Into the Storm: On the Ground in Iraq Read online

  Without so much as a real awareness, I passed through a conversion experience at Valley Forge. It was not religious, though I consider myself a religious man, and it didn't hit me suddenly. It took years. I and my family had a severe setback in our lives, and we overcame it and then pressed on toward new missions.

  After Valley Forge I was not, on the surface, a very different man. I was still confident, assertive, and willing to take risks physically; I still worked hard at professional excellence; I was still sensitive to other people; and I cared deeply about other soldiers and liked to be around them. If anything, most of these qualities intensified. I think my inner intensity, my drive, actually increased.

  But now I was also a much wiser man, with a changed perspective about life. I now had a never-before-experienced inner peace and a new passion for excellence, and for the trust between leader and led. It gave me the inner steel to grab onto when I needed it, to fend off external criticisms and hostility in the face of what I knew to be right. After Valley Forge, I was a man with what you could almost call a crusade, a calling, a burning desire to do something about the terrible betrayal and tragedy that had been thrust upon my fellow soldiers. I was not alone in this among my professional peers, but I determined to see it through.

  The wisdom and peace that came from those experiences were not only about soldiers. They manifested themselves in other ways . . . in, for instance, my relationship with Denise and Margie, and in the way I would establish policies and deal with military families in the future.

  In the military, it often happens that a professional soldier will deny his (or her) family, give up time with them--holidays, vacations, evenings, weekends--normally for the often-unexpected call of duty. The military is a demanding and sometimes cruel profession that exacts a toll on families, all in the name of duty and service. Too often, the present gets mortgaged for the future. You tell yourself, "Well, I'll have time for that later in life, after I retire. For the time being, I have to work hard, and maybe the family has to pay the price." Most of the time, duty leaves you little choice.

  Now I came to the realization that the present is the only time you have. You have to focus on the present, on what you have, and not on the past and its gains or losses, or on the future, and what you don't have. You get there successfully only by taking care of the present. You don't ignore the future, but you enjoy the day-to-day more, and you enjoy the people you love now, rather than putting that off. You have to live life now and build on what you have every day. I began to realize I was not powerless in this tension between the demands of duty and family considerations. I could do something about it in our lives, and within my circle of responsibility I could help others cope better by establishing policies that helped.

  I looked at soldiers, at leaders and commanders, and at units a bit differently. Ever since that time, when I have had occasion to build a team, I am much more aware of soldiers who in their life experiences and in their military experiences have suffered severe setbacks. Out of my own family experience, and out of Valley Forge, I've learned that those who get knocked down and get back up to fight are the really tough ones. People who sail through life without knowing any adversities are suspect. You never know how they are going to react when something hits them. This is especially true on the battlefield. You don't want people responsible for soldiers' lives who could go to pieces when the trauma of their first setback hits them. You want the ones you know will come back out swinging. The same is true for units. You train and build units so that they can come back hard, confident they can take the ups and downs and still win. You have to allow for all this without sacrificing excellence in performance. It's never easy, but I had a much better insight into how to do that now.

  IN the spring of 1971, I began to give serious consideration to returning to active duty. It wasn't easy--then or now--for someone with an otherwise disqualifying physical condition to stay in the military, but it was possible, if the medical and physical evaluation board reports were positive enough, if your motivation was strong enough, and if the Army wanted you badly enough. A few senior officers at that time helped--Colonel Jimmie Leach, for instance, was very instrumental in persuading the Army medical department to listen to soldiers who were wounded and wanted to stay on active duty.

  I started making phone calls, talking with others. There was a possibility that I would be offered a permanent position teaching at West Point, but I turned that down. I wanted to stay in the mainstream of the Army. I wanted to play on the armor/cavalry team. I wanted no favors, only a chance to compete.

  I did consider other possibilities because, like all of us there, I did not know how it would all turn out. I sent a letter to the Ford Foundation with my resume, asking if I could contribute in some way to that public service organization. I investigated the possibility of attending the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. But then I came to the realization that all I ever really wanted to do was be a soldier. I had to pursue that for all I was worth. I had this burning passion now and a developing wisdom about myself and the Army that I wanted desperately to give a chance. I wanted to serve again.

  Fortunately for me and a few others there at Valley Forge, the Army would give us that chance.

  I was discharged from Valley Forge in January 1972, after a stump revision operation in September 1971, two unsuccessful operations on my left ear earlier in the year, and the loss of our son in August. I reported to the Armed Forces Staff College as a student in early February 1972, ready for duty after an almost two-year absence from the line.

  Dr. James Herndon had written on my medical board report, 22 July 1971, "He is highly motivated and desires to remain on active duty in the Army. At the present time he has recently been accepted to attend the Armed Forces Staff College, and when his stump has been revised, he will do so." In December 1971, Dr. Vernon Tolo made an addendum to that medical board: "Recommendations remain the same as on the original board dictation." On 12 January 1972, I sent in my formal application to continue on active duty. On a form dated 4 February 1972, I received the permission I had asked for: "The request for continuance on active duty is approved."

  AS it turned out, our Army as an institution also was seriously wounded in Vietnam. The trust between the Army and the country was fractured. Over the next twenty years, the U.S. Army and I went through many changes; we both got to and fought Desert Storm, and that trust was rebuilt.

  I did not look back, except to remember my fellow amputees and to promise to myself to keep the faith with them.

  The Army would give me that opportunity.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  8 JUNE 1991

  "This one was for all of you, too."

  "We know. Today we felt better than we have in a long time."

  After the 4.2 miles down Constitution Avenue and the enormous outpouring of emotion from our fellow Americans, there was one place I wanted to go. Denise and I had been there before. The quiet place. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The names of friends, relatives, fellow soldiers; gone, never forgotten, never far away. This one was for you, too. The silence there. The memories of heroes who did what our country asked.

  Now there were more names. Not for the Vietnam Memorial, because that now belongs to another time, but new names, families. After the parade, they wanted to talk. "Did you know my son?" There are always new names and new memories after combat. Combat is for keeps and the memories are forever. But this time it would also be different.

  Unit guidons had been placed on the Ellipse as rallying points for combat veterans of those units and family members. Soldiers of VII Corps were quietly talking with families, proud, confident, full of thanks for a nation and a city who would honor them so. They had done their duty and done it with valor and sacrifice just like the generation whose names were on the Wall down the street.

  But this time it was different. The American people and their Army were united. It was not like before.

  I remember
ed the words of that 3rd Armored Division soldier in the days before we attacked into Iraq: "Don't worry, General, we trust you."

  Trust reunited.

  I had seen both now. I had seen the painful no-thanks return from Vietnam and the silence and pain at the Wall down the street, now this. It was difficult to absorb it all. I felt somehow guilty, because I had had the chance to experience all this, while many of that generation had not. Yet I also felt a great pride in my fellow soldiers of this generation who had won a great victory. I had kept my promise to them and to my fellow Vietnam veterans. Our Army had come full circle. So had I.

  How did all this happen? How did we both get from 1971 to 1991?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Rebirth of the Army

  FOUNDED by the Continental Congress in 1775, the U.S. Army is older than the country it serves. It is and always has been an army of the people, and over the course of our nation's history, it has probably reflected American society more than any other uniformed service. As a consequence, it is the service that has most frequently felt the nation's mood swings concerning foreign military ventures. Such ventures have rarely sat well with the American public, or with their representatives in Congress, and because of that, and the nature of American geography, Congress has historically had little patience for a large standing peacetime Army, preferring early on to rest secure behind our ocean boundaries, and later to rely on the technology of the Navy and Air Force.

  In the early 1970s, neither the United States nor the Army was in good shape. You can blame the condition of both on the outcome of the war in Vietnam, and you won't be wrong, but there were deeper causes. Fortunately, the Army's leaders were willing to face up to them.

  What was happening? What did they see?

  By 1972, most U.S. ground forces were out of Vietnam, and the war had been turned over to the ARVN, though with support from U.S. logistics and airpower.

  No matter what you may have heard, however, when our Army left Vietnam, they had not lost.

  Before they left, U.S. Army tactical forces had performed superbly. They were victorious in every tactical engagement, some at considerable cost in soldiers, and technical and tactical innovations, such as air assault and attack helicopters, had proved successful. The NVA had to wait until some time after the departure of U.S. ground forces before they dared to start major operations in the south, and even longer before they risked undertaking a major invasion of the south with mechanized forces and tanks. Yet, even then, U.S. airpower was still assisting ARVN forces.

  And then the air support stopped.

  When that happened, U.S. military professionals, especially those in the Army, felt that the long, terrible sacrifice by young Americans had been betrayed. Just as bad was the loss of national honor: we abandoned an ally we had pledged to assist. The professionals would never forget that.

  There was little support for the war on the home front, and it was reflected in attitudes toward the military. It was a bad idea to wear the uniform off post or base. Protests at the Pentagon became news cliches, and when National Guard troops were called out to keep protesters in check, feelings against the military intensified even further.

  Meanwhile, the whole society was passing through a major upheaval: polarization of whites and blacks, testing of authority, insensitivity to minorities, drug problems, the sexual revolution. The Army was not immune; as drug use and racial tensions divided America, so, too, did they divide the U.S. Army.

  An army has a spirit, an identity, an image. Part of it comes from its own institutional personality and traditions; part from the people from whom it springs. In the 1970s, the U.S. Army's public image was in ruin, its spirit in danger of being broken, its identity in danger of being lost.

  A prime example could be found not in Vietnam or the United States, but in Europe, where the Army faced its greatest challenge, in the Warsaw Pact. How ready was the Army, as part of NATO, to stop a Warsaw Pact armored sweep aimed at Western Europe?

  Not very.

  The years of fighting in Vietnam had drawn Europe-based forces down to unacceptable strengths. Worse, the insatiable appetite for personnel had stripped our forces of officer leadership, and almost destroyed the Army's professional noncommissioned officer corps, long the backbone of the Army. A series of hasty training programs to fill depleted ranks had left the Army with NCOs who all too often were poorly trained in basic leadership techniques. Because the NCO is the first-line leader in the Army, the one person primarily responsible for the basic individual soldier skills on which every successful operation depends, training and discipline suffered. In some cases, it went to hell.

  In Europe, many in the Army were on drugs, mostly hashish, but some were on heroin. There was racial violence in the barracks, which sometimes spilled over into the streets. Gangs ran some barracks. Leaders--officers or noncommissioned officers--were physically attacked. The chain of command in units struggled day to day simply to maintain good order and discipline.

  It was not an Army that expected to win, or was ready to win.

  Equally serious, while the Warsaw Pact had strengthened their forces during the previous ten years, U.S. Army capabilities had steadily declined. While fighting in Vietnam, the Army had missed a whole equipment modernization cycle. Many Army units would have been expected to fight with equipment from the early 1960s, with no prospect for change anytime soon.

  Just as important, though less immediately visible, the Army warfighting doctrine--the ideas with which it fights--had not undergone a serious examination since World War II.

  And finally, Army leaders realized--with shock--that the U.S. Army was not prepared to fight and win in a mechanized battlefield that had the speed and lethality of the 1973 Mideast War. A whole generation of leaders had seen Army unpreparedness in World War II and Korea, and knew its cost in the lives of soldiers. The thought of unpreparedness haunted the U.S. military perhaps more than it did any other major power. It would be hard to underestimate the sense of urgency with which such feelings drove the Army reforms of the 1970s and 1980s.

  Meanwhile, in 1973, the draft law expired, which meant that from then on, the armed services would have to exist as an all-volunteer force. The initial results were almost entirely predictable. It was difficult to find true volunteers, and of those who joined up, all too many were not high-quality recruits. Too many were at the lower ranges of intelligence, and some of them came in only after they were given the choice of prison or military service. All that made an already deteriorating discipline situation worse.

  Some professionals left the Army then. They'd had enough of an Army gutted by Vietnam, indiscipline, low morale, and betrayal. Others left involuntarily, as the Army rapidly drew down from its peak strength during Vietnam. But many stayed. They stayed because they wanted to be soldiers, because they wanted to be part of the solution, because they saw an Army never defeated on the battlefield struggling for its very existence as a viable force, and they wanted to help in these times of trouble. They stayed because the Army was wounded and needed help; you do not abandon a wounded buddy on the battlefield. They stayed because it was their duty. They were in for the long haul. It wasn't always easy or fair, but they knew that sometime, someplace in the future, the nation would need her Army to go fight and win, and it had better be ready.

  Senior Army leadership knew all this when they took a look around their institution in the early 1970s. That they did not like what they saw goes without saying. And so they set out to change it.

  There was much work to be done.

  MISSION AND FOCUS

  To begin with, in order to rebuild the Army, it was not enough to publish directives and policies. The entire Army had to internalize the need to remake itself, and do it so pervasively that all its members felt the same urgency. In order to renew its focus, the Army needed to renew its sense of its mission--or rather, it needed to understand what exactly its mission was.

  An Army's mission is to win wars on the gr
ound. But what did that actually mean for the U.S. Army in the early 1970s? And what would the Army have to do then to accomplish it?

  The answers were provided for them by Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, Army Chief of Staff Creighton Abrams, and Secretary of the Army Bo Calloway.

  James Schlesinger was sworn in as Secretary of Defense in July 1973, after spending several years at the Rand Corporation, one of the premier strategic and military think tanks. In those years, the United States had tended to rely more on nuclear weapons than on conventional forces for the defense of Central Europe. Schlesinger's experience at Rand had left him with the conviction that the United States needed to turn that balance around. There was an urgent need, in his words, "for a stalwart conventional defense in Europe," a need that was not likely to be met immediately, given the "dreadful" condition of the U.S. Army at the time. He had in fact seen a growing indication that the Europeans had given up on American forces in Europe. Because of the drawdown of our forces there to support Vietnam, the Europeans had concluded that our army in Europe lacked credibility.