Culture battle: Selective use of history should not be used to justify the status quo

[Norfolk]

I'd definitely agree on the issue of esprit de corps, a few guys I know and/or work with are ex-British Army, and a friend of mine just started at Sandhurst, and it seems like the benefits of the regimental system here are enormous.

But in the bigger picture, there are a lot of negatives too. In the past, the regimental system both retarded uniform training and institutional knowledge (see Britain's small wars from Clive on up), and even impeded modernization (cavalry regimental loyalties and fears often played a bigger role than conservatism in the slow pace of mechanization in the Twenties and Thirties).

That may all be in the past, but there are still some substantial negatives, mainly tied to parochialism, each regiment jealously guarding its perks and slice of the budget, particularly the more influential ones, i.e. Guards, Paras, etc.

However, some of these negatives might be negated in a much larger army like America's, I don't know.

I'd like to say that the Regimental System, when properly functioning overall, institutionalizes a degree of basic competence, and somethime outright execellence, that most other systems cannot provide under normal conditions. Probably the single most important virtue in practice of the Regimental System is that you don't have to keep re-training everyone at each and every turn in the basics, or keep having to reteach lessons learned; that's all (when the Regiment is functioning properly) more or less automatic. Obviously the troops have continue to hone the basics; but in the Regimental System there is (normally) sufficient stability and continuity of personnel and standards of training that make keeping and honing the basics much easier and more efficient while allowing for a great deal more time and effort to be used in learning about and training for much more advanced tactics and operations. Steve is very correct about the benefits of the Regiment System (when functioning properly).

The US Army wouldn't be particularly inclined (though doctrine in theory allows for this) towards using a regular (ie. Non-Air Assault/Airborne/Ranger) infantry battalion in an air assault raid on an enemy HQ or airfield, but a Commonwealth Army would. Similarly, US Marines are tasked with most of the amphibious mission (Rangers have a slice of the pie too) in the US Armed Forces; but a Commonwealth Army considers amphibious assaults a normal part of the infantry battalion role. A great deal of this is making a virtue of necessity, as the money and manpower just isn't there to maintain an entire Marine Corps or a large Airborne Force (and Commonwealth Airborne Forces and Marines tend to be commando-trained, not regular infantry who happen to be on jump-status or trained in amphib ops). But the Regimental System produces efficiencies that may allow for a much more expansive range of training and taskings for what would otherwise be a rather more pedestrian infantry battalion in an Army without such a Regimental System.

Also, an ordinary rifleman in a Commonwealth Army receives 6 month's recruit and basic infantry training (with no specialization in machine-gunning, recce, assault pioneer, anti-armour, etc. - that's for later - , just rifleman training) and to a generally higher standard than most other armies, where the battalions are expected to train the troops up to snuff, taking away valuable time for other training. The Regimental System goes a long way to avoiding this last situation. And again, it (normally) provides a continuity and stability of personnel and training standards that most other systems can't surpass, although a few can match. When you join a Regiment, you are a part of it for the rest of your carrer, and will spend most or even all of your career within that Regiment. This results in a cumulative degree of professional excellence and experience that is very difficult to acquire by most other means.

But, as Granite State and others pointed out, there are, amongst others, two potentially serious problems that they have already identified with the Regimental System. The first is "Group Think". Now, as pointed out by others, this actually has benefits too, providing both a sense of tradition and example and a force of will in the face of adversity that stands in good stead at critical moments on the battlefield. But there is also the problems that when the system isn't functioning properly, "Group Think" especially resulting in nepotism and the like, can result in tactical ossification and downright moral corruption and break-down of morale and discipline. There are such things as bad regiments, and when that happens, it often takes a wholesale housecleaning by outsiders to retrieve the situtation.

The Second, and perhaps most common problem with the Regimental System is Tribalism, which not only makes it difficult to work with other Regiments, Corps, and Arms at times, also resulting in tactical ossification, but in some real unpleasantness between Regiments. For those who have never been part of a Regiment, it may be difficult to grasp the sometimes gut-level, even visceral at times, psychlogical and emotional impact that being part of a Regiment has. The Regiment is your world; the Army is a "foreign" body with which your Regiment in effect has a contract with.

Promotions in the Regiment are made by the Regimental Senate, not the Army. Each Regiment has not only its own history and traditions, but its own institutions, museums (even Battalions of a Regiment may have their own museums), libraries, messes, clubs, barracks, associations, etc., that are all directly owned (except for barracks, the Army owns these) and supported personally and financially by the members of the Regiment (and to which each member must contribute). No outsider is permitted into these places without being accompanied and signed in by a member of the Regiment. Each Regiment is kept separated from the others by a respectable and safe distance. Real unpleasantness may occur when these rules are not consciously followed.

But the best system is not the Regimental System. For all its superiority over most other systems, the WWII German Divisional System is by far the best. Generally similar to the British Regimental System, including an emphasis on local recruiting, the Divisional System (in turned prodeuced by the Wehrkreise System) is the best, and while it produced no less strong regiments than the British system, the focus of tribal identity was the Combined-Arms Division, not the single-arm Regiment. Couple this with the superb training, discipline, leadership, and Auftragstaktik with the Geenral staff System (another thread in itself), and you have the finest "System" in the world. The performance of the Deutchesheer in WWII I think bears this argument out rather well. This is the system every Army should use.

The Regimental System is not exactly a stranger to the selective use/abuse of history for noble, and less-than noble purposes, especially when used to justify or excuse tactical ossification.

A perspective from inside a Regiment.