The Coalition of the Swilling

Except for the actions of Patton's army and the obstinance of the airborne troops, there should be no reason to be proud of this battle. It was a disaster in every way.

This battle is the primary example I use to demonstrate how competence is forgotten and incompetence rewarded. Patton and the airborne heros would never have been needed if the rest of the army under Eisenhower had been minimally competent and poorly led and trained.

My other example THS might personally remember.

As an A-6 squadron, we had the mission to drop nukes. This was a very serious mission, as one might imagine, and the inspections associated were severely strict.

Usually preparing for the inspection was an exercise in screaming, hair pulling, threatening and last second scrambling for every day's training. This would go on for weeks.

Then we would inevitably pass the inspection with a number of discrepancies and we would laud the team leader who made it all possible.

Then one year they named a captain in charge of preparing for the inspection to a friendly man named "Taz," so named because he was short, squat, and had hair all over his body. He wasn't an inspiring looking guy.

So Taz went about preparing for the inspection and planned everything in great detail, letting everyone know what was needed at what times. There was no last second hair pulling screaming contests. Most people hardly noticed they were preparing at all. I had noticed because I was giving him aircraft and equipment to train with and I was very impressed that he was the first to ever plan ahead and work with me on requirements.

The inspection came and still hardly anyone noticed because Taz was on top of everything and had the team well trained, paperwork all completed properly long in advance and all efforts syncronized and well planned.

The XO confided in me that he was afraid what would happen since it appeared that hardly any energy went into preparing for the inspection, and made a few disparaging remarks about the energy of Taz.

Well, we passed with flying colors, not a single discrepancy.

You know what the result was? The XO and CO said that we were lucky and that Taz's lack of screaming put the squadron at great risk.

I couldn't believe it. And so went the battle of the bulge and many other failures in the history of warfare. The battles that are well planned result in victories that appear simple. Complete disasters that almost result in failure are remembered as great.