4 - The Black Vault

e
THE BDM CORPORATION
Most would agree that a certain distance must be maintained
between a combat commander
and his troops in order to ensure a proper
command environment. When under fire there is not time to talk it over and
convince a person to do something; an order must be given and it must be
obeyed. In Vietnam, however, there developed certain major gaps in
thinking and communications between commanders and their troops which had a
distinctly negative effect on morale and discipline as well as the ability
of tommanders to lead effectively. Col. Rkobert Nichols has notea, for
example,
that "The senior Army leadership (field grade officers and abovei
were [sic] ideologically sympathetic to the stated purposes of the war.
This was much less true of their subordinates, especially during the later
years of the war." 88/
This obviously raised basic questions of commitment
and motivation. Nichols also noted that many senior officers were
reluctant to admit that things were going badly, a characteristic which
,ent itself to the development of a credibility gap between the officers
and their subordinates. 89/ Studies about drug-related problems in Vietnam
have indicated a second gap, more informational than philosophical, in that
the higher ranks seem to have frequently been out of touch with lower-level
realities. An unavoidable distortion of information as it proceeds up the
chain of command is one e;xplanaticn; a lack of honesty in communications
between higher and lower grades is a second.
Whatever the cause, though,
numerous studies including the Army War College's have indicated that
senior officers were not well informed about lower-level troop conditions.
90/
A third gap between officers and their troops was noted by
Eugene Linden in the context of fragging. According to Linden, "the key to
the violence is the severe cultural divisions that exist in the Army and
that are related to and
war." 91/
expressed by differing attitudes towards the
Going one step beyond Linden's analys'is, one can see that this
culture gap was not only a matter of differing attitudes toward!: the war,
it was also a matter of socio-economic background and problems of communication.
To paint the extreme picture, it is no easy task for a middle-class
officer or one from some small southern or midwestern town to empathize
with, let alone effectively handle, the frustrations and undisciplined
behavior of a hard-core criminal from an inner-city ghetto.
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