The English of Military Communications
9781465683281
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
All military language should be of the utmost brevity and clarity. Death and disaster are the direct results of ambiguity. Throughout all history mistaken directions and information have been the ruin of whole campaigns. Careless wording, like careless shooting, is not only ineffective but often suicidal. The object of these few lessons is to give practice in putting the language of military communication into form. It is hoped that by means of certain technical and rhetorical principles the student may gain proficiency in expressing his thoughts as he intends them and as military efficiency demands them. Our Field Service Regulations state that “clear and decisive orders are the logical result of definite and sure decisions.” But this statement does not imply that if a person arrives at a definite and sure decision, he gains clear and decisive phraseology without effort on his part. General Wagner, a pioneer among American military authorities, divides into completely separate operations the act of deciding upon a definite plan of action and that of drafting or framing orders which will carry that decision into effect. One is purely military and has to do with dispositions of forces; the other is mainly rhetorical and has to do with manipulations of language. Many a military man has decided certainly in his own mind what he is going to do in order to carry out his mission, only to be faced immediately with a harder task. He must set that definite idea in the mind of some one else. “How,” he sighs, “shall I put this so as to let my Captains, Smith and Jones, know exactly what I want?” He seats himself on a warm rock under the blazing sun and chews his pencil. What he at first writes down, he finds, is full of loop holes and is not expressive of what he means. He tries again, crosses out words here and there, adds others, and changes his sentences until the whole is undecipherable. In disgust he tears up the paper and tries again. After fifteen minutes of such effort he holds in his hand a few paragraphs of which he is not proud, but which will have to do. There has been no want, perhaps, of clear tactical reasoning on his part, but rather a distinct lack of ability to drive common English home. His case, we find, is not exceptional. One has only to listen to the discussions of military beginners (or of some, alas, who are not military beginners) to hear this statement confirmed. How often after having given careful or even brilliant estimates of a situation will a man burst out with, “I know what I mean right here, but don’t quite know how to say it!” All the way along there has been a decided blank space between decision in the mind and embodiment in language. Whether slang, profanity, or colloquialisms have cut into our ordinary speech to such an extent as to keep us at a loss for the apt word, or whether we have grown careless or slovenly in our habits of expression, is a matter with which we are not concerned here. We do know that we are continually hampered by our inability to state absolutely our meaning. This lack of skill in composition which besets us, we must overcome in our profession, for the sake of the lives dependent upon our words. Napoleon sitting at his desk scribbling off orders and messages as fast as his nimble fingers can travel, his secretaries standing about him grasping each finished piece from under his pen and sending it off immediately by courier without revision or correction, is a dazzling picture for the military leader to contemplate. In his writing, a commander capable of carrying out single handed all the phases and minor items of the mightiest of campaigns could, no doubt, be precise and accurate habitually.
