By James McDonough

     In keeping with this site’s call for reflective articles on the meaning of West Point’s motto to us over the years, I offer this impression on the third, and perhaps most profound, word of the three, ‘Country’.  Previously I wrote one on ‘Duty’ and then one on ‘Honor’, citing the unexpected (at least when we were cadets) complexities and dilemmas that duty might demand by citing the 1994 Rwandan genocide in the first case, and offering in the second essay the example of the absence of honor to emphasize its critical importance by describing a corrupted prison system in Florida.  The bottom line on both words — duty and honor — is that they are key, even noble, concepts that are worthy and necessary characteristics in addressing any event or challenge.  Therefore, West Point was right to impress upon us their importance and helped prepare us to take on the challenges that came before us over the year in one way or another.

     But what of ‘country’?  Why do I say it may be the most profound of the three and therefore by implication the most binding and compelling?  The simple answer is that the first two are concepts, essentially intangibles.  We speak of ‘doing’ our duty and of doing it ‘with’ honor.  Country, on the other hand, is tangible, an entity that exists in form and construct.  It is a place as well as an idea, an entity that is defined by geographic boundaries and a system of laws and precedents with both the reality and the idea simultaneously empowered and constrained by a document known as the Constitution.  We speak of and act in service to our country, as we pledged on that first day on the Plain in the summer of 1965 and again on the day we were commissioned in the summer of 1969.

     It was important that we understood from the very beginning that we were to be subordinate to a higher entity and its lawful civilian leadership.  After all, we were to be ‘soldiers of the state’, commissioned officers in fact, given authority over the armed elements the country would need to defend itself and to ‘uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States’.  These were not mere words, but a solemn undertaking.  They would put us in difficult places under challenging circumstances.  For some of us, it would cost them their lives.  We knew it was a solemn oath when we took it, but few – if any – knew how solemn. 

     As the years passed, some of the Class of 1969 put military duty behind them.  Eventually, all of us did.  But hardly any of us left the concepts of duty, honor, and country behind.  In many walks of life, we ‘soldiered’ on, subordinating ourselves and our egos to those values.  Together, they mark a trinity of loyalty and faith, of pride and destiny.  We had come to fully realize their value, their meaning, their worth — not only to us but for the greater good. 

      Therefore, they do not and cannot stand alone.  Each is important in its own right, but their power is greatly multiplied when joined together as one.  But consider this.  What has penetrated most deeply of all into our psyches is the image of country – our country, the United States of America.  It is a great country, an exceptional country, which each and every citizen is privileged to be a part of.  Paul Johnson, the prolific and renowned British historian who only recently passed from this earth, cited it as a ‘marvelous’ country.  Having lived abroad for 17 plus years and visited dozens of other countries (to include Russia and China), for the most part in the line of duty, and having read extensively of other places and times, I would have to agree with him.  There has never been another country like it.

     Johnson also wrote in his award-winning book, ‘The History of the American People’ that he would hear no more of hyphenated Americans.  “They are all Americans,” he stated, “… [a] black, white, red, brown, yellow swirling maelstrom of history which has produced the most remarkable people the world has ever seen.”  My mother would agree with him.  The daughter of immigrants (likewise her husband, my father) she replied with understandable umbrage, in 1942, to a questioner who, noting her Italian ethnicity, asked what country her recently drafted brother would be fighting for in the war (she was in Alabama at the time to catch a last few days with my father before he deployed to Europe): “America, of course.  We are Americans.”

     All along, the graduates of the West Point Class of 1969 have known intrinsically the wisdom of our West Point motto, but above all we have come to realize the beauty, value, and uniqueness of our country.  We are proud of having done our duty (“…May it be said, ‘Well done’…) and we have strived to serve and live with honor (“…To keep thine honor bright…”), but we say and mean, without any self-consciousness, that we love our country.  What greater emotion can one feel than love for someone or something cherished.  Aside from our relationship with our Creator, what greater allegiance can there be?  Duty, Honor, Country.

*Drafted early in 1942 and shipped shortly thereafter to England. Retired as a Master Sergeant in 1965.

                        The call from Governor Jeb Bush’s Chief of Staff came at 9 o’clock at night.  “Can you take over the Florida Correction’s Department at 6 am in the morning?”

            “What?” I said.  “Let me think about that.”

            “No time.  Give me an answer.  The Governor wants to know. Yes or no.”

            A few more words, than this from me.  “Well, at least let me talk with my wife, Pat, about it.  She’s right here.  I’ll call you back in five minutes.”

            “You can’t talk about it.  Not with her, not with anybody.  Yes or no.  What is it?”

            “Okay.  I’ll do it.”

            When I showed up at my new office in the morning, I couldn’t go in.  It was blocked with “Crime Scene” tape.  Later, I got the explanation for the cryptic phone call.  The former-Secretary of Corrections at the time of the call to me was talking to his corrupt deputy, who had flipped under duress from the FBI.  Wearing a wire under his shirt, he was trying to get the Secretary to say the words that would reduce his own later sentence (he got 3 years).  But the FBI was getting anxious that the Secretary was onto the treachery (but not the wire) and was about to whack him (he had invited him to go out on a rowboat with him on a remote prison-grounds lake).  They then gave the Governor the courtesy of a quick call (before they moved in) to line up a replacement – under the condition he would not share what was going on.  The Secretary didn’t whack anybody that night, but he did get eight years.

            So began my introduction to a large organization (28,000 cadre, 95,000 inmates, 155,000 probationers and parolees, 60+ prisons, and another 70 or so work camps, road camps, half-way houses, etc., and a budget of $3.5 billion.) that was corrupted from the head down.  Up until that morning I had been Florida’s top drug official (colorfully labeled ‘Drug Czar”) but had recently informed the governor of my intention to retire.  Apparently, that didn’t faze him in offering me this new ‘opportunity’. 

He did give me the courtesy of holding my initial meeting with senior staff in his conference room (it was a Saturday morning, so no one was there).  The meeting with the top 12 department officials that morning was tense; before it ended a phone call came in to the number three honcho in the department hierarchy announcing there had been a prison break in the Panhandle.  “How often does that happen?”, I asked.  “First time since I’ve been in the department” she answered.  It hadn’t taken long for the gauntlet to be thrown down.  (It was a fake, a message to the ‘new guy’ – me — that he couldn’t handle the department; we found the two ‘escapees’ four days later hiding in the attic of a warehouse inside the prison, where they had been secreted.)  A ‘resistance movement’ had already begun.

            The department had been corrupted, but by my estimate at the end of my time there was that only 10 percent or so were so involved.  Yet that was enough to make the climate toxic for everyone, not just inmates and offenders, but also for the cadre who were bullied, cajoled, or otherwise threatened to ‘play ball’ (violence by rogue cadre against rival cadre was common, as was inmate abuse).  Also corrupted (or dysfunctional) as a result were the many systems that make a corrections system run properly (medical care was poor, food service was abysmal, contracts were chaotic, maintenance was broken, and so on).  With this recognition early on, prioritizing became easy.  Figure out who the corrupt are and get rid of them, replace them with good people (and there were lots of good people in the department) and fix the operating systems.

            Week two began with a meeting called by me of the 400 ranking members of the department (all with nametags) at a central Florida town.  At 40 tables of ten apiece (which I scrambled every hour), all were introduced to me as I queried the regional leaders about their agendas and priorities, after which I talked to them from the front of the room about ethics, discipline, and behavior, liberally sprinkled with quotes right out of Bugle Notes (‘an officer on duty knows no one’; ‘…discipline is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment…’).  Some were entertained by such ideas (so much so they failed to recognize that among them were strangers who were noting their defiant under-the-breath comments at the tables — and their nametags) which helped me isolate on where to go first.  By the end of week five, the first tranche of leader departures (wardens, IG, general counsel, others for a total of 12) ensued, usually on the heels of an early morning visit by me to their presumed fiefdoms. 

            Some of this was not easy, as rural counties in Florida are bastions of Corrections Department employment, are heavily intermarried or otherwise connected with local law enforcement (Sheriff and Warden brothers-in-law is not uncommon), and not shy about contacting their political benefactors in the Florida legislature.  One of the chief goons (think of the movie “On the Waterfront”) was related to a top Florida law enforcement official and the strongest union in Florida represented the prison guards.  But bit by bit progress was made, although it took a while to uncover all the rot.

            And the rot was extensive if zany at times.  For example, inter-prison softball competition (by rival guard teams) had become an obsession.  Professional ball players were recruited as ‘officers’ but never pulled a shift.  Steroids were smuggled into the prison system.  It produced better long-ball hitters and made the dealers some money as well.  Monies for the lavish weekend ‘tournaments’ were raised by compelling guards to sell T-shirts with the team logo for $20 apiece (the guards, whose average salary was $32,000 a year, were made to pay for the shirts up front to the supplier – often the warden or another ranking official; he or she then, hopefully, could find family and neighbors to buy them in turn). Thereby, well-funded post-game celebrations, usually at pricey hotels, became wild events, not uncommonly erupting into drunken brawls between teams.

            A convicted murderer and inmate, a former doctor who killed for the ‘mob’ and who retained substantial wealth in his outside accounts, was caught (by a tapped phone line) paying a former head of the department to ‘engineer’ a prison transfer to be with his lover.  The former Secretary in this case saw no problem with that.  He was merely working for a client, in his opinion.  The transfer didn’t go through.  And it became more difficult for him to consult with inmates after I played the tape for him in my office.

            It also was dangerous from time to time.  On one occasion, we penetrated and broke a drug-smuggling enterprise in a prison in the Florida Panhandle.  Prison staff, up to highest level, in cahoots with inmates were trafficking drugs into the prison.  We caught on and broke it and on the morning after doing so, I showed up with a new warden I had selected to take over.  Although I generally was armed, guns could not be brought into the prison, where I had to go to restore order.  The SOP called for me to wear a signal alarm that with the push of a button would bring a response squad of guards on the run and the armed tower guard (with M16) to take a ready-to-fire stance and await my command.  As I moved with the new warden through the grounds, a group of about 12 inmates came out of a weight-lifting cage in the exercise yard and came toward us with seeming hostile intent.  I hit the button and the new warden hit his. No response.  The reaction squad did not appear; a glance at the tower showed me the guard there had abandoned his post.  We were on our own.  Thanks in large part to the experienced warden who immediately began to berate and threaten with severe sanctions the dozen now face-to-face with us, they hesitated.  So, I reinforced the threats and the warden one-upped me.  It was enough to give the inmates pause and they backed away.  The upshot was we had to fire a bunch more of the staff, something I had planned to do anyway, I removed all heavy weights from the prisons, replacing them with pull up bars and parallel bars and had guards lead what you would recognize as the ‘daily dozen’.

Eighteen months into the effort of reform and de-corruption, a final confrontation was a prison riot in the Everglades, where the rioters were the guards who had gotten drunk, started a bonfire, and moved with weapons to threaten the life of an uncorrupted guard who was about to come off duty; he had reported to me a horrific act by cadre.  They failed as we countered with strength, protecting the guard and vectoring about 20 trusted and capable leaders to the prison, even as I called local law enforcement in on the problem.  When I reached the threatened guard (with whom I had placed two armed IG agents during the night) I asked what he needed.  He asked that I let him go off prison grounds as he had elderly parents that he stopped by to look in every day after shift.  And then he wanted to go home, as he was sure it was past time to let his dog out. Both requests were granted, and he was promoted as well.

            So, what had happened to cause this particular department to become so dysfunctional?  Honor had been abandoned.  Employment and especially leadership in the department had come to be seen as opportunity, not duty.  Certainly not by all, but by the more ruthless who for a while had their way.  Once countered, it was not hard to find the good people, very much in the majority.  Many of them had in fact stood up to the oppression during the worst of it.  By and by, I reminded all of the guards (who prefer to be called ‘officers’) of their oath of office and had each and every one of them recite it again; I also wrote and printed a wallet-sized card that echoed the tone and commitment to duty of in a manner similar to a soldier’s ‘Code of Conduct’.  It was to be memorized and held on the officer’s person at all times. 

It is my observation that there are always good people that only want to do their duty and to do it well.  All they need is a chance to do so, along with the reinforcing signals and support that it is proper to do.   Once able to do that within the Florida Corrections Department, decency and functional systems returned.  Whether or not such things last rests in the hands of continued honorable leadership.  But the key is honor.  Leaders and institutions need to hold honor high and never let it erode. 

            As for me, I retired (my original plan before the Governor’s call), although two years later than expected.  But the good news is that somewhere during that time, Pat forgave me for taking the job without talking to her first.  I might add, she could write her own story on this, as we did have to make adjustments in our daily routines.

Our class went through four years of West Point figuring that it was preparing us for a career of traditional military service.  That assumption was essentially correct, although in our lack of depth of understanding of what was “traditional” we were endlessly surprised in the years that followed by exactly what our duties entailed.  As it turned out, you see, the only tradition we should have expected was dealing with the unexpected.  However, West Point had done its job well and when the time came most of us figured out what to do and got it done.

I had a few such moments, but one of the more interesting was being tagged to draft the operational doctrine for the Army.  The Army produces tons of doctrinal manuals, but the keystone of all those ton is its central warfighting manual, known throughout the 20^th century as Field Manual (FM) 100-5.  The military is one of the two great institutions that takes its doctrine seriously (the other being the church) and no branch of the military takes it more seriously than the US Army.  Hence, it is modified only every few years and only after much consideration and debate, heavy bureaucratic infighting in the competition of ideas, and ultimate directive of the Chief of Staff of the Army.  Once approved it will dictate the Army’s organizational structure, major equipment procurements, branch integration, soldier training, and officer education for a decade or more.

Shortly after the end of the 1991 Gulf War, I was assigned to Fort Leavenworth to be the Director of the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), where I had been a War College Fellow a few years prior.

Soon thereafter, General Gordon Sullivan became the Army Chief of Staff and, subsequently, General Fred Franks (newly promoted) became the Commander of Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).  Franks’ subordinate for the overall development of doctrine would be then Major General (later General) Wes Clark.

I suspected that drafting a new 100-5 would be part of my assigned duties.  A former director of SAMS (then Colonel Huba Wass de Czega) had drafted the 1980s versions focused on AirLand Battle.  But by 1991, the Soviet Union had dissolved, and the United States was facing new types of threats and challenges around the world.  So, having written a book on leading a platoon, it was only natural that I would be the drafter of the keystone doctrine, an extra duty that would consume the better part of three years.  And so, it was to be (big “Gulp!” here).

The Army gave me all the help I could possibly need.  I was given full support in picking a crackerjack team of six fine officers from around the Army (one of whom was our classmate, Gary Steele).  I also had able input from the available student talent at the school – extremely competent War College Fellows (including classmate Bill Rice (https://thedaysforward.com/bill-rice), the bright young SAMS officers (captains and majors) who were chock full of good ideas, and a brilliant faculty of experts at Leavenworth on the operational level of war.  Immediately, General Sullivan put out a call for input from his senior generals and all branch chiefs and opened the door to retired general staff officers as well.  Add to that the team at TRADOC (who had a strong interest in what came out), and perhaps most importantly the keen interest and leadership of General Sullivan and General Franks (both of whom were personally involved and who shielded me amongst the rough of tumble of contending ideas between high-ranking and often iconic senior officers).

All the above took part in the building of the final product.  SAMS students, for example, were invited to offer ideas, provided they wrote a short paper arguing their point(s).  Then other students would be invited to take an opposing view and a group of them would debate the two sides.  If an idea so offered was worthy, it very well could enter a draft. At a much higher level, the Chief of Staff and TRADOC commander would host various meetings of senior officers (e.g., Army Staff 3-stars, Branch Chiefs, four-star commanders, and others) where yours truly would offer up the drafts to that point (usually written and circulated in advance) and brace himself for the feedback (not always glowing commentary, as it happened).

Retired senior officers were not at all shy about offering their views, in a variety of ways. My favorite among the latter was LTG (R) Jack Cushman (First Captain, West Point Class of 1944) who called one morning and suggested I go to the Leavenworth archives and review his writings.  Accustomed to such calls, I showed all proper military protocols and promised I would.  He then called the following morning (at 0700) and asked me what I thought of them, whereupon I confessed I had not yet been to the archives.  The following morning at 0700 when the call came, I was ready.  His input was wonderful, I must say.  He had a penetrating grasp of the Army and its doctrine.  One paper of his, penned in 1956, dealt with the concept of “air-land battle” (27 years before it entered FM 100-5).  He and many others had great input to the doctrine.

None of this was done in the shadows; there were no hidden agendas.  Successive drafts were shared endlessly.  As we neared the end, a part of the job was to sell the product (Gary Steele was a star here – https://thedaysforward.com/gary-steele-tight-end-army/), not just to the Army and our sister services and our allies, but to the public as well, both via the media, publications,  and in various forums (one, for example, being John Lucas’ law firm in Richmond).

With such leadership from the top down, a well-resourced team effort, and endless debate based on the collective experience of all involved, the 1993 version of its operational doctrine set a new course for the Army as it closed the 20^th century and entered the 21^st.

Okay, so then why is boxing in the title of this essay?

Well, you see every written effort must have a central concept that ties the entire body of work together – even if that theme is not explicitly articulated in the body of work.  In this case, the objective was to formulate the Army’s central warfighting doctrine.  While that effort encompassed many of the best thoughts of military theorists, historians, combat experienced generals, and other experts over the centuries (without being named in the text), my own touchstone was the three principles of Plebe boxing – the ability to move, to hit, and to protect.  They must be conquered in various combinations and sequences (hit, move, protect; protect, move, hit; move, protect, hit; and so on) and they must have the proper supporting systems (communications. intelligence, training, logistics, etc.) and apply the timeless principles of war (unity of command, mass, economy of force, etc.).  But in the end, warfare remains the ability to hit, move, and protect.

So, for those of you who thought Plebe boxing was just a physical torment to add to the tribulations of our first year at West Point, it was really a deep academic subject full of profundities that we could call upon in our future years as we dealt with the many challenges that the Army introduced us to.  It was a truism I kept from everyone else during the effort, of course, but now you know the rest of the story.

Editor’s note:  For those who would like to know more, you may go here; click on the cover photo to read more:  https://www.google.com/books/edition/American_Army_Doctrine_for_the_Post_Cold/qXKyv6Q2Dl8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP1&printsec=frontcover

 

 

        When the gates at West Point opened to let us out on June 4^th, 1969 there was a mass exodus of the Best of the Line punctuated by a cacophony of revving engines and screeching tires.  Before the dust could settle on Highland Falls, it seemed like all of the Class of ’69 had fled.  But not entirely.  A stay-behind formation of romantics lingered a while longer (some for a few hours, some for a few days) to do what had been denied them up to that point – get married and, furthermore, to do it at our rockbound highland home.

            It (almost) begins with the First Class Trip – that wonderful boondoggle where in two halves the entire class in the summer of 1968 was flown to the home of select Army branches so that we could be familiarized (and wooed) with what they had to offer us upon graduation.   At each place, we would train on the equipment, try out branch-specific tactics, and get dazzled by the professionalism on display – all this capped by a formal dinner-dance where young women would be present.  The latter were involved by direct invitation of a cadet or by a blind-dating pool kindly engineered by the locals (we were matched by height).  Only in one place – Fort Belvoir, then the home of the engineers – did I think I knew a local girl.                                             

As it turns out, as a young boy and ‘Army brat’ I had lived in Damascus, Syria where my father was assigned to the embassy.  After being there a year or so, we sponsored an incoming Air Force family, which happened to have three little girls (and at that time, no boys).  Being very young (this was the early 1950s) I was annoyed with the invasion of the girls (I had one sister as well then), and reluctantly put up with them.

Despite my ill humor, our families became good friends and in subsequent military tours over the years we would see each other from time to time as our travels brought us across common paths.  They had settled, I knew, in northern Virginia.  So here I took a chance.

            Securing a phone was difficult in these pre-cell phone days.  A single pay phone accepting only nickels, dimes, and quarters would be available in some selected ‘sinks’ (the basements of the old barracks), usually blocked by a long queue of cadets. I awaited my turn, finally placed a call, and when the mother answered, asked to speak with Sandy, so I could invite her to the dance.  The answer was that I could not, since Sandy had recently been married and moved on.  Flustered (I lacked worldliness back then, as now) I excused myself and got off the phone.  Only then did I remember there were two other girls.  A few days later, I screwed up my courage once more and this time wrote a letter inviting Jeannie to the dance.  A week or more passed before I received a response – again from the mother – stating that Jeannie could not possibly go out with me since she was only 15 years old.  (Note, no name was offered either time).  I was now shattered.

Two weeks later, however, with the trip coming desperately close I made one final try (again by letter) and this time got the right name – Pat.  She accepted, but by now I was clearly on the defensive.  The night of the dance, I stood outside the Belvoir officers club in the company of approximately 400 classmates, all of us eagerly anticipating the arrival of the ladies.  Pat’s mother would be driving, but I figured I would recognize the car (they always owned a station wagon) before either of them.  At last I saw it, and as I wondered how this date might turn out they pulled up and a stunning young woman in a white evening gown stepped out.  My heart leaped, freezing me in place for a moment even as my classmates surged forward (or so I perceived) en masse.  Recovering just in the nick of time, I elbowed my way to the front and greeted both mother and daughter, the former soon departing and the latter charming me the entire evening and for the rest of my life.

I never recovered, but henceforth got her name right even as my thoughts of bachelorhood faded into oblivion.

We were married four days after graduation in that Old Cadet Chapel, returned to West Point much time later to live nearby it for three years (behind the old PX in what was then known as Dunover Court), and had our third son baptized there.  It pays, you see, to be persistent, even as you bumble through life.