From “National Defense” (1981) by James Fallows, pages 110-111.
In an attempt to define more precisely the qualities a leader must display to produce trust and cohesion among his troops, a team from the Army War College interviewed majors who had led rifle platoons in Vietnam several years earlier, asking them to name the values that counted in combat. Four qualities stood out, described by Colonel Malone as follows:
Candor: It’s more than openness, it’s saying the things that need to be said without a lot of words, without an under-the-table agenda, without a lot of Yessir and Nossir. The stakes are too high and time is too short to screw around with anything but the essence and the truth.
The battlefield is the most honest place in the world. The candor of the battlefield is why cohesiveness forms there so quickly and permanently, and why lies told there are punished not with gossip but with action.
Commitment: This is mainly commitment to people, rather than to an idea. For the soldier, the main commitment is to that “ole buddy,” and after that to the small group of people in his squad. There’s some commitment to the larger unit and a little to the nation, but nowhere near as much as to the buddy and the squad. You see it in the Medal of Honor winners. They’re mainly men who jump on grenades, and they do it because they are committed to that small group. You go get your wounded, because they’re your buddies.
Courage: A guy always has a choice about taking a risk. He can lie there behind a log and there’s nothing you can do about it. No one can make him get up. On the battlefield, the risk he must take is a total-loss risk, and yet, for various reasons, the soldier himself decides that the total-loss risk is his best choice. Deciding to take that risk is courage. It is the ultimate definition of a soldier.
Courage is contagious. He did it, I can do it. It’s not that they want to do it, but they will do it.
Competence: This is the oldest value on the battlefield. You can have candor and commitment, but if you are not competent you won’t survive. On the battlefield, competence establishes the pecking order, which may or may not correspond to rank or the chain of command, depending on the competence of those in the chain.