dea that an officer must by ingrained habit dispose
himself to take action only after he has arrived at an exact formula,
pointing exclusively in one direction, would mean only that under the
conditions of war he could never get off his trousers-seat. For such
fullness of information and confidence of situation are not given to
combat commanders once in a lifetime.

It is customary to treat "estimate of situation" as if it were pure
mathematical process, pointing almost infallibly to a definite result.
But this is contrary to nature. The mind of man does not work that
way, nor is it consistent with operational realities. Senior
commanders are as prone as even the newest junior lieutenant to labor
in perplexity between two opposing courses of action during times of
crisis, and then make their decisions almost with the abruptness of an
explosion. _It is post-decision steadiness more than pre-decision
certitude which carries the day._ A large part of decision is
intuitive; it is the byproduct of the subconscious. In war, much of
what is most pertinent lies behind a drawn curtain. The officer is
therefore badly advised who would believe that a hunch is without
value, or that there is something unmilitary about the simple decision
to take some positive action, even though he is working in the dark.

The youthful Col. Julian Ewell of the 501st Parachute Infantry
Regiment, reaching Bastogne, Belgium, on the night of December 18,
1944, with only his lead battalion at hand, insisted that he be given
orders, even though higher headquarters could tell him almost nothing
about the friendly or enemy situations. He got his orders, and with
the one battalion moved out through the dark to counter-attack. So
doing, he stopped cold the German XXXXVII Panzer Corps, and compelled
Hitler to alter his Ardennes plan.

To grasp the spirit of orders is not less important than to accept
them cheerfully and keep faith with the contract. But the letter of an
instruction does not relieve him who receives it from the obligation
to exercise common sense. In the Carolina maneuvers of 1941, a soldier
stood at a road intersection for 3 days and nights directing civilian
traffic, simply because the man who put him there had forgotten all
about it. Though he was praised at the time, he was hardly a shining
example to hold up to troops. Diligence and dullness are mutually
exclusive traits. The model who is well worth pondering by all
services is Chief B