Military Leaders From The United States

"To Renie, my five-star wife — who for thirty years has inspired me to do my utmost in the service of my country. To her love, courage, sacrifices, understanding, and guidance I attribute whatever success I may have achieved."

"No war is ever fought exactly like any other before it, and history is full of stories of commanders who came to grief trying to follow an old pattern of victory once too often. Whatever is new in tactics, equipment, or method must be taught at the squad level before a soldier gets into combat."

"In carrying out the instructions of my Government, I gained the unenviable distinction of being the first United States Army commander in history to sign an armistice without victory."

"After I went to the Far East I witnessed this same concentration-time after time in the schools the Koreans established for their officers and noncoms. The students would squat on their haunches for hours listening to an instructor explain something like the care and use of a light machine gun. They would focus their eyes on the instructor almost without blinking. Never once did a single student that I saw let his gaze wander. I even tested them. They knew who I was, and in addition, the short-statured Oriental has a compulsion to look at a tall man. During the class sessions, I witnessed I deliberately strolled behind the instructor, looking at the students. I thought certainly some of the Korean students would break their concentration on the instructor and sneak a glance at me. I didn't catch a one. I made it a practice to make this test often during visits to ROK training schools. Never once did I catch an eye looking my way. I have never in my life been so impressed with the intensity of military students."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"This book is dedicated to the men and women of many nationalities who fought and died serving with the Fifth Army and the 15th Army Group, in Italy. Never did a commander have more to be proud of than I in being associated with these selfless individuals."

"A soldier's life in combat is an endless series of decisions that mean success or failure, and perhaps life or death for himself or his comrades. The rifleman crawling through the rubble of a bombed-out street must decide on the best moment to escape enemy fire as he dodges from one doorway to the next. He must take a chance. The general seeking to break an enemy defense line and destroy his forces must decide just when and how to strike and precisely to what extent he dare weaken one sector of his front in order to mass overpowering strength at the main point of attack. He, too, must take a chance, although, in the stilted phraseology of military communiqués, he calls it a "calculated risk"."

"On Memorial Day we visited the American cemetery at Anzio and saw the curving rows of white crosses that spoke eloquently of the price that America and her Allies had paid for the liberation of Italy. If ever proof were needed that we fought for a cause and not for conquest, it could be found in these cemeteries. Here was our only conquest: all we asked of Italy was enough of her soil in which to bury our gallant dead."

"The story I would like to tell, I thought then, is the story of the men who lie here. Nothing can blur my memory of their tenacity and devotion to duty, of their refusal to be awed by seemingly insurmountable odds, by the swirling dust of the Salerno, by the treacherous mud of the Liri Valley, or by the stinging snows of the high Apennines. Some chapters of their story I could not hope to tell. No one could tell them who was not there day after day in the foxholes that filled with water before they were half dug, and on the rocky peaks where not even a pack mule could gain a footing. But I can tell a part of the story. I can tell how and why the turn of the wheel of war took the men of the Fifth Army to Italy and what was behind the orders that sent them into battle at Salerno, on the Volturno, at Cassino, and on the flat and barren little strip of hell known as the Anzio beachhead; and I can give at least a glimpse of the bravery and sacrifices, not only of the Americans but of dozen other nationalities who fought their way into the not-so-soft underbelly of the Axis. They are men who paid heavily for their page in history. Testimony to their courage is the fact that they won 56 of the 255 Congressional Medals of Honor awarded to our Army during the entire war. I am proud to have had an opportunity to share in their calculated risk in the Mediterranean."

"Our difficulties with the Russians increased, but I never really blamed Konev. He obviously was merely carrying out instructions. He even had a sense of humor about it occasionally. Once when we were discussing Austrian politics, the name of the Communist party leader, Ernst Fischer, was mentioned. Jokingly, I said: "Well, I don't like him because he is a Communist." Konev grunted. "That's fine," he said. "I don't like him either because he's an Austrian Communist.""

"On another occasion, I decided to give Konev, who liked to hunt, a custom-built rifle, with a silver plate on the stock inscribed "To Marshal Konev, from his friend, General Clark." I wasn't sure he would get it if I simply delivered it to his headquarters, so I had an officer take it to him. I didn't even get an acknowledgment from Konev, although I saw him on several official occasions. Finally, about three weeks after I had sent the gun, I walked to lunch with him after the commissioners' meeting. Speaking through an interpreter, I asked if he had received the gun. "Yes". "Ask the marshal whether he liked it." "Yes". "I just wondered," I said. "I hadn't received any acknowledgment." "Well, you didn't send any ammunition.""

"Admiral King claimed the Pacific as the rightful domain of the Navy; he seemed to regard the operations there as almost his own private war; he apparently felt that the only way to remove the blot on the Navy disaster at Pearl Harbor was to have the Navy command a great victory over Japan; he was adamant in his refusal to allow any major fleet to be under other command than that of naval officers although maintaining that naval officers were competent to command ground or air forces; he resented the prominent part I had in the Pacific War; he was vehement in his personal criticism of me and encouraged Navy propaganda to that end; he had the complete support of President Roosevelt and his Chief of Staff, Admiral Leahy, and in many cases of General Arnold, the head of the Air Force."

"King never forgot a grudge. Now, he's used you to get back at me."

"The operations in the Marshall Islands carried out by the forces under Vice Admiral Spruance were characterized by excellent planning and by almost perfect timing in the execution of those plans. The entire operation was a full credit to those who participated, and it is a noteworthy example of the results that may be expected from good staff work."

"For reasons of security, our submarine operations throughout the Pacific can be discussed only in very general terms. No branch of the naval service, however, has acquitted itself more creditably. Submarine commanding officers are skillful, daring and resourceful. Their crews are well trained and efficient. Their morale is high, and in direct ratio to the success of submarine operations. Materially our submarines are in excellent shape, and we have kept up to the minute in all features of design and scientific development and research. The versatility of our submarines has been so repeatedly demonstrated throughout the war that the Japanese know only too well that in no part of the Pacific Ocean are they safe from submarine attack. When the full story can be told, it will constitute one of the most stirring chapters in the annals of naval warfare."

"Partial to Baltimore. Won fame in Massachusetts in Spanish war. The Saturday Night Club during youngster year. Then Stein and he reformed. Noon-walks. Spoons occasionally. Hops,- Well, yes! Temper? Don't fool with nitroglycerin. Court beauty No. 2. Rooms with the "Full Dinner Pail". Laugh as rosy as his cheeks."

"King brought great operational experience, a powerful mind, and an eccentric and unbending personality."

"King had grown up alone with his father in an Ohio household from which his chronically ailing mother had been removed. He was ever after a loner, a brusque man who fathered seven children but seemed to love only the Navy."

""When they get in trouble they send for the sonsabitches." Asked whether he had said said this, Admiral King replied no, he had not, but he would have if he had thought of it. They were indeed in trouble when they sent for King, bringing him from the brink of retirement to be Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, and King would have been ready to admit that he enjoyed a reputation for toughness and ill temper that had few equals in the upper ranks of the U.S. Navy. He took charge of that navy at the depths of its despair and lifted it to the heights of triumph. He was a hard man in a hard time, well suited to lead a fighting fleet, but he was also a thoughtful man of a breadth and incisiveness that gave him an early and enduring grip on Allied strategy. Much of the war went the way he wished it to. The strongest mind within the American Joint Chiefs of Staff was the mind of Ernest J. King."

"King was a brilliant naval officer and exceptionally capable seaman. But he had a willful, mean, and brittle side to his nature that limited his effectiveness as a leader charged with bringing new people and new ideas to bear on problems of developing untraditional and unanticipated ways of waging warfare."

"The Battle of Guadalcanal, in spite of heavy losses we sustained, was a decisive victory for us, and our position in the southern Solomons was not threatened again seriously by the Japanese. Except for the "Tokio express," which from time to time succeeded in landing small quantities of supplies and reinforcements, control of the sea and air in the southern Solomons passed to the United States."

"Both in Europe and in the Pacific long roads still lie ahead. But we are now fully entered on those roads, fortified with unity, power, and experience, imbued with confidence and determined to travel far and fast to victory."

"Throughout the war, the four of us- Marshall, King, Arnold, and myself- worked in the closest possible harmony. In the postwar period, General Marshall and I disagreed sharply on some aspects of our foreign political policy. However, as a soldier, he was in my opinion one of the best, and his drive, courage, and imagination transformed America's citizen army into the most magnificent fighting force ever assembled. In number of men and logistical requirements, his army operations were by far the largest. This meant that more time of the Joint Chiefs were spent on his problems than on any others- and he invariably presented them with skill and clarity. King had an equally difficult task. His fleets had to hold Japan at bay while convoying millions of tons of supplies for the second front. He was an exceptionally able sea commander. He was also explosive and there were times when it was just as well that the deliberations of the Joint Chiefs were a well-kept secret. The President had a high opinion of King's ability but he was a very undiplomatic person, especially when the Admiral's low boiling point would be reached in some altercation with the British. King would have preferred to put more power into the Asiatic war earlier. He supported loyally the general strategy of beating Germany first, but this often required concessions of ships which he did not like to make. He could not spare much, since, until the last months of the war, he was working with a deficit of ships. America was fighting a two-ocean war for the first time in its history."

"The admiral who shaved with a blowtorch had given no thought to life after the war. Like Patton, Grant, Sherman and other men who stare transfixed into the bonfires of Mars, King settled into the realization on the day Japan's emissaries signed the surrender documents, he had accomplished his life's work. "King was a lost soul when the war was over," said one friend. "He had served his purpose. He had done what he had set out to do. He had won his part of the war." There would be a massive demobilization as the Navy returned its men to civilian life. The Pearl Harbor inquiry would become public, Congress would slash the Navy's budget, and old salts like himself would be put out to pasture, to make way for younger admirals."

"With Forrestal as Navy secretary, King knew retirement would follow quickly. He had gotten along with Knox only because the Chicago newsman knew nothing about the Navy, admitted it, and stayed out of King's way. Forrestal would not. During the war, King had cursed Forrestal out in the halls of the Navy Department, and had browbeaten him into staying out of naval operations. "I didn't like him, and he didn't like me," King said."

"The actions in the Coral Sea and at Midway did much to wrest the initiative from the enemy and slow down further advance. Our first really offensive operation was the seizure of Guadalcanal in August 1942. This campaign was followed by a general offensive made possible by increases in our amphibious forces and in our naval forces in general, which has continued to gain momentum on the entire Pacific front. At the end of February 1944, the enemy had been cleared from the Aleutians, had been pushed well out of the Solomons, and was forced to adopt a defensive delaying strategy. Meanwhile, our own positions in the Pacific had been strengthened."

"The war in the Pacific may be regarded as having four stages: (a) The defensive, when we were engaged almost exclusively in protecting our shores and our lines of communication from the encroachments of the enemy. (b) The defensive-offensive, during which, although our operations were chiefly defensive in character, we were able nevertheless to take certain defensive measures. (c) The offensive-defensive, covering the period immediately following our seizure of the initiative, but during which we still had to use a large part of our forces to defend our recent gains. (d) The offensive, which began when our advance bases were no longer seriously threatened and we became able to attack the enemy at places of our own choosing."

"While Ernie King loved history, there was one story from ancient times that may have escaped his notice. As a boy, the Greek admiral Themistocles was said to have been taken by his father to a deserted beach, where his father showed him the carcasses of old war galleys lying sun-baked, prostrate, and neglected. That, his father told him, is how a democracy treats its leaders when they no longer have use for them. King had once objected to a wartime pay raise for soldiers, sailors, and officers. When the shooting stopped, he said, a grateful nation would distribute just rewards to the men who had brought them safely through the fire. When asked if he would write a book about the war, King replied that while he would do it, the book would have only two words: "We won.""

"King's oaken hull began to split in 1947, when he suffered a stroke. His mind remained alert, but his iron-plated timbers began to creak and sag. He moved into a suite at Bethesda Naval Hospital for full-time care, and at one point he shared a floor with the acutely depressed James Forrestal, who ended his life by jumping from the sixteenth-floor window in 1949. King spent the next seven summers at the naval hospital in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He slipped his moorings and sailed over the bar on June 25, 1956, at the age of seventy-eight. He was buried at Annapolis, home of the United States Naval Academy. The only hymn sung at his funeral was a Navy anthem, an old favorite of Roosevelt's: "Eternal Father, Strong to Save.""

"Roosevelt, who had been assistant secretary of the navy during World War I and maintained a proprietary interest in the service, had a hand in the choice of the sixty-three-year-old King as CINCLANT. Tough, brilliant, and short-tempered- Roosevelt said "he shaved with a blow torch"- King was an aviator, a submariner, and a staff officer, and the president's idea of a fighting sailor. Only a short time before, the admiral had been passed over for a top command and was headed for retirement, because, it was said, he drank too much, chased other men's wives, and had too many enemies. "When they get into trouble they send for the sons-of-bitches," was his explanation for this reversal of fortune."

"Our Chiefs felt that they knew so little of what was really going on in the Pacific, of what the U.S. Navy planned to do, and of the amount of resources that these plans would absorb, that some enlightenment would be valuable. They also felt that 'Uncle Ernie' would take a less jaundiced view of the rest of the world if he had been able to shoot his line about the Pacific and get it off his chest."

"Tough as nails and carried himself as stiffly as a poker. He was blunt and stand-offish, almost to the point of rudeness. At the start, he was intolerant and suspicious of all things British, especially the Royal Navy; but he was almost equally intolerant and suspicious of the American Army. War against Japan was the problem to which he had devoted the study of a lifetime, and he resented the idea of American resources being used for any other purpose than to destroy the Japanese. He mistrusted Churchill's powers of advocacy, and was apprehensive that he would wheedle President Roosevelt into neglecting the war in the Pacific."

"King, sixty-three years old in 1942, was as gruff a man as Nimitz was a serene one. Hard-drinking and legendarily ill-tempered, he once confessed that he had not actually uttered the self-descriptive epithet "when they get in trouble they send for the sonsabitches" but that he would have if he had thought of it. Yet King's choleric manner masked an incisive strategic intelligence, possessed of qualities that perfectly fitted him for senior command: the ability to anticipate, the capacity for penetrating analysis of his adversary's predicaments, an unerring grasp of the reach and limits of his own forces, and a pit bull's determination to seize the initiative and attack, attack, attack."

"The Battle of Midway was the first decisive defeat suffered by the Japanese Navy in 350 years. Furthermore, it put an end to the long period of Japanese offensive action, and restored the balance of naval power in the Pacific. The threat to Hawaii and the west coast was automatically removed, and except for operations in the Aleutians area, where the Japanese had landed on the islands of Kiska and Attu, enemy operations were confined to the south Pacific. It was to this latter area, therefore, that we gave our greatest attention."

"While we contemplate with pride the accomplishments of the past twelve months- accomplishments without precedent in naval history- we must never forget that there is a long, tough and laborious road ahead."

"Once the decision to build up the Navy was taken, strong men of clear vision quickly rose to the top of the service hierarchy. Chief among these were Adm Ernest King and VAdm Chester Nimitz, men of such consummate skill that the ennui of the prewar years had virtually no impact upon their abilities and sensibilities as commanders or as men. Others slightly less senior were pulled forward by the enormous suction created by King's and Nimitz's rise to the top."

"Admiral King's role in the development of strategy for defeating Japan is very difficult to evaluate in detail. Officially he approved or disapproved recommendations that came to him as Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, and Chief of Naval Operations and as one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from his own naval planners, and from the joint planners in Washington. Frequently these recommendations had already been influenced by his own views. Still many of the objectives he preferred, most notably Formosa, were bypassed, and much of the time his recommendations were only in terms of areas or island groups. He accepted without question the specific objectives deemed by the operating commands most suitable. The one who came closest to Admiral King in his basic view that the Japanese should be kept under constant pressure was not a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but the Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area, General MacArthur. Although his role was to recommend and then accept a decision from the JCS, and many of his views on strategy differed sharply from those endorsed by the JCS, his repeated efforts to get more support for his area of command and to push ahead as rapidly and with as much force as possible helped to insure that the war against Japan did not become a forgotten war and were largely responsible for the development of the advance on two axes."

"Dear Ernie, It has been an education, and a very pleasant one, to serve under you this past winter. May I thank you for your patience of me personally and for the professional lessons you have given me- I should be proud to serve under you any time- anywhere, & under any conditions. The best of luck always- may your new job be to your liking- and here's hoping for more stars afloat. Always sincerely yours, Bill Halsey."

"The military leadership styles of these two naval officers are contrasting in several ways. King was an immoral, self-serving leader who was notably brutal to subordinates and abrasive with Allied military leaders and politicians alike. Nimitz, however, was a moral leader who served is country selflessly, and he was engaging and supportive of his staff as well as sister service members and Allied military leaders and politicians. Really, both men serve as dissimilar examples of naval leadership during World War II and Nimitz's style more closely aligns with the leadership style of Marshall and Eisenhower than it does with King."

"Besides intelligence and dedication, one other pillar supported King's professional reputation: his toughness. He regarded exceptional performance of duty as the norm and evinced insensitivity or even callousness to his subordinates, upon whom he also frequently exercised his ferocious temper. But if King proved harsh with subordinates, he was no toady to superiors. Those who fell short of King's standards found he could be hostile, tactless, arrogant, and sometimes disrespectful or even insubordinate. As a junior officer this conduct earned him more than a healthy share of disciplinary action. He defined the span of his concerns beyond his career when he once commented, "You ought to be very suspicious of anyone who won't take a drink or doesn't like women. King, the father of seven, was deficient in neither category."

"Early in World War II, Captain George C. Dyer served on Admiral King's staff and estimated that his headquarters would require a staff of four hundred people. King blew up and said that since he got by with fourteen while a flag officer at sea, fifty would be the maximum he would tolerate on land. Dyer subsequently went to the Pacific, was severely wounded, and was sent to Bethesda Naval Hospital to recover. While Dyer was in the area, King invited him to stop by his office; and when he came in, King handed him a paper that reported current staffing at 416. It was King's way of admitting he was wrong. Admiral King was noted for his caustic personality, although for the most part it seems to have existed apart from his underlying character. It must have been; few sarcastic individuals rise to the top in the military profession- or stay there if they do- especially when the job includes tangling with the President on a frequent basis. Moreover, many officers who served with him for any length of time came to regard him with an affection and respect that belied his personality."

"The belief that King was well versed in naval surface and aerial warfare and that he was technically competent in the use of naval warfare is widely accepted by authors assessing King as a naval leader and is not in question in this monograph. What is examined in this monograph is King's leadership abilities absent his technical naval skills. This analysis will demonstrate that King was perceived as a toxic leader who was known to be petulant, overly emotional, stubborn, egotistical, and immoral. These leadership traits, more than anything else define King, and these negative traits affected how he engaged those he led, US and Allied leaders, and even his own family."

"King also repaired his deteriorating relationship with the press. This relationship had become so bad that journalists were circulating unfounded stories in order to force Roosevelt to relieve him. King's attorney, Cornelius H. Bull, recognized that this dismissal would not be in the country's best interests; so Bull got together with Glen Perry, the assistant chief for the New York Sun, in the Suns Washington office. Together they proposed that King meet privately with a selected group of journalists at Bull's home in Alexandria, Virginia, and level with them off the record. King agreed reluctantly, predicting that there would only be one such meeting. In this he was dead wrong. Those meetings continued for the balance of the war, by the end of which the "members" came almost to revere King. He in turn developed a great deal of respect and regard for them. And he kept his job."

"One thing that might help win this war is to get someone to shoot King. He's the antithesis of cooperation, a deliberately rude person, which means he's a mental bully. He became Commander in Chief of the fleet some time ago. Today he takes over, also, Stark's job as Chief of Naval Operations. It's a good thing to get rid of the double head of the Navy, and of course Stark was just a nice old lady, but this fellow is going to cause a blow-up sooner or later, I'll bet a cookie."

"Lest I look back at this book sometime and find that I've expressed a distaste for some person, and have put down no reason for my aversion, I record this one story of Admiral King. One day this week General Arnold sent a very important note to King. Through inadvertence, the stenographer in Arnold's office addressed it, on the outside, to "Rear Admiral King". Twenty-four hours later the letter came back, unopened, with an arrow pointing to the "Rear," thus: [Here a long, heavy arrow has been drawn in a diagonal line underneath and pointing to the word "Rear."] And that's the size of man the Navy has at its head. He ought to be a big help winning this war."

"King had the brains, all right, but I hated his guts."

"Admiral King, commander in chief of United States Fleet, and directly subordinate to the President, is an arbitrary, stubborn type, with not too much brains and a tendency toward bullying his juniors. But I think he wants to fight, which is vastly encouraging."