My Share of the Task

by General Stanley McChrystal

  I’d been lucky. Hoping to command in the 82nd Airborne, I had ended up in the same brigade I’d started in as a new lieutenant in 1977. I had returned to “the Division” the previous May with some trepidation. I’d been away from it for fifteen years. I knew that much had changed and that the proud unit could be insular. But I joined an organization that was well led and far healthier than the post-Vietnam 82nd I’d experienced fresh from West Point. My brigade commander, Colonel John Abizaid, had forged a close team of commanders yet led with a light touch. While he was my boss, he was also a friend.

  When I had taken over ten months earlier, in May 1993, the White Devils were already a tight unit, and from the start I made teamwork a priority. In the 24th Mech, I’d learned to use technical skills like marksmanship to build confidence, expertise, and a sense of unwavering standards in our noncommissioned officers. We did the same with machine gunnery in 2/504. Likewise, the Rangers had taught me the power of shared physical challenges, so foot marching again became central to forging unit spirit. The paratroopers responded remarkably to my emphasis on cohesion. It would, that March morning, prove essential.

  * * *

  As I left our headquarters for the quarterly training brief, I glanced at paratroopers from my battalion who were loading vehicles for movement to Green Ramp, the marshaling site at Pope Air Force Base, a couple of miles away. There they would complete final refresher training before donning parachutes and taking off to conduct a routine daytime training jump. The jumpers were mostly new paratroopers or cooks, administrators, or other specialists who, although vital to the operation of the battalion, had other duties that kept them out of our larger mass unit jumps. I nodded and smiled at several sergeants I knew well. I envied that they could be outside while I sat in a meeting.

  I was a few minutes early, and we gathered in John Abizaid’s office talking informally before moving to the basement conference room. After a little while, through John’s office window, we noticed a large plume of black smoke rising from the north, the direction of Green Ramp.

  “That’s got to be a huge fire, and down near Pope,” someone said. We assumed it was a controlled burn, and moved downstairs to the brief. A short time later the brigade executive officer, somewhat breathlessly, interrupted the meeting.

  “Sir, there’s been a big accident at Green Ramp,” he told John Abizaid as we all listened.

  Brigadier General Mike Canavan, the assistant division commander for operations, said he would drive to assess the situation, and suggested John and I ride with him.

  Each minute of the drive made it increasingly obvious that a major accident had occurred, as emergency and other vehicles moved toward the tower of smoke. Having seen my paratroopers next to our headquarters just a short time before, I hadn’t considered the possibility they might be involved. But about 250 meters from the gate of Green Ramp we drove past a White Devil paratrooper I knew. Without equipment or a beret, he was walking somewhat aimlessly back in the direction of our battalion. Paratroopers didn’t walk around like that.

  * * *

  At Green Ramp, because we were riding with Brigadier General Canavan, we were able to pass quickly through the military police cordon that had been established and into what we now could see was an aircraft crash site. Ambulances, fire trucks, military police, and vehicles from nearby military units that had moved to the site to help were everywhere. Soldiers, both injured and dead, were being moved as quickly as possible to Womack Army Hospital on Fort Bragg, a couple of miles away. I soon found several of my paratroopers and learned that my battalion had been the hardest hit. The accident ultimately killed nineteen White Devils and left over forty injured, many grievously. A sister battalion, the 2/505, lost four of their own paratroopers in the accident.

  It was a shock. In combat, losses are painful but rarely surprising. It’s the nature of the beast. The scope and severity of this accident was akin to war but arrived with little of the mental preparation that girding for combat allows. The moment called for leadership of the kind I’d long studied and knew would one day be necessary.

  We began to piece together what had happened, and over time details of the incident became clear. An in-flight collision of two air force aircraft, an F-16 fighter and a C-130 cargo plane over Pope Air Force Base had resulted in the fighter pilot losing control and ejecting. His aircraft had crashed onto the airfield, striking a parked C-141 aircraft. Pieces of both aircraft, along with a wave of fuel-fed flame, had swept over the adjacent areas of Green Ramp, where paratroopers gathered and prepared to load planes for the jump.

  The size of the affected area was limited. Paratroopers fleeing the approaching narrow but hellish fireball who cut one direction escaped unscathed, while those in the direct path of fire and debris suffered terrible burns, or worse. It had ended quickly, but the process of rebuilding the battalion, and the impact on many people, would go on for a long time.

  In an accident of this magnitude, as after a significant combat action, there were two immediate priorities. The first was providing medical care to the wounded. Young medics and leaders had to triage on the ground—deciding who would be given a chance to live by determining who would be treated first. At Green Ramp, medical assets arrived after the first few minutes, and relieved that burden.

  The second priority was accountability. In combat, soldiers have a sacred responsibility to leave no one behind, yet in the confusion of an evolving situation, accounting for every comrade can be remarkably difficult. At Green Ramp, the mix of units and the rapid evacuation of many wounded soldiers before a firm system could be established to track them left us hustling to ensure we located every paratrooper.

  I quickly realized that I needed to communicate a clear message to my battalion about what had happened. Inaccurate accounts or mixed messages would make it harder for us to focus on the tasks ahead. Almost immediately, I also decided that rather than allowing the unit to wallow in grief or self-pity, we would actively focus on honoring our dead, caring for our wounded, and doing everything we could for the families affected. From the airfield I moved to the post hospital.

  Not surprisingly, Womack Army Hospital was a confusing whirl of motion. The emergency room entrance area was overwhelmed with arriving vehicles, yet the staff was operating with impressive calm. We set up a small command center to begin to establish accurate accounting for our paratroopers, and I moved to the morgue area to confirm the identity of one of them.

  The scope of the event guaranteed immediate news coverage, and we worked to provide rapid notification to families of the paratroopers involved, so they wouldn’t hear tragic news from public sources or spend anxious hours in fearful anticipation. Yet we balanced that with a need to ensure that haste did not result in misinformation that might produce anguish in loved ones or friends.

  As we assembled and verified the list, familiar names of close colleagues appeared, like that of Staff Sergeant James Howard, only twenty-seven but a veteran leader of our personnel section. Annie and I would later stand by his graveside with his wife and two young children. Paratroopers I’d not yet met, like twenty-two-year-old Private First Class Tommy Caldwell from Senath, Missouri, another husband and father, perished as well. This would have been Caldwell’s first parachute jump in the 82nd. I could imagine that he and his young wife would have celebrated it that evening.

  As people gathered in a large reception room in the hospital, waiting for information or a chance to visit injured husbands or friends, a young wife from our battalion arrived. Jan Dunaway was married to Captain Chris Dunaway, my battalion personnel officer. Both were from rural Arkansas and had embraced army life, the 82nd, and our battalion with vigor. That day, having heard of the accident, Jan drove from her quarters to the hospital to see if she could help. She had no idea Chris had been involved.

  Shortly before Jan walked into the room, I had identified Chris’s body in the morgue and see
n the distinctive airborne wings tattoo over his heart, a reminder of his passionate commitment. Army procedures dictated that formal notification of spouses include an army chaplain and a careful procedure. But I couldn’t risk that she’d hear about Chris from an impersonal list or thoughtless conversation. So I pulled her aside and told her as compassionately as I could.

  I’d never personally communicated that kind of news to a spouse, and although I knew Jan well, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I think even if I had been a veteran at it, her reaction would have stunned me. Looking directly into my eyes, she drew herself up a bit straighter and thanked me.

  “This is a difficult day. I need to see if I can help any of the other families,” she said quietly.

  From the first, I realized that being organized was the key to real compassion. There was a natural tendency for Annie, me, and other key leaders to flock to the bedsides of injured paratroopers or spend time with grieving, frightened family members. But organizing and focusing the paratroopers and spouses of the battalion allowed us to have a greater impact. We found everyone ready to help, and natural leaders arose, many of them wives, to schedule the delivery of meals to families, provide almost constant child care where needed, and even to deliver 135 Easter baskets to children affected by the crash.

  In the first days, Annie, Kathy Abizaid, and other unit leaders spent most of their time at the hospital. The hospital staff was terrific, but White Devil troopers and spouses provided essential support for people facing uncertain futures. Assisting parents and young wives in visiting badly burned, sometimes dying young paratroopers, then making difficult decisions on things like burial locations and insurance money, were searing experiences.

  So, enabled by a chain of command above us that would not tolerate bureaucracy preventing us from doing the right thing for our paratroopers and their families, we buried our dead, visited our wounded, and simultaneously prepared ourselves to assume our planned rotation as the division’s Ready Force-1 battalion. Immediately after the crash, John Abizaid asked me if, after the losses, I thought we needed another unit to replace us as the first in the division to deploy if needed. I said no. We both agreed that responsibility would help the battalion move beyond the loss.

  On March 29, six days after the accident, at an 82nd memorial service for the fallen, I spoke to more than 3,500 people gathered inside the Ritz-Epps Fitness Center at Fort Bragg. The audience included a number of the injured, bandaged soldiers, some moving by crutches, others visible on the white hospital gurneys that had been wheeled in to allow them to watch. I tried to express how I felt.

  “The depth of our loss does not mean we are beaten. As long as young men and women volunteer to jump, when no one would question the choice of an easier path, we cannot lose.”

  While the first days were tough, my reactions were more mechanical than emotional. I grabbed onto the task of leading the battalion through a challenge, and to some degree that focus insulated me from more personal emotion.

  Those feelings came later. In the weeks and months after the crash, we visited injured paratroopers at Duke Hospital, and at the Army’s burn center in San Antonio. On one visit to Brooke Army Medical Center, in a ward of badly burned paratroopers, most lying flat with little clothing or coverage to avoid infecting sensitive wounds, I spoke with a young paratrooper I knew. I had to lean forward, straining to understand what he said.

  “Sir, I’m trying to salute, but my arm doesn’t work.”

  My stomach knotted. I needed to salute him.

  * * *

  I thought often about the risks that the paratroopers I led had accepted. Six months before the tragedy, I’d sat outside my battalion tactical operations center, a waterproofed canvas tent that held maps, radios, and selected members of the staff, with Mike Canavan. We were in a wooded training area on the western part of Fort Bragg but talked about a location some eight thousand miles away: Somalia.

  A day or so prior, on the afternoon of October 3, 1993, U.S. forces had launched a raid into the Bakara Market in Mogadishu, Somalia, to capture clan leaders opposing efforts to bring stability to part of the tragically chaotic Horn of Africa. Although the daylight raid had begun well enough, the shoot-down of an MH-60 Black Hawk had begun a series of events that ultimately resulted in the loss of eighteen American soldiers, including Army special operators, Night Stalker crewmen, and Rangers.

  Even from initial, incomplete accounts, it was clear that there had been a ferocious firefight in which the magnificent courage of the force had been apparent. But because Mike Canavan and I had both served in and would eventually command the task force that conducted the raid, the operation had special resonance for us. We knew that the losses, many of them friends, would be deeply felt in the small special operations community. In the days ahead, media coverage that included heart-wrenching photographs of American corpses, our former comrades, being dragged by raucous crowds through the streets of Mogadishu evoked anger and revulsion.

  The fight in Mogadishu was to have lingering effects on America, her special operations forces, and my experiences in the years ahead. Just as Grenada, Panama, and the first Gulf War had done much to erase the frustrations of Vietnam, Mogadishu carried a whiff of failure, a reminder that despite the progress we’d made since Eagle Claw thirteen years earlier, the possibility of death and defeat was always at hand. That reality focused and drove us as we labored to develop a force that would win.

  * * *

  Several months after Mogadishu, and several months before the tragedy at Green Ramp, the Army Personnel Command had asked if I wanted to compete for command of a Ranger battalion. Commanding a Ranger battalion was reserved for “second-time” commanders who had already led a conventional unit. A forthcoming board would consider a slate of candidates from across the Army. I went back and forth in my mind as to whether I should pursue the opportunity. Ever since my summer experience with a Ranger company at Fort Hood as a West Point cadet, I’d wanted to lead Rangers. My four years in the 3rd Ranger Battalion had made that a passion. Yet I loved the White Devils and felt I hadn’t yet done all I could in command. Ranger selection would cause me to leave just halfway through my command tour.

  I was a few days from making the decision, seesawing daily between the two options, when an old Ranger comrade came to visit. Nick Punimata had been a senior NCO in the 3rd Ranger Battalion and had since become a warrant officer in Special Forces. A thoughtful friend in a bearlike body, Nick sat down in my office and congratulated me on getting a Ranger battalion command.

  “Nick, the board isn’t until next week,” I corrected him. “And I haven’t decided whether to compete for one. It might be better for me to stay here.” Nick gave me a look of surprise and exasperation.

  “But, sir, what about the boys?”

  I made the decision then and there, and a week or so later I was informed the board had selected me to command a Ranger battalion.

  * * *

  Soon after I was informed I’d return to the Rangers, the Pope crash happened. As a result, my chain of command at the 82nd recommended that my departure be delayed from summer 1994 until November to allow me to help the unit navigate through rebuilding in the wake of the tragedy. It was a good decision, and I was pleased to have seven more months in command of the White Devils.

  Those months were exciting. On September 18, 1994, two months before I left the White Devils, I joined most of the 82nd Airborne Division’s roughly sixteen thousand paratroopers as we loaded into a fleet of C-130s at Fort Bragg for what was to be the largest American combat parachute drop since World War II.

  Contingency planning had been ongoing for many months as turmoil roiled Haiti. The sizable parachute drop and subsequent operations would secure key facilities on the island. My White Devils would jump on the airfield in Port-au-Prince and move on foot through the city to link up with Rangers at the National Assembly building.
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  Four days before the designated D-Day, we were instructed to move our units into secure holding areas to conduct final preparations while maintaining as much operational secrecy as possible.

  With their commanders and key staff having been sequestered for the past week, the paratroopers no doubt sensed something was afoot and were curious as they marched into the personnel holding area where we would be staging. I assembled them in the corner of what once had been a 1950s-era 82nd Airborne Division unit motor pool.

  As I looked onto the sea of faces, they were familiar. I’d seen them dripping with sweat on long foot marches, and shivering with cold but grim determination during long training exercises. I remembered their serious but compassionate demeanor carrying coffins or escorting families of their comrades. Most, like me, had never experienced direct combat. They thought they were ready but needed to hear it from me.

  “Gentlemen, they’ve canceled the World Series on us,” I said, referring to the ongoing baseball players’ strike. I paused to confused looks. “So we’ve decided to invade Haiti.” The paratroopers laughed and cheered.

  I wasn’t trivializing a combat operation in which people would likely die. But it was important to break the tension. There would be stress enough in the days ahead. As most had already guessed, the operation would be to unseat Lieutenant General Raoul Cédras and his junta, who, having deposed the democratically elected president, ruled over what President Bill Clinton at the time called “the most violent regime in our hemisphere.”

  After three days of conducting rehearsals and repeated reviews of every part of the plan, we moved to the airfield and, beside a sea of parked aircraft, donned parachutes and loaded up. The energy was palpable—and short lived.

  Immediately before takeoff, I was informed that the negotiations former president Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell, and Senator Sam Nunn were conducting with Cédras were still ongoing. I knew no operation would take place while they were still there, and I guessed our imminent launch was being used as a powerful lever to get an agreement from Cédras. So it was no surprise when, a couple of hours into our flight, I was passed a note from the air force loadmaster in the back of the aircraft that said we were returning to Pope. I relayed the word to the paratroopers without much explanation. Most looked surprised; all appeared disappointed.