In movies set in past centuries, the leaders of military units are often depicted as leading the charge, running in front of everyone else, engaging (or intending to engage) first in combat with the enemy, and so on.
Was this really common? It seems kind of a bad move, to me. If he falls (and it seems probable that he would, doesn’t it?) then his unit is left demoralized and at least for a moment leaderless.
Or do I not understand how it works out?
-FrL-
Read John Keegan’s The Mask of Command for an analysis of why they did this and why they stopped.
Sailboat
Hmm…
Can you summarize? 
-FrL-
Think of officers as quarterbacks/coaches. They plot the strategy, devise the play, organize the squad, and lead them in making the play. If they don’t lead by example, why should anybody follow?
It’s a little more complicated than that, but not much. In the days when you fought hand to hand you needed to be physically in contact with your men or the confusion of battle would tear them apart. And the role of officers was as much to goad the men into doing stupid things like running into a hail of bullets rather than the other way. The physical courage of officers played a major, pardon the pun, role in whether their troops functioned properly in battle.
You can see a devolution from kings to lords to officers to sergeants in who plays this role as armies get larger and larger over the centuries, battles get more spread out and cover a larger area that is more difficult to understand and control, and communications make command of distant troops easier.
But make the effort to read Keegan. He is the best writer on war and his books are revelatory.
In the days before command and control could be done by radio you needed to physically lead them forward to show them what you wanted them to do, and make sure that they did it. Once the killing range and firepower of weapons increased the officer casualty rate began to become unacceptable to the point where something had to change
I also believe in a more “amateur” or primitive type army (i.e. one without tons of discipline and no rigid command hierarchy, operating on a very basic Darwinian sort of principle)-think Viking horde-that any leader who shrank back and told his men to “You go on ahead and attack boys, I’ll hang back here and supervise” would be disrespected (if not summarily killed or at least shunned) if he wasn’t up there swinging his battleaxe with everyone else. At the very least the unit’s morale would suffer badly if the head guy wasn’t leading the blitz. Fast forward and the colonel who hides in the command bunker while the charge is executed is now accepted as normal because his expertise is considered valuable and hard to replace.
Well, no. To my own personal knowledge, as late as 1967, junior officers were taught and indoctrinated that they must lead from the front. In the infantry school the whole concept was summerize in the school’s moto: “Follow me!" Infantry platoon leaders were expected to be on the firing line and actively and physically leading and setting the example. Except in the most exceptional circumstances a company commander was expected to put himself in a position where he could observe and direct and control the three or four platoons that made up his company.
Somebody once observed that platoon lieutenants were pretty much a waste of time and a general bother except in one situation. When the platoon was on line and hostile fire started coming in there is a perfectly natural and reasonable tendency to take cover. In that situation it is the platoon leader’s sole duty to stand up and walk the line, kicking his people on to their feet and moving them forwards. That means that when things get really ugly the only person standing up and offering a good target is the platoon leader.
As far as I know “Follow me” is doctrine today.
George Washington, CINC of the Continental Army, rode between the opposing lines during the Battle of Trenton in 1777, encouraging his troops. An aide covered his eyes because he was sure that Washington would be shot. Miraculously, despite volleys from each side, he wasn’t, and the Americans swept the field.
Officers leading from the front was certainly still the custom during the Civil War. Look up Strong Vincent or Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain sometime. Robert E. Lee once personally tried to lead an attack, but was forced back by his own troops, who understood how irreplaceable he was to the Southern cause. Gen. Pickett came in for some criticism for not being at the front of the Gettysburg charge that bore his name.
I read a book a few years ago, Tarnished Eagles, about courts-martial of Union regimental colonels during the Civil War. One such officer lost his men’s respect when, despite being told repeatedly that the forces they could see through a dense forest were also blue-clad, he ordered them (while cowering behind a tree) to fire. “If you’d come up here and take a look for yourself, you damn coward, you’d see it’s our own men!” one frustrated soldier finally snapped.
“You can’t lead from behind.” -JEB Stuart and he didn’t
Until the middle of the 18th century European powers purposely didn’t shoot at officers for the same reason they didn’t kill knights in the Middle Ages, it was unsporting to kill a noble…American rebels had no problem with this though.
<<slight hijack<<< Often, we are told, it’s the sergeants that really run the army in the field, not the frontline officers. How true is this?
Bloody colonials, no sense of fair play 
I’m reasonably sure that the motive for not killing knights, when it was practiced, was ransom and not mores.
Not at all. They ensure that the orders of the officers are carried out. They also make sure their troops are ready to fight (ammo food water). The officers are the ones leading the troops. There are times when a platoon sergeant will have to step up and accept more responsibility if his officer is particularly weak. Those officers typically don’t last long.
But is it not safe to assume that the ordinary soldier will have more confidence in their sergeant or any other NCO.
After all these soldiers probably interact more with NCOs than with officers, at least in the British army they do altho’ from what I’ve seen on film, American soldiers do seem a lot more easy with officers.
Bear in mind that I said “on film”
Princeton, not Trenton. :smack:
Why is shooting the little guys more fair than shooting officers? Don’t the little guys deserve a break? Particularly if shooting the officers will make the little guys stop fighting without having to kill them? I mean, if it works that way, it’s officers that are causing the war to continue.
Sailboat
It’s politicians that cause wars to both start and continue.
The little guy would be pefectly happy to stay at home with his wife and kids
The relationship between officers and noncoms has often been described as a “husband and wife” relationship. It’s an extremely loose analogy but it serves to some extent. Officers define the strategies and goals, monitor their progress, and change them as the situation dictates. NCO’s direct the soldiers on how to get those goals accomplished and strategies implemented. A large part of this is the “motherly” role in making sure the soldiers are equipped, fed, protected, transported, and trained. This varies hugely from unit to unit but it’s a fairly apt generalization.