Fit For Command

Imagine standing in formation back in the day. The CO relieves the battery first sergeant and asks you if intelligence alone is the determining factor for fitness to lead the unit. You think that you are smart, so here is your big chance. The right answer and just maybe the CO will promote you on the spot and turn the unit over to the smart guy. Ha, ha, of course we know that intelligence alone does not make a person a leader. Albert Einstein was not selected as overall Allied commander during WWII. The generals and admirals did not go through the most rigorous intelligence testing and selection before one came out as the obvious choice. No, leadership is something different. Volumes have been written attempting to define what makes a person a leader where another fails. Gen. Patton became famous as a combat leader, but often said the wrong thing when it came to politics and diplomacy. He probably would have made an awful, perhaps dangerous, political leader. Was Patton more or less intelligent, or does that have anything at all to do with it? The problem may be that I am not here to write up a tiny primer on leadership for West Point or Annapolis.(Funny, but nobody seems to mention Colorado Springs when they give that military academy example.) No, this blog is about PTSD, but I do have a point going here. The question I want to ask is: does intelligence have anything to do with the potential to develop post-traumatic stress disorder?

Back in the day, Capt. Gates never got around to asking me that leadership question. Quite likely he knew better than to give a smart-a..uh smart guy, intelligent or not, the floor. The training at OCS probably went something like: Never ask discussion questions of the rank and file, for their answers will be rank and you will have time to file an oak into a toothpick before they shut up. On the cruise returning from Beirut via Rota and the eternal cleaning of guns and vehicles, we did receive some materials on PTSD and signs to beware of as we transitioned back to the peacetime Marine Corps. However, the causes of PTSD were always The Event (combat, the bombing, the man next to you got killed, etc.). Nothing was said about what might make a Marine more or less susceptible to begin with. Perhaps zero research had been done on the question at that time. In those days, the diagnosis of PTSD had only recently been defined for Vietnam veterans. What qualities or history prior to combat those PTSD veterans had in common likely wasn't first on the list of things to do for the doctors and nurses. Alleviating the suffering came first I sincerely hope. Can I look around at those I know for some common factors?

My friend Luke served in Desert Storm and developed PTSD. Two of us probably isn't a large enough sample to satisfy the statisticians, but we'll give it a go. Unstable home life? Me, early divorce and then remarriage giving me a stepfather from about the age of 7. Luke, nope, parents remain together to this day. Hmm, not doing so good already. Intelligence: I write daily and am often asked to proofread other's work. Luke: when it comes to the written word, we'll just say Luke's pen was taken and he was given a #2 pencil and told not to damage too much. Luke enjoys math and is good at it. I can't stand the stuff and quickly forget all math that I learn. (It's kind of like a math sieve in my brain. I can pour it in but little is caught.) Three areas and we are not coming up with much in common yet. I read often and do it swiftly and well. It is painful to watch Luke read, and I suspect he would rather watch a good basketball game. We were raised in towns only 40 miles apart, but geography probably has little to do with it. Both of us ended up in Information Technology as a career, but that was after the fact. Perhaps we fled to that career field to avoid the people that make us uncomfortable. Luke is married; I am a bachelor. Luke owns dogs, cats for me. That's just using two of us in trying to find common ground, some before and some after The Event. I think I may have a beginning on why it is so difficult to pick out a recruit and say, "He stands a good chance of developing PTSD, assign him to shore duty or to that remote base in Alaska no one wants to end up at." I wonder, is our memory skill level or ability similar, could that be the key?

Memory recall ability may be useful to command. Leaders such as Hitler and Napoleon, among many others, were said to have near perfect recall. With PTSD that may be a liability as opposed to ability, we recall too much and it comes out during stressful moments. I'm not sure any of us want to give up our memories in total, but giving up a few selected ones might help. I think I've hit upon a movie plotline there, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, if I'm not mistaken in my recall. Some have hypothesized or theorized that taking out or causing the patient to forget a few key memories might help ameliorate or even cure the PTSD. Sounds good so far, grab a few bad memories and, poof!, the PTSD is gone. What else might be lost though? As always, messing about in the mind is fraught with potential peril. What if those few key memories are such a part of us that their removal caused relationships to be destroyed. What if my friend's PTSD was cured, but he no longer loved his wife and had no further interest in his daughter? What if he sold his pickup truck and started driving a flower-decorated '67 VW Beetle? Yikes! That bit alone would make him unfit for command in my book. Hmm, maybe trying to sharpshoot a few memories isn't the right answer. Speaking of memories, I seem to recall a young man who walked into the Marine Corps recruiter and signed up open contract, at a time when bonuses were offered for certain career fields. That wasn't very dern smart of me, I wish I could stop disproving my own theories!

Bucky