He agreed, we shook hands, and we never had any problems.
Despite the internal staff battle, it was immediately apparent that USAFA’s military training was far superior to my cadet training at West Point. Hell, West Point in the 1940s was like summer camp in comparison! Oh yes, we’d gone on forced marches, fallen over rocks at night, crawled through some mud, shot Springfields loaded with blanks at one another, learned to drink beer, and had a wonderful time, but it bore no resemblance to the great training at the academy. What was all the fuss about?
Lieutenant General Thomas S. Moorman was a great guy. I admired and respected him enormously and we got along well. He had a little bit of a temper but he knew what he was doing. That gentleman had the big picture and had the best interests of the academy at heart well ahead of personal desires. He and his wife, “Miss Atha,” anchored the whole place with their graciousness, in direct contrast to the rough demeanor I brought along. Well, after a year of combat I was still wound pretty tight. My gut told me to dial back my brash attitude, become civilized again, exercise prudence, get in the groove to make a good impression, but I just couldn’t. Part of me kept wondering why I was commandant. The mantle did not sit easily. How this was going to play out was unknown, but I couldn’t be anything other than who I was. There was also Ella. How would she take to this new environment?
To my surprise and relief, Ella liked it. I’d been commandant for only a few short weeks when we were invited to the supe’s house for a large dinner party. The superintendent was quartered in a beautiful old home on acreage that had become government property when the air force first acquired the land. The large dining room had a table that could seat eighteen people. Our quarters were smaller but equally gracious, set back on a lawn under the trees. Both houses were the focal points for social events. This was the first of many such quasi-official occasions and attendance was not a matter of choice. I didn’t resent these necessary gatherings; they were always interesting, the guests were fun, and Tom and Miss Atha were charming hosts. But my rough edges left a few splinters at that first party. I was like a frustrated gorilla tearing through a ladies’ tea party. Ella, fortunately, was in her element as the center of attention as the commandant’s wife. This seemed to bestow more social standing on her than the more nebulous position of wing commander’s wife in the Officers’ Wives Club at Bentwaters and temporarily made up for missing the high life of D.C.
The party started off on the wrong foot for me. Ella and I were set upon by a group of wives upset that we had enrolled our girls in a private school rather than Academy High. I told them it was none of their goddamned business and stormed away. That response might not have been fit for cultured society. Ella saved the day with her charm and social grace. She described the girls’ prior schooling and her sincere desire to continue to provide her children with the best education. She charmed the group. There was polite laughter. I was rescued from a gaffe.
One of the supe’s guests that night was a rather robust lady with an overpowering, booming voice. Regardless of whom she was talking to prior to dinner, everyone learned her passion in life was hunting. That meant really hunting, African safaris no less: elephants, rhinos, lions, impalas, gnus, you name it; she had shot it and had the record heads to prove it. The woman sat on my left at dinner, regaling me with endless details of barrel length, bore, shot weight, recoil padding, white hunter qualifications, and so forth, all for my edification and that of the whole group, whether we were interested or not. Finally sensing my bored bemusement, she turned directly to me and asked with scathing sarcasm, “You DO shoot, don’t you?”
Knowing I had just fought over North Vietnam for a whole year, the other guests leaned forward in rapt attention for my response. I was aware of their interest and answered with studied politeness. “Only people, ma’am, only people.” End of conversation.
Within a month of my arrival my two biggest challenges were clear. For starters, military training was working pretty well but discipline needed tightening. In my mind, firm discipline in military training is essential, whether for a jungle airstrip, in the trenches, in an aircraft, or at service academies. The system is designed to level the playing field. Kids came from all backgrounds: upper-crust East Coast families, cornfields of Nebraska, city slums, California beaches. All had been outstanding in high school to gain academy appointments, but they came with social attitudes intact. Doolie year was designed to neutralize that. When the hair gets cut, twenty extra pounds of baby fat melt off in Jack’s Valley, and egos are stripped away on the playing field, everyone becomes naked. Personality and character show up. The whiners give up or sink to the bottom; the natural leaders rise through the ranks. It happens that way in any group, especially under the unique stresses of the military. Kids do that by learning to work together as a team; no man climbs an enemy hill by himself, and a pilot doesn’t fly off alone without a team behind him. Military people have to operate as units, each member supporting the other with team spirit. Discipline to reach true teamwork is crucial—the MOST important part of being an officer.
Some people saw a paradox in the notion of a maverick fighter pilot instilling discipline in the Corps of Cadets. Many thought fighter pilots were probably the most unruly, undisciplined bunch of people in the military. Complete nonsense, of course. Every aspect of a fighter pilot’s life demands strict discipline. Flying itself takes discipline. It is, in fact, both the end result of highly disciplined training and the constant application, through self-discipline, of the lessons of that training. I have a pet definition of discipline: It’s what makes a person do the right and proper thing under many different circumstances. That doesn’t mean by sheer instinct or innate ability, it means through knowledge gained by life experience, training, and learned judgment. If discipline were instinctive, I wouldn’t be needed as commandant. To do the right thing from moment to moment, a person needs to analyze and judge a situation correctly, make the right decision for the proper course of action, and then take that action. All of these steps require discipline and training. It took discipline in Korea not to chase MiGs across the Yalu. It took discipline in Vietnam to break off a hot engagement when we got too close to China. It took discipline among the ground troops just to get the airplane airborne each day. Nothing is accomplished without team spirit and a focused work ethic. It’s an acceptance of the gold standard, a set of rules you believe in and take an oath to obey.
It seemed to me that much of the day’s society showed lack of discipline of any kind. Kids had grown away from society’s standard and were trying to develop their own. If people had any standard at all it appeared to be based more on what was good, pleasant, or gratifying in the moment, rather than what was good for the whole. If laws need to be changed in a land where law is determined by a majority of the people, then laws need to be changed through an orderly, established procedure. That’s democracy. Making up one’s own laws creates chaos. Adherence to law brings rewards although adherence may sometimes be extremely difficult. Deviation from law usually brings punishment of some sort, yet compliance out of fear of punishment is weak. Compliance because of one’s conviction or acceptance is true discipline. My job as COC was to lead a cadet back to his own essential core of “doing the right thing” through the discipline of military training. The concept was simple but my work was cut out for me.
Case in point: An AOC (air officer commanding) showed up flustered at my office one day reporting, “Boss, we’ve got a streaker at the noon meal formation and he’s gotta be stopped!”
“What’s a streaker?” I asked, knowing pretty well what the answer was.
“Some cadet is running naked through the ranks at noon meal formation with a bag over his head. We’ve tried but we can’t catch him. It’s making us look silly!”
I laughed at the image, thought for a moment, and told the AOC I would handle it. At a meeting later that day I explained to my staff, “OK, tomorrow I want an officer or NCO to appear in every exit off
the Terrazzo when our streaker gets out there. You are just to stand there. No chasing. Mind you, no chasing! If he darts past you that’s all right. I don’t want to know who he is. Neither do you. That’s not the point. Afterward I want the cadet wing commander and his cadet staff in my office at 4:00 P.M. sharp.”
All went as planned the next day. I watched in amusement from my office window as our streaker tried to get back into barracks. I have to admit he was fast, perhaps inspired by the freezing November day. When I last saw him he was disappearing around the south side of the Chapel headed for the hillside woods. At four o’clock I welcomed a small group of defiant-looking cadets into my office. I shook hands with each of them and told them to sit.
“Gentlemen, I am certain all of you know the rules of the game at this stage of your lives. There is a vast difference between official responsibility and unofficial behavior. For instance, when you are at parade that’s official. When you are assigned guard duty that’s official. As your commander I expect your response to an official responsibility to be totally trustworthy, to be something I can depend upon no matter what. To get to the point of this meeting, I am going to ask you a question after which I am going to leave. I don’t want to hear your answer but I expect you to discuss the question for as long as you like. The office is yours.” I looked at them sternly.
“My question: How can you stand at an official event such as the noon meal formation in front of the entire wing, knowing your acceptance of the verbal report from each squadron and each group stating all present and accounted for is an official affirmation meant to assure both you and me that all is in order, when you have every reason to know all is not in order?”
I left. End of streaker.
My other biggest challenge at the academy revolved around the honor system. Honor, to me, is a simple do or don’t. USAFA had gone through some recent cheating scandals, which threw a sharp focus on the system of dealing with honor violations and demoralized the wing. At the academy our honor system seemed bogged down by specifics and nuances of meaning. It was treated like a court of law, which shocked me. At the Point, honor was simple; it wasn’t thought over, it wasn’t discussed, it wasn’t codified, analyzed, beaten to the ground, or weakened by myriad interpretations. We just lived with it, accepted it; we didn’t lie, didn’t cheat, and didn’t steal. Not lying meant you didn’t make falsehoods, known falsehoods, deliberate falsehoods, or little white falsehoods. You didn’t cheat on exams or in the classroom. You didn’t steal. That just meant you didn’t steal. Period.
Honor means to perform one’s duty in an honorable fashion, to behave in a way that makes one a trusted agent of one’s company. The standard of an honor code needs to be maintained, but violations committed for the good of the whole company (versus individual actions to further selfish personal gain) seemed to me simple to regulate. I ran into a brick wall with my commonsense notion versus the academy policy of automatically expelling a cadet for any honor code violation. Yes, the violator must be punished as an example to others, like the parachute episode in my Ubon trailer, but when a rule is broken for good reason, a good commander will wait until the uproar has died down. He will then take care of his subordinate privately without running it through a court of law.
The first violation on my watch was a doozy. The same enterprising fellows who had put the sign in my office and supplied the wing with fake mustaches were part of the “Rally” Committee, tasked to keep up morale. I had to hand it to them—they were an inventive bunch! Between the cheating scandals and the war going on in SEA for a number of years, the Cadet Wing was in an understandably deep funk. The kids thought their fate was to master academics, graduate, go to pilot training, then die in the war. Due to regular losses, the sports teams weren’t inspiring, particularly in football. Alcohol for cadets of age was permitted in public places off campus, but on academy grounds it was verboten, so parties were a drag. Before one football game, that Rally Committee decided the morale of the wing needed boosting through a beer pep rally.
The committee head and a pal collected several hundred dollars from friends and made a deal with a local beer distributor to purchase two hundred cases of beer. Obligatory pep rallies were scheduled for Thursday night before Saturday games to show wing spirit. These guys checked a small flatbed truck out of the motor pool on Thursday afternoon, drove the truck to Colorado Springs, loaded the two hundred cases, drove the truck back to the Cadet Area, and parked it near the base of the Ramp. At 10:00 P.M., committee members assembled at the Ramp, dressed in cadet dark blue sweatsuits so they couldn’t be seen. The truck was driven up the Ramp and slowly around the Terrazzo area while rally members unloaded and placed cases of beer in a long, continuous line on the ground. As 10:15 “Release from Quarters” bugle call sounded on the PA system, cadets drifted slowly out onto the Terrazzo without much enthusiasm. When a couple of them spotted the beer they ran back into dorms yelling, “There’s beer! Get out here, there’s beer!” A few diehard straight arrows tried to stop the runaway train, to no avail. Four thousand cadets had themselves one hell of a pep party that night. At the end, not one can of beer was left and the truck showed up in its parking place at the base of the Ramp.
Calls from squadron and group AOCs came to me by midnight. I knew I had a mess on my hands. By morning the AOCs were swarming to discover the perpetrators. By afternoon, Cadets H. K. Ownby and Wade Adams were planted in chairs in front of my desk with a phalanx of angry AOCs standing behind them. The AOC group blurted out the details of the plot, exclaiming they had the two kids on an honor violation for lying to the beer distributor about their identities. Ownby asked me to call the beer distributor myself and gave me the number. I picked up the phone and called, asking the man how much beer was purchased, how much was paid, what time it was picked up, and then who had bought the beer. I stared hard at the kids while the man answered my questions. Then I said, “Oh, I see. Well, thank you very much.”
Addressing the AOCs, I reported, “He said they gave him the name of Nino Balducci.” By this time at the academy I knew Nino Balducci was the fictitious cadet who had entered with the first class, of 1959, and got turned back every year. It was a standing joke that he was blamed for every cadet wrongdoing. The group AOCs, almost in unison, said, “You see, General, we’ve got them!”
“Yes,” I responded, “it appears so.” Then I looked hard at Ownby and Adams. “He also said the kids told him to give us the name of Nino Balducci if we asked. Then he was to tell us they told him it was a joke and to make sure he told us their real names, Ownby and Adams. I guess you don’t ‘got ’em.’”
To engineer a meaningful reaction to this very public infraction, those two faced a Commandant’s Disciplinary Board and were punished with hundreds of tours to march, along with hundreds of hours of confinements. A few months later, I visited Ownby privately in his room. “Did you learn anything?” He answered, “Yes, sir.” I turned to leave and said, “Good. You’re relieved of the remainder of your punishment.” I smiled at him, walked out the door, and delivered the same message to Adams. Enough was enough.
Over my three and a half years at the academy, I tried to change the honor system both individually and collectively. I tried in one-on-one conversations and in small group discussions on Saturday mornings when I’d bust in on training hour; I tried at my house in personal contact with the cadets; I tried through my office during Wednesday sessions; I tried at meetings with individual members of the Honor Committee; I tried throughout all the agony of trying the honor cases. It was an ultimately hopeless quest.
For many reasons, I had a love-hate relationship with my time as commandant. The tangled politics of the administrative system frustrated me no end, but I surely loved the cadets! Those kids were the cream of the crop, only a couple of bad apples in the bunch, and the Cadet Wing suppressed those quickly. It was rewarding to be around bright, eager young minds, to watch them grow as men and officers. I tried to hang out with the kids as much as poss
ible. I loved their spirited high jinks and purposeful sense of fun. Pushing the boundaries of playfulness is the only way to live and work, in my opinion. Laughing adds lightness to even the most serious situation and one must not take oneself too seriously.
As a means of getting closer to them, Ella and I had groups over to the house in civilian dress for informal get-togethers. I think it helped having two teenage daughters around. We had lots of family slide-show nights (which horrified the girls to no end), barbecues, badminton tournaments, treasure hunts, croquet matches, and even formal dinners where table manners and proper etiquette were mandatory. Of special significance to me was hosting groups of first classmen from different squadrons for Friday spaghetti dinners. Several evenings ended with me narrating gun camera film from my P-51s and F-4s. The cadets paid rapt attention to those. On one such evening, a squadron group member showed up late in a flight suit an hour into the party. Turns out he had just had his first solo flight. I retrieved an old flight scarf from my dresser, tied it around his neck, and congratulating him with “Now you are a proper Wolf cub!” His squadron mates were understandably envious. Good. I wanted to push all of them to push one another. The cadets pushed me back with their endless shenanigans. I’m sure they thought the stern eye of the commandant was on them from his lofty perch as they marched or walked across the Terrazzo, but my observations were always tinged with a large amount of fatherly love. I was proud of them. I pulled for them. I sank or rose with them. They were my kids.
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