Clearly, they knew I knew what they were planning. But I never flat out told them not to stuff their hats with those ping-pong balls. So, it was with a measure of apprehension, at the conclusion of the graduation, that I waited for the traditional flinging of their covers into the air, a favorite spectacle for that time of year, recorded on national television and in the media at large. In other words, there would be an abundance of witnesses to ping-pong balls spilling out over the hoard of newly designated naval officers.
I actually held my breath when the moment came, hoping for the best. The hats went up, I watched with great intensity and concern, and waited for the balls to fall. They did not appear. I heaved a huge sigh of relief. Score one for the Supe.
Chapter Twenty-Four
WOMEN UNDER FIRE
For one thing, he described Bancroft Hall as a “horny woman’s dream” and that sex was rampart in the Hall.
THE MOST SERIOUS PROBLEM we experienced during my four years at Annapolis had to do with a former graduate, Jim Webb, Naval Academy class of 1968. He had an impressive portfolio: Marine officer, highly decorated Vietnam veteran, and best-selling novelist. His Fields of Fire was a terrific book, one that put him on the literary map. He was gifted with the written word. He also would become secretary of the Navy for eleven months in 1987, well after our “collision” of differences at the Academy. All in all, Jim Webb is a remarkable individual. But he created a serious problem for us that lingered for years. Vestiges of it remain still, but with far less impact.
In December 1978 the director of the English and History Department, Marine colonel Frank Zimolzac, came to see me with the chairman of the English Department, Dr. Fred Fetrow.
“There’s a Marine Corps graduate of the Academy who has an outstanding combat record, is a successful novelist, and has expressed interest in becoming a writer in residence, teaching English here,” he said. “We can accommodate him with an eighteen-month contract in accordance with the school’s policy on such matters.” We had the resources for such a contract, and I was immediately attracted by the proposal.
“That’s wonderful,” I said. “With that background he ought to be a big hit with the midshipmen.” I’d never met Webb but recognized him as a well-known author. Webb signed a contract in December 1978, agreeing to stay for three semesters. His lectures were well received, and he was a popular addition to our faculty. Then oddly, after only a couple of months, Webb notified the department he wished to resign, that he wanted to leave in June at the end of one semester. When I heard this, I thought, ‘Well, OK, everyone’s plans change. So be it.’ But in the subsequent discussions about his unexpected departure, I was told that during his abbreviated tenure, a sizeable number of students, male and female, were entering and leaving his office at an unusual rate.
When he was asked why he wanted to leave, Webb indicated he got so deeply involved with the midshipmen that he wasn’t getting his writing done. That made sense, because he was an established and highly regarded author. So, Webb left the Academy, and life went on. A couple of months later he wrote me and said he had an article coming out in the Washingtonian Magazine and that it may appear to be a bit controversial. I wrote him back and said, “Don’t worry about it, we can handle it.”
The article was entitled, “Women Can’t Fight,” and no sooner had it hit the streets than it had an immediate and explosive impact on the Naval Academy. It garnered nationwide attention.
Webb’s article was well written but, in my view, sensational in nature. I believed it contained inaccuracies and that he misrepresented some facts. For one thing he described Bancroft Hall as a “horny woman’s dream” and that sex was rampart in the Hall. This was blatantly wrong. It would be possible, certainly, for occasions of sexual relations to take place but not to the excess implicated in the article. After all, there were three hundred women among the four thousand students in residence at Bancroft Hall. We weren’t blind to the potential problems of sex on campus. We had our finger on the pulse of such things.
The article had an instantly demoralizing effect on the women not only at Annapolis but at West Point as well. More on this later. I admit I was furious about the article and had to seriously question Webb’s ultimate purpose in becoming writer in residence in the first place, not to mention the extraordinary number of interviews that apparently took place and accounted for the often-intermittent parade of midshipmen in and out of his office. But that episode was over and done with. The article, as it turned out, gained notoriety, and I felt powerless to counteract it.
The English and History departments were housed in Sampson Hall. Colonel. Zimolzac notified Webb he was no longer welcome in that building. Webb let it be known he was banned from the entire Naval Academy. Learning this, I directed the staff to make damn well sure that Jim Webb was invited to every single event we had scheduled, every Forrestal Lecture, every parade, every social occasion. He accepted none of these and continued to claim he was banned from campus.
I made certain that copies of the article were made available in our library. It turned out to be one of the library’s most popular documents, especially among the males.
A while later I received a call from former superintendent, Vice Adm. Charles Minter, who had been contacted by Gen. Wallace Green, former commandant of the Marine Corps and now retired. Greene had read the galleys of Webb’s new book, A Sense of Honor, and said, “It depicts the Naval Academy in a manner with which I am not familiar. It’s not the Academy I know.”
Retired Navy captain Robert Bowler, executive director of the U.S Naval Institute, which is headquartered on the Academy grounds, called and said Webb had submitted the book to him to copublish along with a New York publishing company. Bowler and his editors read the manuscript and concluded that those portions relating to the Academy did not represent their views of it. So the institute declined the offer.
A novelist has every right to portray his subjects any way he chooses. The readers decide whether his or her story is credible or not. A Sense of Honor was a popular book, but it sure didn’t do the Academy any good. It portrayed the Academy faculty in a negative way, it degraded nuclear officers, it depicted sexual activity between an officer and his former roommate’s wife—the so-called stuff of life. Even so, it’s a free society, and the book was available in our midshipmen’s store.
A few months after the appearance of the book I received a call from the supply officer, who said the publishing company in New York had accused us of banning the book from the Naval Academy. He explained he ordered the book but, because of the subsequent decreasing demand for it, he reduced the number of books ordered, figuring it didn’t have that much appeal to the students.
The publishing company issued a press release stating the Naval Academy had banned Webb’s book. That ought to inspire sales, I thought. I directed the supply officer to draft a statement describing in detail what had really transpired. We released this to the public, adamantly denying we had banned the book. I wrote to the publishing company as well, stating our case.
Webb and I exchanged a number of letters over time regarding this and related issues, the focus of which was always the Academy, his beliefs regarding women in combat, and his criticism of the way we were doing business.
When he became secretary of the Navy, Webb remarked, “Now is the first time that I’m warmly received at the Naval Academy.”
Permit me to jump ahead to April 1990 and my remarks to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service (DACOWITS), when I held a position as chairman of naval leadership at the Academy. The thrust of my testimony was two-fold: the adverse impact on acceptance of women at the Naval Academy as expressed in Webb’s Washingtonian Magazine article and the detrimental effect on the admission of women to the service academies caused by the increased active duty obligation enacted by Congress in 1989.
I noted,
To understand why the “Women Can’t Fight” article has such a serious and pervasive unfavorable
influence, it might be well to discuss the major challenge to the acceptance of women at the academies. Because of the rigorous military and physical regimen at the service academies, these institutions attract a certain number of young men with a strong macho ethic. I define macho as the desire to be perceived as tough and virile. It is important to these young men that they be viewed by their civilian friends as undergoing a difficult rite of passage. In their eyes, the women degrade this macho, rite-of-passage-image of the academies; these young men resent their presence, and often make derisive comments and engage in cruel pranks on the women. Even though they daily see women successfully meeting all the requirements of the Academy program, their resentment is not diminished.
The Academy leaders must engage in a concerted effort to change the attitude of these young men over their four years at the school, and in most cases they are successful. But these young men look to the “Women Can’t Fight” article written by a Vietnam hero, Naval Academy graduate, and now former Secretary of the Navy, as support for their position. These midshipmen still check out Webb’s article from the library, and the library staff must keep a large supply of copies of the article on hand. Some midshipmen have formed a Webb cult at the Academy and have devised the acronym W.E.B.B.—Women Except Bancroft, Baby. When Webb became Secretary of the Navy, these young men were elated because they felt he would quickly remove women from the Academy.
What are some of the portions of Webb’s article that are demoralizing to the women? First, Webb stated that the presence of women at the Academy “poisoned the preparation of men for combat” and that the Academies were “no longer turning out combat leaders.” Next, Webb stated he never encountered a woman at the Academy whom he would trust to provide combat leadership to men. He further stated that “sex is common place in Bancroft Hall.” The Hall, which houses 4,000 males and 300 females, “is a horny woman’s dream.” He stated that the appointment of Elizabeth Belzer, Naval Academy Class of 1980, the first woman graduate, to her high midshipman leadership position was politically inspired. Finally, he stated that the women would, in the long run, lose far more than they would gain from the Academy experience, that they would be permanently scarred.
To counter these statements and allegations, I will provide you the real facts. I have considerable combat experience, not including my six years as a POW, and while superintendent and in my present capacity, I can state categorically that the presence of women has not in any way degraded the quality of our program at the Academy and our ability to produce combat officers. In fact, it was my perception that women actually strengthened standards at the Academy because of their example of maturity, intelligence, professionalism, dedication and toughness. Their presence caused some of the immature, macho males, who are prone to walk around partially clad, to use excessive profanity, to refrain from these and other practices which contribute nothing to leadership development. By being closely associated with women, our male midshipmen are developing into leaders with greater breadth and human understanding.
The record of Academy graduates in Lebanon, Grenada, Persian Gulf, Libya, Panama, the Achille Lauro incident and other crises indicates no diminution of their capability to function effectively in combat. In addition to my own observations as Commander of the Third Fleet in the Pacific, I have talked to many military commanders, and they contend Academy graduates still have the “right stuff.” I might add that Academy graduates are still being selected as astronauts, and that the Academy continues to be the prime supplier of personnel in the space program.
With regard to the allegation that women cannot lead men in a combat situation, in addition to the Captain Linda Bray incident in Panama. I can site numerable current examples of the superb leadership of women in arduous positions in the fleet operational environment.
Webb’s statement that sex was rampant in Bancroft Hall was and is blatantly false. Our Academy officers are quite close to the situation in Bancroft Hall and though there have been isolated incidents of fraternization, they are relatively few. My daughter, who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1981, and many other midshipmen confirmed this for me.
Concerning the Liz Belzer political assignment allegation, I can assure everyone that her promotion was based purely on merit, because she was such a superb midshipman. She has continued to demonstrate her superior qualities as an officer. She qualified as a Surface Warfare Officer, served with great credit as a division officer on a destroyer tender on a deployment to the Indian Ocean, and she has obtained a Masters Degree from MIT and Woods Hole in Ocean Science.
I guess scar tissue must be stronger than normal tissue, because those “scarred” women are doing superbly in every field in our military services today. I could provide countless example of such performance, but time does not permit me to do so. I would add, as well, that those women graduates who have entered civilian life are performing extremely well, moving right up the corporate ladder in many cases.
I recommended to the panel that it would be a good idea if Jim Webb would make a public statement or write another article stating he had changed his views expressed in 1979, and further expressing his full support for women at the academies. From his statements at his confirmation hearings and the decisions he made as secretary of the Navy to place women in ammunition ships and fleet oilers, formerly combatant ships, I believed he had in fact changed his position. Indeed, as secretary of the Navy, in a Forrestal lecture to our midshipmen in September 1987, he stated, “I am not biased in any way to the issue of women here at the Academy or in the naval service, and in fact feel strongly that men and women should be treated equally in such matters.” Furthermore, he did recommend opening surface, aviation, and seabee billets to females that were heretofore unavailable to them.
As to the second item on my agenda for the committee, I referred to the one-year extension, from five to six years, of the active-duty obligation of service academy graduates:
For the good of the country, the service academies must be able to attract the cream of American youth. High quality young people at age 17 or 18 simply are not sure what career field they wish to devote their lives to. Out of a spirit of patriotism they will enter the service academies and accept an active-duty obligation of four or even five years with the expectation they may decide to remain in the military for a full career. But active-duty obligations in excess of that amount will drive the fine young people away from the academies, to the great detriment of the country.
The situation is greatly exacerbated in the case of minorities and women for several reasons. First, minorities and women are well aware that our military services were previously white, male bastions. Although they are patriotic and wish to serve their country, they are still somewhat skeptical of entering a military career. A long obligation simply will turn them away out of fear they may encounter something they do not enjoy and be irrevocably committed for a large portion of their lives. Secondly, qualified women and minorities are strongly sought after by many universities in this country who require no post-graduation obligation. The service academies simply will lose their ability to compete in our recruiting when handicapped with a six-year active duty obligation. The situation is particularly critical because the 18-year-old population is in decline until 1994.
The previous obligation was not changed, so we didn’t succeed on that score, but you can’t win them all.
As to women in combat, my sense is that many still adhere to the belief it is wrong for females to be so engaged. That’s a given. Does Jim Webb’s article still reverberate through the halls of learning at Annapolis? Probably, a little bit. But with the passage of time, its impact has diminished considerably.
Chapter Twenty-Five
SUPERINTENDENT’S BUSINESS
I told Admiral Bob Long, then vice CNO, “Admiral Rickover’s on record for being against sports and sex. Now he’s after honor. How are we going to attract people to the school if honor is added to the list?”
THE ATTRITION
RATE AT THE ACADEMY—and at other military schools—was 30 percent, which some attributed to the fallout of the Vietnam War. Regardless of the cause, this was unacceptable to me. One of our goals was to get that number down. When I arrived in the fall of 1978, one of the drivers of this problem was the rule that if a midshipman dropped out in the second year, he or she would incur a two-year active-duty obligation as an enlisted person. Were the person to wait until the third year, the obligation was for three years. Graduates were obligated for five years.
I developed a pitch that I gave early on to second-year students. It went something like this: “I’m not saying you should make the Navy your career. I’m basically telling you if you decide to stay after your third year and complete the Academy, and assume the five-year obligation, you’re going to be better off seven years from now as compared to leaving school in that third year or before. Unless you have a specific desire to be a lawyer, a doctor, or something else, you’ll only be twenty-seven years old or so and you will be a desirable candidate for work in the civilian field. Leaving the Naval Academy after the second year because you are concerned about a greater obligation, you’re throwing away a lot.”
I always cited my friend Ross Perot, who became phenomenally successful after leaving Annapolis and completing his active duty. There were many others who made their mark in the civilian world.
Concomitant with this attempt at persuasion, I urged the young officers of the staff to convey how they would improve matters at the school, including shoring up the relationships between students and officers, hoping this would be a plus in the struggle against high attrition. Capt. John Butterfield, director of U.S. international studies, was instrument in this effort, which, slowly but surely, led to an 8 percent decrease in the attrition rate.
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