There are a lot of reasons for it, some good and some bad, for the fact that there are a lot more staff officers and positions than line officers. Whether you think it’s a good thing or not, that’s the way it works. They break down as follow:
S-1: Personnel and Administration — This is the equivalent of the Human Resources department at a corporation. The ultimate bureaucrats.
S-2: Intelligence — These guys are responsible for knowing what the bad guys are doing, what the bad guys think the good guys are doing, what the good guys are doing to hide what they are doing from the bad guys, what the bad guys are doing to hide what they are doing from the good guys — after awhile you have a major headache. Their motto — ‘We bet your life!’
S-3: Operations and Training — If you’ve got to be a staff officer, be the S-3! These guys are responsible for actually giving the orders when the commander makes a decision. A good turn as the S-3 is critical to becoming an exec or commander somewhere down the pike. During combat ops, the position is often held by a top subordinate unit commander or the exec. Career line officers want to be the S-3. Remember the line from Orwell about all pigs being equal, but some being more equal than others? The S-3 is more equal than the others!
S-4: Logistics and Supply — Very boring, very critical. Everything you will ever need comes from the supply department. Almost every major military disaster in recorded history has resulted from a general who ignored supply problems. Another popular saying is that amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics.
Lastly, according to the book, a light artillery battery like Battery B was supposed to have five officers, a commanding officer, an executive officer, a fire direction officer, and two platoon leaders. In practice, a captain was the CO, a first lieutenant was the XO, and three second lieutenants split up the other jobs. (Batteries don’t have staff officers.) For instance, the six howitzers might be split up into three two-gun platoons, each under the command of a second john, while the exec runs the other stuff. Also possible, two of the second johns might control three-gun platoons, leaving the third second lieutenant to control the motor pool, etc.
What we had didn’t quite match the book. We had Captain Harris as the commander, First Lieutenant Brimley as the exec, and Second Lieutenant Goldstein.
Oh, yeah, and me.
In the most amazing division of labor, I was assigned to control all six howitzers, while Goldstein was assigned to control our motor pool, with the exec running the fire direction center. After only a few days it became obvious why this was being done in this fashion — Second Lieutenant Goldstein was hopelessly incompetent! Despite frequent (and frequently loud!) counseling from First Lieutenant Brimley and Captain Harris, Second Lieutenant Goldstein could be counted on to fuck up anything assigned to him. At least in the motor pool he couldn’t shoot a truck at the good guys!
Battery B had had a year of simply terrible luck with their second lieutenants. They had three a year ago, all straight out of AOC, all with high hopes. One had managed to land in the trees and break a leg, and after getting out of the hospital, had transferred to a motorized artillery regiment. One had been caught driving drunk and been cashiered. The third was Second Lieutenant Goldstein, who was well on his way to an OER (Officer’s Efficiency Report) that would see him assigned to a mess kit repair company in Duluth, Minnesota, if he was lucky. I was to be the first, hopefully, of a string of new second lieutenants who would bring Battery B back to the path of righteousness.
Nothing like a little pressure on the new job!
Anyway, by the middle of January I was learning my job in a real battery. I also had my list of jobs, which was daunting indeed. I was the junior officer in the battery, so in addition to my ‘real’ job as platoon leader of six howitzers, I also had what Robert A. Heinlein called the ‘George’ jobs, all the shit jobs that get dumped on somebody. I was morale officer, welfare officer, pay officer, recreation officer, public relations officer, community liaison officer… you get the idea. Some of these items took up very little time (public relations officer) and some were major league pains in the balls (pay officer), but they all had to be done. I was glad Marilyn wasn’t around, since I wasn’t sure if 24 hours in a day would be sufficient.
On the plus side, well, I wasn’t some dumb shit kid barely old enough to shave. While I might look like just another junior officer, I had been running small outfits most of my life. It wasn’t that I didn’t make mistakes, but that I had made every conceivable mistake in another lifetime! I didn’t make the same mistake twice, and while I hadn’t been in the military before, I had been a foreman and sales manager and most other forms of manager over the years. If there was a way to fuck up, I had done it over the years. Now I could learn from my own mistakes. I also knew the men would be looking for a way to test me. I wasn’t too terribly worried. I had been in similar jobs before, I had a thick skin, and a decent sense of humor.
One of the major mistakes made by junior officers is that they think that since they’re officers, they must be smarter than the enlisted men. So, you get a 22 year old Second Lieutenant trying to tell an E-7 Sergeant First Class who might be old enough to be his father how to do things. I knew better. You tell the SFC what you want to do — politely — and then ask his opinion of how to do it. If you’re really smart, you keep your own fucking mouth shut in the meantime! Another big mistake is that they ignore the chain of command and start directly telling the enlisted men what to do. The chain of command is there for a reason — use it! Like I said, I had fucked up by the numbers 50 years ago; I didn’t need to repeat the experience.
The Army, was transitioning between a mostly conscript army to an all volunteer army. The 82nd was a volunteer outfit even during the draft era, simply because all paratroopers are volunteers. We had generally higher quality troops compared to the rest of the Army. Still, pay was low and standards were low. The big changes wouldn’t come for a few more years. One of the big changes in the Eighties was the rise in pay and standards. A few years before, I remember being told, the pay officer needed to do his job while wearing his.45, locked and cocked! I never had to do that. We had gone to direct deposit a few years before I got there.
Towards the end of January, that Thursday morning, I came into the battery office at 0700 and found the Captain already there drinking coffee with the battery sergeant, Sergeant First Class Hammersmith, and Spec 4 Jones, one of the clerks. I glanced at the wall clock and then looked at the Captain. “Am I late sir?” He normally didn’t show for another fifteen minutes or more.
“Just got out of the house early. You have no idea how much racket a baby can make in the morning,” he said with a smile. The Captain had just become a father for the second time that spring.
I smiled at that. Oh, if you only knew! “And if I’m very careful, I won’t for a very long time.”
That got an amused snort out of the Captain. I made some tea and set it on my desk, which was in the back corner of the battery office. Only the commanding officer, the exec, and the battery sergeant got their own offices. The captain followed me over. He pointed at a big envelope on my desk with a return label on it from RPI. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Not quite sure. It must be from my school, I didn’t have an address, so I simply gave them the 319th’s name here at Bragg. I’ll make sure they get a proper address, sir.”