The Generals
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“The enemy’s horrible, insidious”: Military History Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam, 240.
“the population of our liberated areas”: Military History Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam, 246–47.
“we recruited only 100 new soldiers”: Military History Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam, 247.
“There’s no doubt that 1969”: Chanoff and Toai, Portrait of the Enemy, 109.
“When the Tet campaign was over”: Chanoff and Toai, Portrait of the Enemy, 157.
“COSVN Resolution 9”: See Sorley, A Better War, 155–56. See also “A Preliminary Report on Activities During the 1969 Autumn Campaign, 30 October 1969,” Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 06—Democratic Republic of Vietnam, box 12, folder 13, the Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University.
“The Communists are simply avoiding”: Daddis, No Sure Victory, 183.
From 1965 to 1968: Andrew Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942–1976 (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2007), 367.
Smaller and fewer operations: Daddis, No Sure Victory, 156.
“In some locations” . . . “virtually eliminated”: Truong, Vietcong Memoir, 201.
“because they were able to infiltrate”: “Interview with Nguyen Thi Dinh,” February 16, 1981, for Vietnam: A Television History.
“The problem was that it came too late”: Selected Papers of General William E. DePuy, 439.
“the United States could not have prevented”: Jeffrey Record, “Vietnam in Retrospect: Could We Have Won?,” Parameters, Winter 1996–97, 63.
“By ’69, it was just a joke”: Santoli, Everything We Had, 88.
“Things were going to hell”: Appy, Patriots, 445.
“It was very difficult”: General William R. Richardson, interview by Lt. Col. Michael Ackerman, 1987, USAMHI, 202.
“When I hear people say”: Appy, Patriots, 408.
losing a soldier a day: William Hauser, America’s Army in Crisis: A Study in Civil-Military Relations (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 119.
Desertions and AWOL incidents: Lewy, America in Vietnam, 154–57.
According to a statement: Richard Gabriel and Paul Savage, Crisis in Command: Mismanagement in the Army (Hill and Wang, 1978), 45.
In at least two instances: Shelby Stanton, The Rise and Fall of an American Army: U.S. Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1965–1973 (Presidio, 1985), 357.
“a bogus combat-veteran culture”: Schwarzkopf, It Doesn’t Take a Hero, 181–83.
In 1968, a year in which there were 14,592 Americans: Hauser, America’s Army in Crisis, 175.
the Army seemed to be putting: For a more sympathetic account of the Army of the late Vietnam War, see William Shkurti, Soldiering On in a Dying War: The True Story of the Firebase Pace Incidents and the Vietnam Drawdown (University Press of Kansas, 2011). The essence of Shkurti’s argument, especially on pages 85–95, is that while the Army of that time was frayed, it was not as bad as people think. He argues, for example, that some combat refusals were justified. He also notes that in 1971 “only 4.5 percent of Vietnam GIs were hard-core heroin users.” What this argument leaves out is that a unit can go bad when only a small percentage of its soldiers are ill-disciplined, criminally inclined, extremely demoralized, or simply poorly led and trained.
There were 120,000 Army personnel: Thayer, War Without Fronts, 36–37.
“These guys would work stoned”: Santoli, Everything We Had, 128.
“In my units, the majority”: “Interview with George Cantero,” May 12, 1981, for Vietnam: A Television History.
almost half the Army enlisted men: Lee Robins, Darlene Davis, and Donald Goodwin, “Drug Use by U.S. Army Enlisted Men in Vietnam: A Follow-Up on Their Return Home,” American Journal of Epidemiology, April 1974, 240.
Even more were using marijuana: Moskos, “The American Combat Soldier in Vietnam,” 33.
“the person that got fragged”: “George Cantero,” Vietnam: A Television History.
between 1969 and 1971: Robert Scales Jr., Certain Victory: United States Army in the Gulf War (U.S. Army Office of the Chief of Staff, 1993), 6.
one infantry company that went through: Keith William Nolan, Sappers in the Wire: The Life and Death of Firebase Mary Ann (Pocket Books, 1996), 85. Nolan does not indicate whether the rapid turnover was caused by casualties, reliefs, promotions, or some other cause.
“There were times I was very frightened”: Nolan, Sappers, 104.
When one platoon refused to move: Nolan, Sappers, 114.
In 1965, the Army’s rate of court-martials: George Lepre, Fragging: Why U.S. Soldiers Assaulted Their Officers in Vietnam (Texas Tech University Press, 2011), 10, 113, 162.
At 2:40 A.M. on March 28, 1971: Stanton, Rise and Fall of an American Army, 359–60.
“They were just walking”: Nolan, Sappers, 232.
“It was a mistake”: Richardson, interview by Ackerman, USAMHI, 194.
Baldwin was replaced: Information on the removal of Maj. Gen. Baldwin is from Nolan, Sappers, 253–59; Frederick Kroesen, General Thoughts: Seventy Years with the Army (Association of the United States Army, 2003), 21–22; and Richardson, interview by Ackerman, USAMHI.
“the atmosphere was somewhat poisonous”: Selected Papers of General William E. DePuy, 427.
In a public opinion poll: D. M. Malone, “Leadership at the General Officer Level,” 1975, in Malone, The Trailwatcher, 217.
“the senior officer corps”: Both the Westmoreland speech information and the quotation are from Roger Spiller, “In the Shadow of the Dragon: Doctrine and the U.S. Army After Vietnam,” originally published in the RUSI Journal in 1997 and reprinted in James Willbanks, ed., The Vietnam War (Ashgate, 2006), 421. In a footnote in his biography of Westmoreland, Lewis Sorley says that Kevin Crow, an Army historian, has cast doubt on whether these booings of Westmoreland actually occurred (Sorley, Westmoreland, 348). But in his oral history, General Paul Gorman, who was there, recalls that Westmoreland’s speech at Fort Benning’s Infantry School “nearly created a mutiny” (Gorman, Cardinal Point, 64).
“We reached a condition”: Frederick Kroesen, “Korean War Lessons,” Army magazine, August 2010, 18.
“Those were the dog days”: From online version of Montgomery Meigs, “Generalship: Qualities, Instincts and Character,” Parameters, Summer 2001.
“The Army was really on the edge”: Barry McCaffrey, interview by Lt. Col. Conrad Munster, U.S. Army War College, April 2004, 24.
“An entire American army was sacrificed”: Stanton, Rise and Fall of an American Army, 368.
“As a young officer, I watched”: “Colonel (Ret.) Richard Sinnreich,” interviews by Lt. Col. Steven Fox, 2001, in Sinnreich Papers, box 1, USAMHI, 81.
PART IV: INTERWAR
22. DEPUY’S GREAT REBUILDING
President Nixon did not like Abrams: H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (Berkley, 1995), 313, 531.
“I had no doubt”: Haig, Inner Circles, 275.
the discussions about who would succeed: Sorley, Thunderbolt, 334–35.
“Your Army is on its ass”: Gole, DePuy, 213.
The Grant-like Abrams: For the Grant-Abrams comparison, see Davidson oral history, part 1, LBJ Library, 14.
“expeditious discharge program”: Scales, Certain Victory, 8.
“the full battalion would cheer”: McCaffrey, interview by Munster, USAMHI, 38.
“In 1973, I was present”: Interview with person requesting anonymity, October 2007, 2.
That year the Army War College: Linn, Echo of Batle, 213.
“arguably, the most important general” . . . “likely the most important figure”: Spiller, “In the Shadow of the Dragon,” 44, and Richard Swain, introduction to Selected
Papers of General William E. DePuy, vii.
“What DePuy did was take a broken Army”: Gole, interview by author, Carlisle, PA, December 14, 2010.
a fast-rising young officer: James Kitfield, Prodigal Soldiers: How the Generation of Officers Born of Vietnam Revolutionized the American Style of War (Simon & Schuster, 1995), 127.
“The soldier moved to the next sequential task”: Gole, DePuy, 249.
DePuy and his subordinates: Kitfield, Prodigal Soldiers, 162.
“We cannot have the best man”: Gole, “Relevance of DePuy,” 70.
He threw his institutional weight behind: Kitfield, Prodigal Soldiers, 216.
“It not only ensured that the best”: David Barno, “Military Adaptation in Complex Operations,” Prism 1, no. 1 (December 2009), 29–30.
Cushman had grown up in the interwar Army: John Cushman, e-mail message to author, March 5, 2011. In the 1930s, Cushman’s father worked again for Marshall, in Illinois, and introduced his fifteen-year-old son to him, but that personal connection did not keep Maj. Gen. Troy Middleton and George Patton from relieving the father, then a brigadier general, as an assistant commander of the 45th Division in Sicily in 1943. Author interview with the younger Cushman, November 12, 2011.
“basic questions such as honesty”: Cushman, Fort Leavenworth—A Memoir, vol. 1, 58.
“It was tough, direct” . . . “Lock your heels”: Malone, “The Trailwatcher,” 189. A somewhat different account is given in Kitfield, Prodigal Soldiers, 147.
“the more senior an officer is”: Morris Brady, “Memorandum for MG Cushman,” April 2, 1974, 1–2, included in John Cushman, Fort Leavenworth—A Memoir, vol. 2.
“What the hell happened out there”: Malone, “The Trailwatcher,” 189. Abrams had long harbored suspicions about Army intellectuals. John Wickham, who would become Army chief of staff eleven years after Abrams did, recalled being at an officers’ bar in Saigon as a lieutenant colonel and being loudly told by Abrams, “Wickham, the Army needs fighters like Hollingsworth [Gen. DePuy’s old assistant], it doesn’t need eggheads like you.” Wickham had plenty of time to ponder this crack after he was almost killed in Vietnam and then spent five months hospitalized, believing he would never walk again. “General John A. Wickham Jr.,” interview by Jose Alvarez, 1991, John Wickham Papers, USAMHI, 13, 26.
“did not want a dialogue”: Paul Herbert, “Deciding What Has to Be Done: General William E. DePuy and the 1976 Edition of FM 100-5, Operations,” Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 1988, 42.
“In 1964–67 I had taken exception”: Cushman, Fort Leavenworth—A Memoir, vol. 1, 28.
“the Army War College”: “Remarks by General William E. DePuy, TRADOC Commanders’ Conference, 25 May 1977,” in Selected Papers of General William E. DePuy, 245.
“All I want from this class”: Cushman, Fort Leavenworth—A Memoir, vol. 1, 47.
“They said that DePuy”: “Remarks by General William E. DePuy, TRADOC Commanders’ Conference, 25 May 1977,” in Selected Papers of General William E. DePuy, 241.
“Nice warm human relationships”: “TRADOC Leadership Conference, 22 May 1971, at Fort Benning, Georgia,” in Selected Papers of General William E. DePuy, 113.
“be examples of the soldierly virtues” . . . “out of here”: Cushman, Fort Leavenworth—A Memoir, vol. 1, 63–64.
“Major General Cushman believed”: Herbert, “Deciding What Has to Be Done,” 54.
“General Jack Cushman at Leavenworth”: Starry, interview by Spruill and Vernon, in Sorley, ed., Press On!, 1111.
“Don’t get too lofty”: Herbert, “Deciding What Has to Be Done,” 87.
In 1976, DePuy published the edition of the manual: Spiller, “In the Shadow of the Dragon,” 429.
DePuy made the drafting of doctrine: This group of sentences paraphrases Spiller, “In the Shadow of the Dragon,” 430.
“doctrine became one device”: Hew Strachan, “Strategy or Alibi? Obama, McChrystal and the Operational Level of War,” Survival, October–November 2010, 160.
“the molasses in the system”: Gole, “Relevance of DePuy,” 73.
“DePuy wanted USACGSC”: Herbert, “Deciding What Has to Be Done,” 54.
“We were tactical guys”: Gole, DePuy, 261.
“servicing targets” . . . “clear and broadly accepted”: Donald Bletz, “The ‘Modern Major General’ (Vintage 1980),” Parameters, vol. 4, 1974.
“courted the dangers of oversimplification”: Herbert, “Deciding What Has to Be Done,” 58.
“Dear Jack,” DePuy wrote to Cushman: DePuy to Cushman, October 22, 1975, Correspondence, DePuy Papers, box 35, USAMHI.
In its twenty-first-century wars: The terms used in this sentence borrow from those used by Gary Klein in his wonderful book Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions (MIT, 2001).
DePuy told Starry: Starry, interview by Spruill and Vernon, in Sorley, ed., Press On!, 1128.
“General Cushman is a very strong minded individual”: Cushman, Fort Leavenworth—A Memoir, vol. 1, 44.
“From 1982 on, the National Training Center”: Paul Yingling, interview by author, Baghdad, June 7, 2008.
“The fixation on winning day-long battles”: Linn, Echo of Battle, 216.
“right now, . . . we have”: “National Defense Funding Levels for Fiscal Year 1981,” Hearing of Investigations Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, May 29, 1980, 9, 18.
“Meyer felt that lack of essential honesty”: Kitfield, Prodigal Soldiers, 200.
after returning to the Pentagon from Capitol Hill: Kitfield, Prodigal Soldiers, 202–3.
“He can be counted on”: Malone, “Leadership at the General Officer Level,” 222.
“potentially creative managerial type”: Bletz, “ The ‘Modern Major General,’” 50.
personality and intelligence tests: David Campbell, “The Psychological Test Profiles of Brigadier Generals: Warmongers or Decisive Warriors?,” address to the American Psychological Association Convention, New York, August 30, 1987, 13.
“on the flexibility scale”: Campbell, “Test Profiles of Brigadier Generals,” 10.
“a maladaptive Army senior officer corps”: Lloyd Matthews, “Anti-Intellectualism and the Army Profession,” in Lloyd Matthews, ed., The Future of the Army Profession, rev. ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2005), 83.
In 1983, an Army survey: Tilden Reid, “Performance of Successful Brigade Commanders Who Were Selected to BG as Viewed by Their Former Battalion Commanders,” U.S. Army War College, June 5, 1983, 21, 24, 26, 29, 56.
In 1975, the Army established: C. M. Dick Deaner, “The U.S. Army Organizational Effectiveness Program: A Eulogy and Critique,” PAQ: Public Administration Quarterly, Spring 1991, 22–23.
“While organizational effectiveness”: John Marsh and John Wickham Jr., “Personal for General Rogers, . . . Subject: Organizational Effectiveness Program,” June 7, 1985, in author’s files.
“that could easily be measured”: Peter Varljen, “Leadership: More Than Mission Accomplishment,” Military Review, March–April 2003, 78.
23. “HOW TO TEACH JUDGMENT”
“was confined to the science” . . . “you’re trying to do?”: Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Huba Wass de Czege, unpublished interview by Col. (Ret.) Kevin Benson, January 14, 2009, files of Col. Benson, 9, 11.
In June 1981, Wass de Czege buttonholed Richardson: Huba Wass de Czege, “The School of Advanced Military Studies: An Accident of History,” Military Review, July–August 2009, 3. See also Kevin Benson, “School of Advanced Military Studies [SAMS] Commemorative History, 1984–2009,” U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 2009, 4–5.
“A system of officer education”: Col. Huba Wass de Czege, “Army Staff College Level Training Study,” U.S. Army War College, June 13, 1983, 3. Italic
s in original.
“marginally qualified” . . . “what to think about war”: Wass de Czege, “Army Staff College Level Training Study,” 29–30, 51–52. Italics in original.
“better military judgment”: Wass de Czege, “Army Staff College Level Training Study,” 4.
“The Army gave them the opportunity”: “Lieutenant Colonel Harold R. Winton, USA, Retired,” interview by Lt. Col. Richard Mustion, 2001, Winton Papers, box 1, USAMHI, 46.
For example, its second director: Benson, “SAMS Commemorative History,” 24.
“I came out of that war” . . . “but what about the war?”: Sinnreich, interviews by Fox, 14–16.
“When you get to the unit”: Wass de Czege, interview by Benson, 16.
“Getting these guys was like gold” . . . “around the Army than anybody”: Robert Killebrew, e-mail message to author, June 14, 2011.
Gen. Richardson, who had approved the idea: General William R. Richardson, interview by Lt. Col. Michael Ackerman, 1987, USAMHI, 336.
“would make a tremendous impact”: Wass de Czege, “Army Staff College Level Training Study,” 10.
“just seemed to approach the issues”: Huba Wass de Czege, e-mail message to author, June 20, 2011.
“War is much more than a tactical battle”: Quoted in Benson, “SAMS Commemorative History,” 33.
“For nearly ten years”: Wass de Czege, “Army Staff College Level Training Study,” Appendix B, 21.
a plan developed by “SAMSters”: Benson, “SAMS Commemorative History,” 49.
“are innovative leaders”: “Converting Intellectual Power into Combat Power,” SAMS brochure, 2009, 2.
In 1984, an Army survey: Lt. Col. Duane Lempke, “Command Climate: The Rise and Decline of a Military Concept,” U.S. Army War College, April 29, 1988, 8.
An internal survey conducted: Linn, Echo of Battle, 219.
In 1987, a survey of 141: Lt. Col. Thomas Baker, “Leadership: Does the Officer Corps Truly Care for the Enlisted Soldier?,” U.S. Army War College, April 20, 1987, 15, 16, 24, 26, 27, 32, 37, 49.
“Not trusting people”: Walter Ulmer, “Leaders, Managers and Command Climate,” Armed Forces Journal, July 1986, 58.