Guardian of the Republic

by Allen West

  On Sunday there was only one place you were going to be, and that was church. Several churches stood proudly all along “our” Boulevard. My family’s church was Fort Street United Methodist Church, where I also attended Sunday school. Every Sunday the nine a.m. parade of residents would leave from our little street, cross North Avenue, and head over to Boulevard, where we’d stop off at our respective houses of worship.

  Church was where you made your other group of friends, especially for me, because many people in our congregation came from all across the Atlanta area. Only severe sickness could get you out of church. Even if you were visiting extended family elsewhere, you were not going to miss Sunday services. When I stayed with relatives down in south Georgia, I was certainly going to church—no way was I going to embarrass my mom and dad by not attending.

  But it wasn’t just the weekly sermons and Sunday school lessons that taught me the fundamental principles of faith. I remember the ol’ “Mothers of the Church.” Trust me, in church everyone was your mother—in fact these ladies were allowed to smack you. The elders of the church were my surrogate dads. Disrespecting them at times could be worse than disrespecting my own father.

  Back in the old-school way, a child was an extension of the parents. The child reflected the parents and their parenting skills, and you as the child were their calling card. I remember being down in Cuthbert and going out somewhere. When I was walking back to my granddad’s, I didn’t speak to any of the folks sitting out on the front porches. I had no sooner hit Granddad’s first step when my dad greeted me with a whack. It had already gotten back to him that his boy Allen was disrespectful and did not properly greet his elders.

  Buck was a quiet man, and I learned never to have a negative effect on his impeccable reputation, especially in his hometown. You can bet from that moment on, I learned to say good morning, good day, good afternoon, good evening, sir, ma’am—and that lesson resonates with me today. In fact, it’s a courtesy I demand my own daughters practice.

  Mom was the real disciplinarian in our home. I saw Snooks West as a benevolent dictator, and I mean she was tough. Mom was an old-school southern woman with a soft, sweet voice and dialect. She stood around five feet six inches but had a demeanor that made her seem six feet tall. She was the standard-bearer, and she demanded excellence. Dad and Mom had separate bedrooms, but they loved each other. It was just that Mom, as the ultimate independent woman, wanted her space. Truth be told, Mom was a tad bit, well, messy. But she was a first-class woman and loved to dress, and it’s no surprise that her closet was always overflowing.

  Mom was thrifty, however, and she never believed in owing anyone. Her favorite place to shop was Sears, Roebuck, which was right down the street on Ponce de Leon. Remember layaway? That was Mom’s preferred means to get something she wanted. And she was not about to overspend. Instead she would set the money aside, little by little.

  When Mom went to get herself a new car, she paid in cash. She would go to the dealership and find what she wanted. When the sales guy asked about payment plans, Mom would softly say, “How much is the price, child?” and proceed to write a check.

  My dad was equally thrifty. I found it hard to believe how incredibly savvy my mom and dad were with finances. They were careful investors and could make a dollar stretch like you cannot imagine. If they were on Capitol Hill today, our federal budget would be balanced easily.

  Because of their belief in fiscal responsibility and their deep-seated desire to make a better life for subsequent generations, they invested in education for me and later for my younger brother, Arlan. They knew that the key to our futures was having a good education, for it is the great equalizer and the means by which the playing field is truly leveled. Even before starting elementary school, I was attending private tutoring sessions, which gave me a tremendous head start. I knew how to write cursive before the first grade (which is why I cannot print worth a doggone now!). When it came time for me to enter grammar school, Mom and Dad were not going to have me subjected to a substandard school system. So they enrolled me at a private Catholic school, Our Lady of Lourdes, at the intersection of Boulevard and Auburn Avenue. There I would be educated in the shadows of the famous Ebenezer Baptist Church and across the street from the memorial and gravesite of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

  It is the parents, not the government, who are primarily responsible for their children’s education, and my mom and dad comprehended that. They also understood that parents should have choices for where their children attend school.

  Today my wife, Angela, and I also realize the importance of educational choice, and we have made investment in our daughters’ education our highest priority. I believe a solid foundation of learning is critical to ensure greater opportunities for the next generation, our children and grandchildren. My folks sacrificed so that I could attend a private Catholic school, and I will never forget their generosity and selflessness.

  I finished at Our Lady of Lourdes in the seventh grade. After that, Mom wanted me to attend a larger private school, and she set her sights on Westminster, Lovett, Pace Academy, or Marist. I took the entrance exam for Marist and made the cut—it didn’t hurt that I was a decent athlete.

  I entered eighth grade at Marist School with some excitement. At the time Marist was an independent Catholic day school and had about seven hundred students, all boys. It was an academic and athletic powerhouse. Even baseball star Hank Aaron’s sons, Hank Jr. and Larry, attended that school.

  For the first time in my young life, however, I began to feel the burdens of stress and pressure. I had to get up early to catch the first bus running to downtown and then hop on the transfer bus to Ashford Dunwoody Road, where Marist was located. I was playing sports, which meant really late nights getting home.

  On top of everything else, out of the seven hundred students at Marist, only seven were black. I’d only recently left Our Lady of Lourdes, a black inner-city Catholic school, and now everything was turned upside down. It was becoming harder to relate to my friends on Kennesaw Avenue, and the heckling on the bus coming home was getting worse. I did well in eighth grade, but the pressure started taking its toll in ninth. I needed a change.

  And for the first time ever, simple, quiet Allen—who had always done what everyone wanted—now asked to be heard. I begged my mom to let me transfer to Grady High, the local public school just down the street. Mom refused to listen, so in the early days of 1976, I began to plan.

  I knew I had to do something to show my mom I was serious about changing schools. I decided I would run away to my Aunt Sally in Alexandria, Virginia. I studied the Greyhound schedules and found a bus that departed early morning for Washington, DC. I began to pay attention to my dad’s nighttime habits and time his trips to the bathroom. When walking down the stairs in our house, I noted which steps creaked.

  Dad had a huge mayonnaise jar of quarters, and I often donated to the jar to keep change handy. I began to increase my donations from my weekend chores so that this kitty would fund my escape. It was an intricate plan, and it had to be executed to perfection or else. Perhaps that’s why to this day I love the movies The Great Escape and Von Ryan’s Express.

  Finally the night came when I was ready. I went to bed fully dressed. I borrowed my older brother’s ivory-handled bayonet from Vietnam for protection, snatched a blue denim jacket, and eased downstairs, carefully paying attention to where I stepped on the stairs. I grabbed the quarter jar, gently opened the door, and was off.

  I had left a message on my bed so my folks wouldn’t worry about where I was heading. Now, in the middle of the night, I made my way off Kennesaw Avenue to North Avenue and was spotted by an Atlanta Police Department patrol car. I knew the officers would double back. So I took an alternate route and evaded the patrol. I reached the Greyhound station in downtown Atlanta about fifteen minutes before the bus was scheduled to depart. The ticket agent stood there and watched while I counted out the fare in quarters. I boarded the bus and took
a seat in the back. I was free!

  A day later I arrived in Washington, DC, and made my way to Aunt Sally’s house, where she and my Uncle Bill were waiting. I spent about four days at Aunt Sally’s, and Mom finally understood my concerns. I flew back to Atlanta, and boy howdy, was I nervous. What would happen when I got home? Well, Dad was at the airport to meet me, and he gave me a hug. He looked at me and said in his strong Buck West voice, “Boy, I am proud of you for standing up and showing you have some spunk in you. I have always wondered if you would ever make a rebellious act, and you did, but you did it responsibly. However, if you ever do something like that again, I will kill you.” Mom, well, she was a bit of a mess. She was crying and felt like a failure. I told her she wasn’t, it was just that I needed her to listen to me.

  The real challenge was going back to Marist and finishing the remainder of ninth grade. Some people looked at me differently because I’d run away from home. But something important had happened. The whole episode had been liberating. It showed me that there are times when I need to make a stand and not be concerned with what others feel or believe. It was a major turning point in my life. And thus later that year I became a sophomore at Henry Grady High.

  I flourished at Grady. I quickly developed leadership skills, and I received the rank of cadet lieutenant in my first year of Army Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. I worked out with the varsity football team and was made captain of the junior team. During my junior year, I became cadet/lieutenant colonel battalion commander above those who were seniors, and I made the varsity track team. In my senior year, I was copresident of the student body and won awards at several math contests. When I graduated Grady High, I received the 1979 Atlanta Journal-Constitution Cup for the Best All-Around Senior.

  My parents had accepted my stance, but in turn I stepped up and took responsibility and ownership for what I’d done. I worked part-time jobs to make sure I could buy my own clothes—there were no more boring blue shirts, ties, blazers, and gray or khaki pants for me. I showed friends that I was part of the neighborhood, but I still maintained a sense of excellence and the highest academic standards.

  The decision to change schools had opened up more leadership opportunities than I could have imagined. I was now on my way to college.

  My homeroom teacher at Grady, Ms. Carolyn Payne, had the greatest influence on my selection of college. My choice had come down to either North Georgia College in Dahlonega or the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, which Ms. Payne had attended, and she explained why her alma mater was so great and the right fit for me. I knew my parents’ dream was for me to become an officer in the military. My older brother was a Marine, and Mom now worked at a Marine Corps headquarters, but I wanted be a soldier like my dad. So it was the US Army for me. Because Tennessee had one of the best ROTC programs in the country, the choice was UT. Furthermore, my Aunt Bren and my two cousins lived in Knoxville.

  By the time my parents dropped me off at Hess Hall on the Tennessee campus, they had fully prepared me to take wing and fly. The question then became, would I depart from the principles and standards they’d worked so hard to teach me? There were to be bumps along the road, as is true of any journey. But today as I write these words, gazing out on the Caribbean and listening to folks enjoy the sun and surf, I can honestly say I’ve stayed true to the principles of Buck and Snooks.

  They instilled in me a sense of faith, family, and God. They enabled me to appreciate service to our country. They taught me about fiscal responsibility, the quality of a good education, and personal responsibility. They showed me what it was like to be strong yet caring. They had raised a man, an American ronin, who would dedicate his life to being a guardian of the republic.

  Buck West passed in 1986 of a massive stroke. He died in the same VA hospital where he worked to comfort our veterans. Years earlier, when I would visit him at his job, I learned about those men and women who had once been willing to give that last full measure of devotion. Dad was a faithful man, but not a religious one. In general he didn’t trust those “ol’ rascal ministers.” I remember the first time he ever attended Fort Street United Methodist Church: it was when I was home from Italy on leave. The next time he entered that church was the day we bade him farewell.

  Snooks West passed in 1994, succumbing to liver cancer. Because of her more than twenty-five years of civilian service to the US military as a transportation coordinator for the Marine Corps, she was given military honors. She had been a faithful and involved member of Fort Street Church, even singing in the choir. At their funerals both Mom and Dad had a church full of folks who had come to say good-bye because my parents were so loved and respected. After all these years, thinking of their deaths still brings tears to my eyes.

  At Mom’s funeral I held our first daughter, Aubrey. She was nine months old. The pastor addressed the congregation and eulogized Snooks by referring to a woman who had raised three men. She had certainly done that, but her reach was far greater.

  If you are ever up at Marietta National Cemetery, you will see that Buck and Snooks lie together, with one headstone, one grave. As they were in life, so they shall be in death. Man and woman, husband and wife, Dad and Mom, Buck and Snooks. I hope they rest peacefully, knowing I have not departed from their ways.

  Chapter 2

  SHAPING OPERATIONS

  Be all you can be. Find your future in the Army.

  —US ARMY SLOGAN

  It was the marketing motto that would shape my life: BAYCB, “Be all you can be.” Right up there with “You deserve a break today” and “I’d like to buy the world a Coke,” it was one of the best-known advertising jingles in America. So doggone, why did some chucklehead come up with that “Army of One” foolishness?

  In military vernacular there are two types of operations: decisive and shaping. Before any decisive operation, there must be a shaping operation to set the conditions for the final attack and to ensure victory is achieved and objectives are met.

  My military career was the shaping operation that made me the man I am today.

  Throughout the history of our nation, there have always been those patriots who served in uniform and then went on to greater service of our country. To quote an oft-debated question, I ask you, “Are leaders born or made?” I tend to believe leaders are made. They are shaped through a progression of experiences and circumstances that inspire something in them to rise above the occasion.

  One of my favorite leaders in American history is a simple man who answered the call to arms and who stood as a giant at a moment when the future of our country was in peril. Such was the story of one American, a professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin College in Maine. His expertise was language, not combat arms or the science of warfare. However, when our country was torn in two and challenged in battle, and when the fundamental premise on which America had been established was being threatened, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain answered the call.

  During the Civil War, one of his first major engagements was at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. There he led a futile charge across the field toward Marye’s Heights. All through the night he was pinned down against sniper fire, and without a doubt that experience and loss shaped him as a developing combat leader.

  It was not long after the Fredericksburg engagement that Chamberlain’s Twentieth Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, as part of the Army of the Potomac, found itself marching north to a road junction at a place in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg. Word had been received that General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had crossed in behind the Blue Ridge, had entered Pennsylvania, and was turning south.

  On the first day there, Brigadier General John Buford’s cavalry dismounted and held the high ground along Cemetery Ridge for the Union, enabling fellow Union General George Meade’s main force to close and reinforce. Buford’s delay would be one of the greatest actions in US military history, an incredible shaping action that would set the conditions for the decisive action on day three of t
he Battle of Gettysburg.

  It was on day two, however—a hot July day in 1863—that Colonel Chamberlain found himself in a precarious position at the far end of the Union line, which extended all the way back to Gettysburg and almost curved back on itself like a fishhook. It was there where Chamberlain was given orders that he could not retreat, could not withdraw, and must hold the ground. Little did Chamberlain know, but the primary effort of the Confederates that day would be against that same far Union flank, with General John Bell Hood leading the assault.

  After the Confederates fought through the rocky crags of Devil’s Den, they turned their sights on what would become known as Little Round Top, where Chamberlain’s depleted Twentieth Maine Regiment waited. The assault came in wave after wave against the Maine men, and soon casualties were rising, ammunition was running low, and a sense of panic was growing. As Chamberlain saw the Confederate forces turning their flank, he managed to extend coverage in a maneuver called “refuse the line.” But eventually the Maine regiment’s ammunition ran out, and the Confederate men of the Twentieth Alabama Infantry Regiment prepared for another charge against the Union forces.

  Chamberlain, wounded in the leg, gave an order that had never been given in the Union Army. He “ordered the bayonet” and, using a maneuver called a “swinging gate,” created a frontal assault and flanking attack simultaneously, leading the charge that saved the day at Little Round Top.

  With his actions, Chamberlain saved the Union Army of the Potomac. He saved Gettysburg and the North from the Army of Northern Virginia. And above all he saved the Union.

  The bookish professor of rhetoric from Maine was later awarded the Medal of Honor and was given the privilege of accepting General Robert E. Lee’s sword at Appomattox Court House, ending the Civil War. Chamberlain, a Republican, returned home to Maine, where he served several terms as governor.