Military Leaders From The United States

"I first met George S. Patton, Jr., before World War II when he was a lieutenant colonel at Fort Sill, and in North Africa, when he was a general, I saw him often. Almost every day he would head for the front, standing erect in his jeep, helmet and brass shining, a pistol on each hip, a siren blaring. For the return trip, either a light plane would pick him up or he would sit huddled, unrecognizable, in the jeep in his raincoat. His image with the troops was foremost with General Patton, and that meant always going forward, never backward. General Patton had two fetishes that to my mind did little for his image with the troops. First, he apparently loathed the olive drab wool cap that the soldier wore under his helmet for warmth and insisted that it be covered; woe be the soldier whom the general caught wearing the cap without the helmet. Second, he insisted that every soldier under his command always wear a necktie with shirt collar buttoned, even in combat action."

"At the 9th Division headquarters at El Guettar, Tunisia, enemy planes bombed and strafed incessantly, so that the security normally associated with a headquarters in the rear was missing. Although officers and men alike dug deep, even in foxholes they could get little sleep. One day a small convoy of vehicles arrived, sirens alive, Patton standing in the lead vehicle. While the division commander, Major General Manton Eddy, rushed to greet him, the staff pondered what fault Patton would find this time. "Manton, Goddamn it," Patton shouted in his high-pitched voice, "I want you to get these staff officers out front and get them shot at!" Having been bombarded day and night by enemy planes, having had no sleep for days, a young personnel officer went berserk and had to be evacuated for medical treatment."

"Several weeks before General Patton died in a command car accident in 1945, he visited my headquarters at Ingolstadt. Over lunch he remarked on a recent visit he had made to the United States where the press had castigated him for referring to the Nazis as a political party "like Republicans or Democrats". "Westy," he told me solemnly, "don't forget when you return to the States, be careful what you say. No matter what, they'll put it in the newspapers." It seemed remote advice at the time for a young, inauspicious colonel, but I was to have ample reason in later years to reflect on his counsel."

"Soon after the war- Jim Gavin told me to our amusement- the commandant of the Air War College, Major General Orvil A. Anderson, introduced him as a guest speaker. Anderson was a pioneer flier and balloonist, later fired from the Air Force by President Truman for preaching preventative war. "We were never more privileged," General Anderson intoned, "than we are today to have this distinguished speaker, one of America's great soldiers, one of the greatest since Lee, Grant, Pershing, a man who is going down in history as a tactician and strategist, one of the great soldiers of all time." Then General Anderson began to slow down. "One of the great soldiers of all time," he repeated. By that time it was apparent he was stalling. "One of the great soldiers of all time," he said again. Turning to Gavin, he asked in exasperation: "What the hell is your name anyway?""

"Raised an Army brat in a constantly changing scene, Kitsy has always been at ease in any company. While she enjoys formal affairs, she has such an air of informality that in her corner of the room ritual is soon dispensed with. Kitsy was much impressed with the wives of Vietnamese officials. If the Vietnamese men, she liked to say, were half as strong as their women, the country would have no problem. She enjoyed their sense of humor, their propensity for earthly jokes. When she had difficulty deciphering the mixture of languages and getting to the point, one or another of the ladies would take her aside and explain. Kitsy shares some of my lack of affinity for foreign languages; her attempts at French drew the same wry smiles as my attempts at Vietnamese. Kitsy's sense of humor has brightened many an occasion. At a ceremony unveiling my official superintendent's portrait at West Point, the master of ceremonies asked her to say a few words. "This is the second time I have seen Westy unveiled," said Kitsy. "The first time was on our wedding night.""

"Not long after I became U.S. Army Chief of Staff, the Secretary of the Army accepted my recommendation that the heads of the Army Nurse Corps and the Women's Army Corps be established as general officers. Soon after I had the honor of pinning stars on the first two female generals in the nation's history, Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hosington (and establishing a tradition by giving each a kiss on the cheek), Kitsy found herself at the hairdresser's beside General Hays, a widow. "I wish you would get married again," Kitsy said. "Why?" General Hays asked. "Because," Kitsy responded, "I want some man to learn what it's like to be married to a general.""

"Had President Kennedy not pledged the nation to bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, and oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty?"

"We underestimated the willingness of these peasants to pay the price. We won every set piece battle. Westy believes that he never lost a battle. We had absolute military superiority, and they had absolute political superiority, which meant that we would kill 200 and they would replenish them the next day. We were fighting the birth rate of a nation."

"In 1967, the problem of "ghost effectives" (unit commanders reporting imaginary soldiers to pocket their salaries) was so serious that, under American instigation, the ARVN Inspector General was instructed to inspect the effective forces of different units selected at random. One day, it was decided that the 15th Regiment of my division was to be inspected at Long Xuyen Province. Lt. Gen. Nguyen Van La, the Inspector General, was accompanied by a U.S. brigadier general acting as a liaison officer with the Vietnamese Joint General Staff. The purpose of the inspection was to determine whether the number of troops corresponded to the regiment's reported effective. The U.S. general, however, displaying supreme arrogance, made comments about the physical presentation of the regiment, which, by the way, had returned from an operation the day before. He pulled the soldiers' hair which, he commented, was too long or the uniforms, which, he said, missed a couple of buttons. He acted like a commander inspecting his troops in a parade, and as though General La and I were his subordinates or we did not exist at all. I took General La aside and suggested that the American general be advised that he had overstepped the boundary of his authority and decency, and that he should stop his uncalled-for behavior at once. A few months after that incident, Nyguyen Cao Ky told me during a meeting at IV Corps Headquarters at Can Tho, that General Westmoreland had informed him that I had become "anti-American.""

"Despite a number of near misses, I came through the war unscathed. In Tunisia a shell hit my vehicle but without harm to me, and in Sicily an exploding mine blew up my vehicle, but I was thrown clear. On the Roer River in Germany, just as I got out of my Jeep and entered a company command post, a mortar shell struck my vehicle. In the Remagen bridgehead on the Rhine a shell demolished a latrine moments after I had departed. Somehow none of the enemy shells had my number."

"Russians and vodka, I soon learned, were virtually synonymous. Twice I accompanied my division commander, General Craig, with his Russian opposite beyond the Elbe. Since General Craig was an abstainer, his aides had to exercise considerable ingenuity to dispose of the vodka from his glass in nearby flower pots. The Russian general several times did the same. I noted an unwavering peculiarity about the Russians: we always had to go to them; never would they come to visit us or even meet us halfway."

"Being in Germany in the 1940s brought back recollections of my first visit long before as a Boy Scout, when I had had my first encounter with German appreciation of dueling. As as child I had been cut severely on the left cheek when thrown through the windshield of my father's car in a head-on collision, and a prominent scar remained. Traveling in Germany as a youth, I was perplexed when college students would tip their beanie hats as they passed until at last I discerned that they mistook the scar on my cheek for a dueling scar."

"As graduation neared, neither my classmates nor I could know, of course, that World War II was in the offing. It was destined to expose us to trying and often tragic events. My roommate, Billy Hulse, a flier, disappeared on a training mission over the Great Lakes, his body never recovered. A close friend, Frank Oliver, died in the fighting in Normandy soon after the invasion. Buist Dowling killed in Normandy while leading a patrol. One of the better football players, Jock Clifford, killed as a regimental commander on Okinawa. Bill Priestly, aide to the high commissioner of the Philippines, electing to stay when the fighting started on the islands, also killed. Those and more."

"During the war years, it was my privilege to associate on a number of occasions with prominent personalities, such as Senator Harry S Truman, for whom my battalion staged an artillery demonstration when he visited Fort Bragg in 1941. When I invited him to fire, he did so with confidence. Shaking my hand as he departed, he said that as an old artilleryman he recognized that the fire mission was uncomplicated and that, even so, he suspected the crews had helped him hit the target. "I enjoyed it anyway," he said. When I was in Vietnam, a then former President Truman wrote me a letter of encouragement."

"Returning home on leave following my second year at West Point, I called on a great-uncle who had joined the Confederate Army at the age of sixteen and had fought in a number of major Civil War battles, including Gettysburg, and had been with Robert E. Lee at Appamatox. My Uncle White was the younger brother of my grandfather. He hated Yankees and Republicans, not necessarily in that order, and talked derisively about both. When I visited, he was seated in a wheel chair, in grudging acquiescence to the infirmities of age. Tobacco juice decorated his shirt and stains around a spittoon on the floor testified to the inaccuracy of his aim. Flies buzzed through screenless windows. "What are you doing with yourself, son?" Uncle White asked. I answered the old veteran with trepidation. "I'm going to that same school that Grant and Sherman went to, the Military Academy at West Point, New York." Uncle White was silent for what seemed like a long time. "That's all right, son," he said at last. "Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson went there too.""

"Among a stream of visitors to the 9th Division in England, while it was preparing for D-Day in the early months of 1944, was Prime Minister Winston Churchill. When he arrived to address the assembled troops, he went at first not to the speaker's stand but behind a small outbuilding. He reappeared minutes later buttoning his fly, making sure no one missed the reason for the delay. The troops loved it."

"While in Sicily, I re-established an earlier acquaintance with a dynamic young colonel commanding one of the 82d Airborne's parachute infantry regiments, James M. Gavin, who later commanded the division. When the war was over, General Gavin asked my transfer to the division to command the 504th Parachute Infantry. Since I had yearned to be a paratrooper ever since serving at Fort Bragg in proximity to the first American airborne units, I was delighted at the assignment. I learned much from General Gavin in his capacity as a division commander, particularly on leadership qualities and maintaining the morale of the troops. More than any other commander under whom I served, he impressed me with the necessity for a commander to be constantly visible to those he leads."

"To Kitsy, Stevie, Rip, and Margaret, and to the valiant men and women of the United States and other nations who served the cause of freedom in South Vietnam."

"Patton looked like his father and had similar mannerisms. Their speech was somewhat alike as well. It was pretty evident that young Patton was the son of the old man. However, the impressive thing about George is that he didn't concern himself with his last name. He went out and made a career, earning everything on his own... He did a very good job in command of the 11th ACR and handled himself professionally. It's quite a burden the son of a senior officer has to carry and I must say, to his credit, he did it well. Because down through history, when you look at the sons of famous people, they were not all winners."

"Well, the Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient. And, as the philosophy of the Orient expresses it - life is - is not important."

"An officer corps, my West Point education emphasized, must have a code of ethics that tolerates no lying, no cheating, no stealing, no immorality, no killing other than that recognized under international rules of war and essential for military victory. Yet I also learned to my chagrin that there are those who fail the standards and that the code must be constantly policed. I saw failures at West Point, and for all my preventive efforts, I also saw failures among those who subsequently served under my command. Yet if an officer corps is to serve the nation as it should, firm dedication to a high moral code must always be the goal. One of the most exciting events of my plebe year was the commencement address by the Army Chief of Staff, General MacArthur, who was much as any man extolled such a code. Already a distinguished soldier even before World War II and the Korean War, General MacArthur spoke at a time when pacifism and economy imperiled the military services and the nation's security. While warning against misguided pacifism and politically inspired economy, he spoke of West Point as "the soul of the Army". "The military code that you perpetuate," he said, "has come down to us from even before the age of knighthood and chivalry. It will stand the test of any code of ethics or philosophy.""

"The Green Beret... proudly worn by the United States Army Special Forces... and acclaimed by our late President, John F. Kennedy, as "a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom..." In Vietnam the men of Special Forces were the first to go. They frequently fought, not in great battles with front-page attention, but in places with foreign sounding, unknown names; and often times no names at all. One such place was Nam Dong. In July of 1964 this Special Forces Camp, in the jungle-clad mountains near the Laotian border, came under a fierce attack. It was the first time that regular North Vietnamese Army forces joined the Viet Cong in an attempt to overrun an American outpost. The North Vietnamese reinforced battalion of eight hundred men was determined to eliminate this camp- an impediment to their further infiltration down the Ho Chi Minh trail from Laos to the south of Vietnam. Roger H.C. Donlon, then a captain and, commander of Special Forces Detachment A-276 at Camp Nam Dong along with his brave twelve-man team, 60 Nungs and 100 loyal Vietnamese successfully defended the camp. For their valor two of his sergeants were posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Four other team members were awarded Silver Stars, and five more Bronze Stars with V for valor. Roger Donlon was the first soldier I recommended to receive the Medal of Honor for heroism which was later presented to him by President Lyndon Johnson. He was the first soldier of the Vietnam War to receive this award. "Beyond Nam Dong" is his personal story... from his scouting days as a boy in upstate New York, through the Vietnam conflict, to his present efforts at reconciliation. It is the inspiring story of a courageous soldier and patriot."

"Serving one's country as a military man is rewarding experience. It is nevertheless a life of constraint. A military man serves within carefully prescribed limits, be it as enlisted man, junior officer, battalion commander, division commander, even senior field commander in time of war. The freedom to speak out in the manner of the private citizen, journalist, politician, legislator has no part in the assignment. Perhaps this is one reason why generals who have hung up their uniforms traditionally turn to the pen, seek an opportunity for free expression that they have long denied themselves, to report to the people they have served. In these pages I have tried to exercise that prerogative that in the end is mine, while at the same time seeking to make an objective and constructive contribution to the history of a dramatic era. In the idiom of the time, I have tried to tell it like it was. This is my personal story, yet inevitably it represents more than that; for my story is inextricably involved with the stories of those who served with me during thirty-six years in the United States Army- from wooden-wheeled artillery to antiballistic missile, from horse to spaceship, from volunteer army to draftee army in three wars and back to volunteer army. My story is particularly involved with the stories of those who served with such valor and sacrifice in the Republic of Vietnam. My hope is that in telling my story I have in some manner done justice to theirs, that I have to some degree contributed to an appreciation by the American people of arduous, imaginative, valiant service in spite of alien environment, hardship, restriction, frustration, misunderstanding, and vocal and demonstrative opposition."

"More than 30 years ago, ... I wrote, and Foreign Affairs published, an article now being circulated in the blogosphere as evidence of an alleged anti-Israel point of view. Some commentators reach farther, suggesting that since I have been an active supporter of Barack Obama's presidential bid he, too, is anti-Israel. Both these assertions fall flat after any objective reading of the historical record."

"I am a long-time admirer (and think myself a friend) of Israel. In the early 1970s, I played a key role in getting advanced weaponry released to the Israeli Air Force - capabilities it later put to active use. During that period, I made many official visits to Israel and established close relationships there. These contacts turned out to be useful during Operation Desert Storm, when, as chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, I worked with my Israeli counterparts to help defend Israel from Iraqi Scud missile attacks."

"I was a vocal opponent of the George W. Bush Administration's decision to invade Iraq, a strategic blunder made worse by slapdash execution. As we have seen, this star-crossed action took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, breathed new life into a moribund al Qaeda, and enhanced Iranian influence in this critical region - all outcomes which damaged both the United States and our ally Israel."

"We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the CIA."

"There is no reason why the U.S. cannot achieve our objectives in Iraq. Our aim must be to create a viable federal state under the rule of law which does not: enslave its own people, threaten its neighbors, or produce weapons of mass destruction. This is a 10-year task. We should be able to draw down most of our combat forces in 3–5 years. We have few alternatives to the current U.S. strategy, which is painfully but gradually succeeding. This is now a race against time. Do we have the political will, do we have the military power, will we spend the resources required to achieve our aims?"

"Trump is a potential disaster as commander-in-chief—uninformed, volatile, poor judgment. Hard to believe this is the candidate of a major political party."

"It is my view and hope that Israel will have our continued support. I wish it every success. Of course, what Israel regards as success is up to it to decide. But for friends like me, "success" means a secure Israel at peace with neighbors who recognize and respect its existence. Even so, we should maintain our special relationship and help Israel keep its qualitative military edge."

"As for the article, much has changed in 32 years and much has not. The essential argument holds: no set of realistically achievable geographic borders produces safety for Israel. Rather, the security requirement is that any of the territory taken in the Six-Day War and given back as part of a peace settlement should be effectively demilitarized. Of course, the Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt long ago in exactly this way, resulting in relative quiet along Israel's southern border and creating a fundamental shift in the regional balance of forces. This opportunity was not skillfully exploited, so the result has been a "cold peace." But it is nevertheless peace and has served the interests of both sides."

"The situation is perilous, uncertain, and extreme – but far from hopeless. The U.S. Armed Forces are a rock. This is the most competent and brilliantly led military in a tactical and operational sense that we have ever fielded."

"Trump is unexpectedly increasing my enthusiasm for Hillary. What he is saying is not based on facts: it's based on immaturity, bad judgment and ignorance, and I think it's going to be hard for people in uniform who are thoughtful about this, to vote for him."

"Clark had a tremendous flair for public relations and was a well-known figure but he was also a skilled and popular commander. His nickname was Eagle in Allied High Command parlance."

"One problem the museum has always had in the eyes of some cadets is its worship of General Mark Clark. One whole room of the museum is dedicated to the propagation of Clark's exploits through two wars. The room itself is dark, an inner sanctum lit with tabernacle lights, and smoking with a kind of mystical incense which seems to compliment the godly aura of the man himself... Statues of Clark, pictures of Clark, letters from Clark, letters to Clark, speeches by Clark, and a seemingly endless amount of Clark memorabilia helps make the museum a monument to his career. If any pictures were available of Clark walking on water or changing wine into water, they would be dutifully placed in the museum by people who suffer guilt feelings that The Citadel has never produced an international figure of its own."

"Clark was a good field commander and a brilliant combat commander, as he demonstrated at Salerno, although like most people, he had his faults. Clark performed well in World War II: along with Dwight Eisenhower he helped establish United States Forces in Europe; he was the first American general to command a field army in combat, and was the first to fight in continental Europe; and under his leadership his forces were the first to liberate an Axis-occupied capital. Though stripped of troops and equipment, he led his forces through an unbearable winter in the mountains and successfully defeated a large portion of the German Army. Without Mark W. Clark and the fighting in Italy, the war would have been fought much differently, and victory would have been more prolonged and costly."

"George Santayana's famous “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is one of those overused dictums politicians and others offer up when they want to sound profound. It is true, however, that history reminds us usefully about the sorts of situations that have caused trouble in the past. Allied leaders in World War II were determined that, this time, Germany and the other Axis powers would not be able to claim that they had never been defeated on the battlefield. Allied policy was one of unconditional surrender, and Germany, Japan, and Italy were all occupied at the end of the war and serious attempts, largely successful, were made to remodel their societies so that they would no longer be undemocratic and militaristic. When someone complained that such treatment was like the savage peace the Romans imposed on Carthage, the American general Mark Clark remarked that no one heard much of the Carthaginians these days."

"King even bit back at Army compliments when he considered them presumptuous. Once, Major General Mark Clark sent King a telegram from England praising the work of a Navy captain on his planning staff and recommending the man's promotion to rear admiral. Marshall later told Clark, "Let me tell you what happened. King and I were having a terrible argument on something. We couldn't agree at all. I was trying to get him in a good humor to get him softened up for this thing and I thought I had, and then the door opened and he came stomping into my office, put the telegram on my desk, and said, "Read this." I read it, and King said, "Who is Clark?""

"In the Italian campaign, we had demonstrated as never before how a polyglot army could be welded into a team of allies with the strength and unity and determination to prevail over formidable odds. But in Austria and elsewhere in postwar Europe, we had learned another lesson about allies. The Russians were not interested in teamwork. They wanted to keep things boiling. They were ready to resort to lying, to betrayal, to the repudiation of solemn pledges. They were accustomed to the use of Force. They were skilled in exploiting any sign of weakness or uncertainty or appeasement. This was their national policy."

"Once I said to Konev, "You've made ten demands at this Council meeting that we can't meet. But suppose I should say, 'All right. We agree to all ten demands.' Then what would you do?" "Tomorrow," he said, "I'd have ten new ones.""

"Having seen the Red Army and Russian diplomacy in action, my own belief is that there is nothing the Soviets would not do to achieve world domination. But I am convinced that also that they respect force; perhaps they respect nothing in the world except force. And when confronted with strength and determination, they stop, look, and listen."

"World War II was an era in which America came of age as a world power. We had and we still have many lessons to learn. It was not surprising, perhaps, that we celebrated a victory when in reality we had not won the war. We had stopped too soon. We had been too eager to go home. We welcomed the peace, but after more years of effort and expenditure, we found that we had won no peace."

"General Clark walked the campus like a retired deity and ignored the general run of cadets."

"The ROK Army military school system was patterned exactly after ours, as was their naval training system. The ROKs during the war developed a Korean West Point and a Korean Annapolis. They created their own war college to give their officers more education as they showed the capacity for higher command. All the senior instructors and most of the junior instructors have been through our schools as well as their own. They taught by our American methods, with our American weapons and from translated versions of our American military texts and manuals."

"I consider the South Koreans one of our greatest allies, a people who know communism and hate it and are not afraid to die fighting it."

"This new kind of war, this contest between the benefits of two ways of life, may foreshadow the nature of the final world struggle between the democracies and communism. Perhaps both sides, with the frightening instruments of total destruction in their hands, may decide that these terrible weapons must never be used. I pray fervently that this is true, not only because of the lives that would be saved but also because I know America can reap a greater harvest from peace than can her enemies. But peace will be granted us only if we are strong if the Russians and their followers know we are strong and if they are convinced that we have the determination and courage to use that strength to achieve a military victory the next time we are called to war against communism."

"I remember an incident when, as Chief of Army Field Forces, I went to Fort Benning, Georgia, to watch the instruction of the first class of Korean officers sent to America. I have seen a lot of training in my years of experience in the Army, but never had I seen more attentive concentration on the instructor. Not a Korean shifted his eyes from the instructor once during the session. It appeared to me that each Korean officer felt that in some way the mere physical process of unbroken sight of the instructor would speed the process by which he learned from the American teacher."

"Speaking candidly as a private citizen, Mark Clark tells of his running battle with the Communists from 1945 on. In vivid terms he describes the Korean conflict- the war we might have won."

"But the foundation of ROK military power was the South Korean infantryman, courageous, tireless, hungry for the knowledge that would give him more power as a fighting man, disciplined and willing to die in the service of the cause for which his country fought and bled. You didn't have to tell a South Korean that communism was evil. It was an evil that had blighted his country and he saw it all around him, wherever he went."

"Graduation was nice. General Clark liked it. The Board of Visitors liked it. Moms and Dads liked it. And the Cadets hated it, for without a doubt it ranked as the most boring event of the year. Thus it was in 1964 that the Clarey twins pulled the graduation classic. When Colonel Hoy called the name of the first twin, instead of walking directly to General Clark to receive his diploma, he headed for the line of visiting dignitaries, generals, and members of the Board of Visitors who sat in a solemn semi-circle around the stage. He shook hands with the first startled general, then proceeded to shake hands and exchange pleasantries with every one on the stage. He did this so quickly that it took several moments for the whole act to catch on. When it finally did, the Corps went wild. General Clark, looking like he had just learned the Allies had surrendered to Germany, stood dumbfounded with Clarey number one's diploma hanging loosely from his hand; then Clarey number two started down the line, repeating the virtuoso performance of Clarey number one, as the Corps whooped and shouted their approval. The first Clarey grabbed his diploma from Clark and pumped his hand vigorously up and down. Meanwhile, his brother was breezing through the hand-shaking exercise. As both of them left the stage, they raised their diplomas above their heads and shook them like war tomahawks at the wildly applauding audience. No graduation is remembered so well."