Gen. DePuy describes the lack of actual training he found at TRADOC when he arrived:
Well, I would have to say that when I first visited the schools and the training centers I was unimpressed. I was horrified by some of the things that I found. For example, at the Engineer School I discovered that the engineer lieutenants were never given an opportunity to learn how to drive a bulldozer, or run a road grader or a front-end loader. Yet, they would eventually go to an engineer platoon having that type of equipment, and I couldn’t understand how they would be able to supervise, or to criticize, or to train. Down at Fort Benning most of the training of the lieutenants was accomplished in a classroom instead of out with troops. The orientation was very academic, very intellectual. I don’t know whose fault it was. Some people didn’t think it was a fault. There’s been a big argument for years about education and training. I’m not sure what all the differences are, but I do know that the Army had moved pretty much towards education and away from training. TRADOC is now criticized for going too far towards training. My conviction is that we were totally unbalanced towards education, and that as hard as TRADOC works, it will only bring the thing back into balance. As between the two, education and training, you need both.
At Fort Knox I thought that the training of the tank lieutenants, the armor lieutenants, was awful. They really weren’t being trained to be tank commanders first and tank platoon leaders second. They were really being trained to be tank company commanders. The basic courses in all of the service schools taught them not to be what they were about to be, but what they eventually might be. And, when they went to the advanced course, they were taught about brigades and battalions instead of about being a company commander. I found that to be very interesting. It was part of the philosophy of the Mobilization Army in which everybody got a job one or two grades above where he then stood. But, we don’t have a Mobilization Army; we have an 800,000 man Army! That’s what we are going to go to war with. Why should we go to war with untrained platoon leaders, untrained company commanders, and untrained battalion commanders, when they have to win the first battle? So, the first thing I tried to do was to bring the school system back closer to where the Israeli school system is, which is a training system that trains tank commanders, tank platoon leaders, and tank company commanders at about the time that they are going to discharge those duties. As I said, this is controversial, and right now there is a bit of a reaction setting in to all of that. I just hope things do not go back to where they were, which was really bad.
Now, the training centers really upset me. CONARC had run the training centers with an iron hand. Everything that was done in the training centers was prescribed by CONARC. There was no latitude or flexibility, and the first consequence of that was that there was also no feeling of responsibility. No matter how dumb it might be, the answer always was, “It’s in the directive. It’s in the Program of Instruction (POI). We’re doing just what we were told to do.” This meant that the major general commanding the training center went around and inspected only to see how well his Center was doing what CONARC had told them to do. The colonels, the lieutenant colonels, and the captains all went around with their eyes glazed over, bored to death. The drill sergeants had taken over. Over time, the drill sergeants will distort even a very clear directive, and find some little aspect of it that was never intended to be important and make that the centerpiece of some training exercise or bit of instruction. Well, it was really bad. The execution was bad, the concept was bad, the training was bad, the supervision was bad, morale was bad, and motivation was bad.
One term they used in the training centers that conveys part of the problem was what the drill sergeants would refer to as being “on the trail.” I don’t know whether or not you know where the term “on the trail” comes from, but it refers to driving cattle herds from Texas to Colorado, or from Oregon to Colorado. That was the mentality that pervaded the training centers. The cadre were just getting one bunch of cattle through, and then another bunch of cattle would come along to be herded through, with a lot of screaming, shouting, yelling, and cursing, but with little effort to teach. It was just an effort to get through the day, to get another 100 trainees, or another 1,000 trainees through without an accident and without some sort of disciplinary problem. Well, what I did was say, “Each of you major generals running a training center is now totally responsible. If there’s anything that goes on that’s wrong or dumb, stop it, and change it. Do what’s smart, and tell me later.” I told them, “I don’t ever want to be told by you or any of your colonels, captains, lieutenant colonels, or sergeants, that you’re doing something that’s dumb, or that I find out is dumb, because you were told to do it. From now on you are going to do only what you think is right.” Well, that had quite an impact. Now, one of the impacts that it had was that they all started doing things much better, and they thought up all sorts of marvelous new things to do, and marvelous new ways of doing it. Suddenly, they were enthusiastic. They now had a man-sized job to do, and they couldn’t cover up anymore. In my opinion, it turned the whole situation around.
Recently, the Army got all excited when folks discovered that there were differences between the training programs at the various training centers. You may be sure that they are minor. You may also be sure that the price the Army pays for absolute conformity is too high. It results in lousy, irresponsible, lackluster training by officers and NCOs who are bored to death with “on the trail” type training.
Now, the last and biggest part of all of this is the whole philosophy of training. There I have to talk about General Gorman, because General Gorman and the others who were with him on the Combat Arms Training Board (CATB) at Fort Benning, brought to TRADOC a new concept of performance-oriented training, which is a systematic way to go about the setting of training objectives through the careful determination of tasks, conditions, and standards. They also brought to training some exciting new technology and procedures. It took me some time, frankly, to digest it all myself after I came to TRADOC. But, finally, I saw the great benefit and logic of what they were doing and fully supported it. The credit for the concept really has to go to General Gorman and to a number of other people who worked with him, both earlier and later. They are the ones who articulated this concept, and who were the leading proponents of it in the Army.