Background
All of us who have served in the Armed Forces have our own experiences of having served under capable commanders both in war and peace. Personally I have been fortunate to have served under a succession of professionally competent leaders who were also very good trainers of men.
In my post-retirement years, I have also worked as a corporate trainer and participated in assessment work at very senior levels. I was often asked and occasionally gave formal talks on military leadership on the battlefield and its relevance to civilian and corporate leadership. The response to these talks convinced me that tenets of military leadership have much to contribute to training of business leaders and managers.
I propose to write a series of blogs on Military Leaders and Mentors. These will eschew theory; but by using anecdotes and examples, the reader will be enabled to draw his own lessons and conclusions related to his personal field, military or otherwise. The subject of leadership is such that the discussion will be drawn out over a period and necessarily will always remain incomplete. I have been an Infantryman in the Army so these will mainly be army examples. Please bear with me.
Get the Job Done
In December 1962, our unit, 2nd Battalion, Brigade of The Guards, was then serving with 43 Lorried Infantry Brigade which was a part of 1 Armoured Division. The other brigade was 1 Armoured Brigade comprising four illustrious regiments of the Armoured Corps. With its Supporting Arms and Services, the Division, then only one of its kind, had an élan (sometimes misplaced) of its own. The 1962 debacle had just taken place, but that was at a far distance from the Armoured Division. In this pepped-up environment, our Brigade Commander stood out.
Brigadier Karam Singh, Vir Chakra, was from Central India Horse (CIH) and had earned his VrC in the 1948 war with Pakistan. In the anglicized milieu of the then Army and particularly the Division, Brig. Karam Singh insisted on often reverting to Hindi; additionally he was a hard taskmaster and trainer. The training exercises that he set for the Brigade were remarkable for their originality, tactical acumen and endurance. It is only when I became senior that I began to comprehend the solid grounding that our Commander had provided us.
Those days, exercises over terrain the Armoured Division had spent years usually followed a set pattern. Not Brig. Karam’s. First, you knew that an exercise was in the offing, but no one ever knew exactly when it would start. It would always begin with a Warning Order, usually at some unexpected hour. And once the exercise started, one never knew when it was going to finish. Just when everyone was dead tired and dropping, up would pop another warning order, another task and off we went again – the fatigue just accumulated. In one exercise lasting over a week of hard paced movement, for lorried infantry this meant foot-slogging and digging, as a young officer I must have slept for just a few hours. The Brigade Commander didn’t sleep at all, I think. At the end his eyes were more bloodshot than anyone else’s. That was his lesson, battle is one hard grind and you just don’t fall out. It is only when I was commanding a Brigade in Sri Lanka and the pressure never seemed to ease over weeks and months that I understood Brig. Karam’s wisdom.
One exercise incident still stays with me. As mentioned, everyone in the Division knew the ground intimately. Our battalion was advancing, led by tanks. At the appointed place, like previous years, the tanks pulled up at a stream, declared that they could not cross and told us, the Infantry to take over the advance. As I dutifully dismounted, the Commander came on the radio. What has happened? He asked. He cut short the reply and told the Squadron Commander to line up his tanks on the near bank, to dismount his men, pick up stones from the bank and make a crossing place. He was reaching in half an hour and would supervise. Our battalion was to continue the advance; the tanks would join up shortly. All this was said in Hindi with anger overflowing the radio. There was consternation. In fifteen minutes or less, the tanks had crossed and had resumed movement, well before the Brigadier had reached. It is only later we found out that the Commander had taken his tank to that place, found a crossing place and arranged the exercise accordingly. It was a lesson in leadership that is unlikely to have been forgotten by those involved.
Another time our battalion was to act as exercise enemy to the Brigade. Our Commanding Officer was left free to do what he liked. The exercise wound its way and concluded. The Brigade had run rings around us. At the end, Brig. Karam Singh stood in front of all officers, most of us very junior and explained how he had carried out appreciation (assessment) of his task, how he had planned and executed it. He also told us what had been done well and weaknesses. It was an object lesson in mentoring. In between some tanks and vehicles had broken down. He told us, in Hindi, that as a squadron commander, he would wear his overalls and slide under his tank for maintenance and he expected us to do the same. Equipment could not be allowed to breakdown! Again, a singular lesson.
Some years later, after a longish stint in high altitude, our battalion was in the plains again under a CIH officer; he was Maj. Gen. B.N. Sarkar, the divisional commander. As we were a new battalion in his Division, he chose to inspect us and put us through our paces over three days. Since we were Guards, we were also expected to parade ceremonially as a battalion at the end of the inspection. The month of June in North India is miserably hot and the parade was scheduled for a very early start. The General and the Brigadier (not Brig. Karam) came, took the salute and went off satisfied. But the spectators were sparse in attendance. In the evening, at the customary Drinks party, the whole station was present in full strength. The General was furious. They could come for drinks but not the parade. He ordered us to parade again and wanted the whole station to be present, this time as an order. Needless to say, we were not very popular after that.
But think of the lesson in values that the General drove home that day.
Conclusion
My non-military readers will agree that these examples of vigorous leadership, commitment to a task, intimate knowledge of one’s trade, value systems, have universal application.
In the next blog, I shall write of another two Generals, our divisional commanders in high altitude, who ensured that we never feared the mountains or our enemy again, ever.
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