by Larry Berman
If Bud was going to remain in the navy, he needed postgraduate training in law. He had been accepted for law school, but his detailer reported that he would not receive orders because there were no suitable replacements to serve as executive officer. During the Louis Johnson era, the navy was not sending anyone to law school. Saralee could not understand what was going on. “Neither Dick nor I can understand why you have become so important to the Navy. To us and to many ex-officers with whom we have talked it is inconceivable that they wouldn’t release you when you have two such great opportunities to attend law school. What’s the dope? Certainly hope you can get out of navy.”41 A month later, Saralee wrote Bud that “I personally don’t think Mouza can stand the present situation too long.”42 She urged Bud to get out of the navy. Jim wrote soon thereafter: “I certainly hope that you can obtain shore duty for a spell. Mouza is very tired of being alone—nor can I blame her . . . she has no reason to be happy here therefore—till her husband is with her.”43
Mouza’s December 1947 letters to Bud detail financial hardship, with only $33.84 in the checking account and $27 in cash. “I hope we’ll have enough money for everything,” she wrote.44 From aboard the Zellars, Bud began a 1947 New Year’s Eve letter. “I am still so sick about the Law School that I can hardly talk about it. It just seems when our bad luck will never leave us. I am worried to hear how you will feel about it.”45
Bud’s detailer knew how upset he was about law school and offered to send him to any Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) program. By this time, Bud had served six years in the navy, all of it at sea. He yearned for a shore assignment so that he could spend time with his family. He was offered an assignment at the Naval Academy but felt that it would be better for Mouza’s cultural and social adaptation if she lived in a civilian environment. Bud told his detailer, “Send me where it’s warm.” In February 1948, Bud was detached from the Zellars. He got his wish with an assignment at the University of North Carolina as assistant professor of naval science in NROTC.
As they drove up over the hill from Durham into Chapel Hill, “we both agreed it was like suddenly dying and going to heaven, to enter this very beautiful spot where we were really going to be away from the Navy stress and trauma for a while.” They secured university housing at Victory Village, a grouping of little clapboard houses built for students during the navy flight-program era, which after the war had been turned over to the university for junior faculty housing. Many of the young professors there had married foreign women, “so that we had a remarkable situation where on Johnson Avenue, a long sloping curved avenue that we lived on, there were probably 15 or 20 families, and probably ten of them were GI brides.”46
The Zumwalts made lifelong friendships in Chapel Hill, growing especially fond of their neighbors Jim and Caroline Caldwell. “In the spirit of Victory Village we got to know each other quickly and became fast friends,” said Caldwell. “We had much in common and we just liked each other.” Jim and Bud were both instructors at the university, Bud in naval science and Jim in history. “Bud and I were friendly adversaries in politics, and we spent much time disagreeing about Truman policies and politics while Caroline was helping Mouza make the transition from the ways of the Orient to the ways of this country. Young Elmo did much to seal the bonds between the families. The most friendly and outgoing of youngsters, he wandered in and out of our house at will. Caroline sometimes just read to him, and sometimes he just sat in our living room and played.”47
North Carolina was also the first time Mouza came face to face with a distinct type of discrimination. “A wives’ club was established, that is, a naval officers’ college graduate wives’ club. The only member who didn’t qualify, as non–college graduate, was my wife. This was her [the organizer’s] southern way of discriminating against a foreign wife, so that second year was kind of less happy, although the other wives were great about making sure that Mouza was included in all other things. They weren’t able to deal with that particular form of exclusion, another reason why I became convinced that prejudice in any form can be a very harmful thing,” Bud recalled.48 Until Bud was promoted to the rank of admiral, Mouza was haunted by the fear that she would be the reason he could not reach the pinnacle of his profession.
The Caldwells’ neighbor on the other side was Christina Wright, whom everyone called Aunt Tina. Tina was a lifelong friend of Mrs. Katherine Tupper Brown Marshall, wife of the legendary General George C. Marshall, who lived in Pinehurst, North Carolina. Aunt Tina and Mouza became close friends, and Tina was always speaking of wanting to visit Mrs. Marshall. Bud volunteered to drive Tina down because it presented an opportunity to meet Truman’s former secretary of state and soon to be secretary of defense. The Marshalls lived in Liscombe Lodge on Linden Road, a modest clapboard bungalow set in a smallish garden and so well screened by trees that it was barely visible from the road.49 Mouza and young Elmo were also invited to Pinehurst. Bud and General Marshall spent several hours talking together. Their conversation erased any doubt Bud had concerning his career path. “I spoke of my concern for what was going on in the world and the great pessimism I felt about the political situation in this country, and its reluctance to do the necessary things to maintain a readiness to resist the kind of aggression that we saw going on elsewhere.” Bud thought that his country was literally liquidating its power overnight.50
General Marshall spoke about how the American people had “girthed its loins” and come together in World War II in building tanks, ships, and aircraft and training a million men to fight. Looking at Bud, he said, “Young man, don’t ever sell the American people short. They have vast reserves of hidden strength ready to be marshaled when the crisis is clear.” Peering over his glasses and looking directly at Bud, Marshall added, “And when that time comes your country will need dedicated career men like you.”
If there was a single point when Bud chose a military career, “in my case this was it, under the benevolent stare of that magnificent man.”51 Bud believed it was just a matter of time until the United States would have to get involved in another war.52 Years later in testimony before a congressional committee, Bud recalled the conversation with Marshall: “I recall commenting to him that as a high school student in 1938 I had gained the impression from public statements of government officials that in the event of a war with Japan, the U.S. would prevent the invasion of the Philippines.” Marshall said that was indeed declaratory policy, but, “Lieutenant, you need to understand the difference between your country’s declaratory policy and reality. The reality was that we knew we lacked the military capability to carry out our declaratory policy. We always assumed privately that we would have to surrender the Philippines and fight our way back after mobilization.”
General Marshall went on to say that “in peacetime in democracies the dynamics of media criticism, public interest in and preference for social welfare programs, and party politics, all tend to overwhelm national security requirements. He pointed out that prior to both World War I and World War II the conventional wisdom in the US, England, and France was that the military was never satisfied, want too much, and have too much. It was his judgment that the millions who died in these wars need not have died had the democracies been prepared for war. Presciently, before the Korean War, he predicted that the then ongoing disbarment [sic] by the west would soon lead to another war.”53
Bud understood that he was forgoing a career that could have brought professional satisfaction and intellectual stimulation, a career that both his parents had chosen and one that he admired greatly. His decision was between two service-oriented careers. “I saw the opportunity, at sacrifice of financial and family opportunities, to bring my own personal commitment to bear in the service of my country. I felt patriotic; I was patriotic; and feeling that way I saw in my own case with seven years of experience, having been Executive Officer of a destroyer and knowing that I was now considered ready to command one, that I had more to contribute to my country b
y continuing in the profession to which I had already dedicated seven years of my life than to start a new profession where I had nothing significant to offer in competition with the thousands of others who would also make that choice.”54
Bud’s first command was the Tills, a destroyer escort operating out of Charleston, South Carolina.55 His time aboard the Tills was brief, primarily involving reserve training exercises. The Tills would typically travel to Miami and then to Key West for antisubmarine warfare training and then return to Charleston. He and Mouza were settling into a wonderful family life, having purchased a new home in Charleston and welcomed a second son, James, into the family in November 1948. Then, after a few months on the Tills, Bud received orders detaching him immediately to serve as navigator on the battleship Wisconsin. On a week’s notice, the family sold their home and moved back to Chapel Hill, because the Wisconsin was clearly going into the Korean War. Chapel Hill was a place where Mouza had friends and a support system.
As navigator of the Wisconsin, Bud distinguished himself in the Korean theater, receiving a commendation medal with combat distinguishing device for meritorious service during combat operations against North Korean and Chinese Communist forces in the Korean theater from November 21, 1951, to March 30, 1952. The Wisconsin alternated between serving as an escort for carrier Task Force Seventy-seven and providing gunfire support to the marine division located on the east side of the Korean peninsula at the bomb line. The navigator’s job during the escort operations involved making sure that the officer of the deck was trained to deal with the maneuvering board solutions and screen rotations and prepared for battle stations in case of attack. During gunfire support operations, the navigator’s job was to locate targets precisely during twenty-hour days on and off the bomb line. Bud’s fitness report noted that as navigator, “his competence and untiring vigilance in ensuring safe navigation of the ship” allowed the commander to focus on planning and gunfire operations. Lieutenant Commander Zumwalt’s “performance of duty was consistently superior in bringing the ship through dangerously mined and restricted waters, frequently under adverse weather conditions and in poor visibility. He assisted in the planning of combat operations consisting of numerous gunstrike missions along the coast of North Korea.”56
The Wisconsin tour provided Bud with the chance to help out his younger brother. Upon completing his college work, Jim went off for a year’s junket by motorbike around Europe. He then enrolled at the University of Paris and met a Swiss girl named Gretli, a schoolteacher who was doing graduate work. They fell in love and wanted to get married, but her father would have no part of this. Jim asked if Bud could possibly get to Switzerland and meet the family, thinking it might have a positive impact. Bud and Jim arranged to meet in Paris, taking the train to Zurich and then to the little suburb of Wallisellen. The patriarch of the family could not understand how Jim could marry when he had no job and was still in school. Bud explained the GI Bill and his own situation with Mouza. By chance, while they were in the train station, Bud and Jim noticed a magazine counter with the Coronet featuring the Wisconsin in the pictorial section, a picture of the skipper and Bud poring over a chart, and a picture of Bud lecturing the officers in the wardroom. Jim gave a copy to the family, embellishing the story by saying his father was mayor of Tulare and a physician and his brother navigator of the Wisconsin. Gretli soon called Jim and reported that they had received permission to marry.
Next, Bud was detached from the Wisconsin in order to attend the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, a career-enhancing assignment. The family moved into navy housing, joining a host of other people getting ready to enter the command and staff course there.57 However, their idyllic life was tossed into disarray when the discovery was made that Elmo had been born with a hole in his heart. The news was devastating to Bud and Mouza, who had already seen their son win a battle with polio years earlier.
Doc Elmo’s judgment was that there had to be some underlying cause for his grandson’s frequent bronchial problems. Bud and Mouza took Elmo first to the naval hospital, where “they did the usual superficial job that Navy medicine does for junior people, and found shadows in his lungs, and said he probably has TB.” Bud consulted with his dad, who said, “That is absolutely out of the question. . . . He can’t have tuberculosis. Get him somewhere else.” Doc Elmo advised them to go to Children’s Hospital in Boston. “The shifting diagnoses is confusing and but depicts the fact that medicine is an inexact science,” wrote Elmo to his family. “To you and Mouza, Bud, my prayer goes that the last appointment in Boston will point the way to a clearing future. I can hope that the Ductus Arteriosis may be the answer for it would seem to offer the best chance for an outstanding result. On the other hand, if it is decided that Elmo has a damaged heart, you still have the opportunity of careful guarding and living that may allow him to grow into a competent citizen whose life work must be limited to non-active things.”58
Doc Elmo’s hopes were confirmed by doctors in Boston, who discovered that the shadows in the lungs were the result of distended capillaries, distended under pressure from the blood that was supposed to go throughout the body but was shunting back through the hole in his heart to the other side and putting pressure on the lungs.59 Much of the year was spent undergoing the workup and learning about a problem that would be surgically corrected when Elmo was old enough.
The year at the War College in Newport (June 1952–June 1953) was followed by the first of two tours in the Bureau of Naval Personnel (known as BuPers). The assignment was wonderful for the family. Bud was home at a reasonably decent hour and free on Saturdays and Sundays. “We were therefore able to do the picnicking, we attended church, and I was a Cub Scout leader for a while . . . I did some Little League work with at least one of the two sons.”60
Juxtaposed to the idyllic home life was the job itself, which initially looked like a career killer. “I don’t know who did it or how it happened, but I’m dead,” Bud said to Mouza after his first day on the job. “I’m assigned to the complements and allowances branch and to the shore establishment division. All they do is write the documents that show what the wartime complements and the peacetime allowances of shore activities are. I can’t possibly have been given that job as a challenging job. It’s got to be a place for a person who’s going to seed.” Bud was certain he had been dead-ended. “My God, I’ve really been killed.”61
Bud came to understand that the people who wrote the individual allowances held quite a bit of influence. They were the ones who collected the data that determined who needed ten thousand boatswain’s mates and not six thousand or ten thousand machinist’s mates. It also provided him with a broader way of looking at problems and new ways of thinking about how many aviators and how many submariners were needed. The job became an opportunity rather than a dead end. “I began to think about ways in which that might be exploited.”62 From his years at sea, Bud knew the navy was losing boatswain’s mates and machinist’s mates, radarmen and electronics technicians by the thousands. The single most important reason was years of sea duty with no prospect of extended shore duty. He remembered how the long deployments had affected his outlook on remaining in the navy. “When I looked at the totals that were coming out of the machine, from these allowances that we were writing, it was clear that we had written billets in the ratio, in the case of radarmen, which were the worst, there were 26 seagoing billets for every two shore billets—13 years at sea for one year ashore. So these guys did have an expectancy of more than 20 years before they got their two years of shore duty.”63
Bud and his staff looked at literally every job in the shore establishment for petty officers and came up with approximately nine thousand different jobs that could be assigned to anybody. He put together a presentation and went up the line with it to show that “if I could be authorized to shift these billets, I could fix in a single sweep, just as soon as we had trained the people to fill them, the ratio of the sea and shore duty for the four or fiv
e most rigorously seagoing ratings.”64
Bud eventually made the presentation to Vice Admiral James Holloway, Jr.—the future Admiral Holloway and father of Bud’s successor as CNO, James L. Holloway III—who at that time was serving as chief of naval personnel. Also at the briefing was Albert Pratt, assistant secretary of the navy. They were both impressed enough with Bud’s presentation to have him next brief the assistant secretary of defense, Carter Burgess. Using data to show that the entire division of Complements and Allowances, not just the shore side, but the seagoing side as well, was really a Requirements division, Bud was able to get approval for a name change to Requirements. This one presentation “kind of led to my being discovered. We made a big fix there. Admiral Holloway sort of adopted me as a personal assistant and was constantly sending for me on this or that,” recalled Bud.65
What Bud thought was going to be a disaster turned out to be one of the most exciting and stimulating of jobs, enabling him to be innovative and get things done. Not everyone would have been able to seize this institutional opportunity. Throughout his career, most notably in Vietnam and as CNO, Bud saw the playing field differently than others. He also learned that the people who often had the best solutions to problems were the ones in the field, not the bureaucrats in an office. In this case, the ex-enlisted men who were allowance writers, the lieutenant mustangs (enlisted men who rose in rank), usually knew what had to be done. “It was amazing how much you could learn about how to fix things from these fellows who really knew how the system worked, and yet they hadn’t really done anything to fix it.”66
