Who are the great generals?

[Fred III]

Thanks Fred. Now you actually walked, talked, and worked with a Great General, DePuy. What, according to your observations, were the outstanding traits of Great Generalship that DePuy himself had?

Norfolk--

DePuy was the most remarkable soldier I ever served with, and that includes George Joulwan, who was my CO when I was a young 1LT with the 1/30, 3rd Inf. Div., in Schweinfurt, Germany. Whatever I am today, I owe to my parents, my school, and George Joulwan, so you can see how high I hold DePuy. (Joulwan, incidentally, was NATO CG and led the forces into Bosnia.) Joulwan was also with me in Vietnam, same division (1st) when we served together under DePuy for the second time.

As a teacher-- BG CO in Germany-- he was a patient man with young LTs, teaching them his methods, teaching them-- us-- how to be good officers. At the same time, he brooked no excuses and forced you to take responsibility for what you did. If you erred, you always had the opportunity to explain, and either he or his well-taught officers always took the time to show you how to get it right. He was a strict disciplinarian and enforced his ideas and his methods, his formations, his timing, etc. We used the "traveling," the "traveling overwatch," and the "bounding overwatch," techniques until we could taste them, and woe betide he who wouldn't learn! We also used his fire-and-maneuver techniques until they became second nature and even the lowest private was so embued with DePuy's tactics, that they scoffed at anything else. As you can imagine, we were probably the only unit in USAREUR to use this stuff and the morale in the battle group was sky-high because we felt we were something different and because DePuy always emphasized the necessity of saving lives.

When we went on field exercises, there was a constant emphasis on the use of assets. On a small unit level, it was our introduction to "combined arms." Again, God help the man who moved his men to the "attack" without first exploring the availability and use of mortars, artillery, air, and any other mechanism that would save a single life.

This translated into the same atmosphere in Vietnam. I was RA, but had bad eyes so I couldn't remain in the infantry. I lucked out after my 2-year obligation to a combat branch, and was transferred in TC, and got an interview job at NATO as a 1LT. You talk about cloud nine... ! When my tour was up, I went to Ft. (Useless) Eustis, school, a battalion S-3 job, company CO, then Vietnam. In Vietnam I took over the truck company in the S&T Battalion (the only one a division has). That's when I ran into Joulwan again, several NCOs I knew in the 1/30 and a couple of the officers from there, as well. It almost seemed DepUy had orchestrated the whole thing: could he have? All his own boys? I don't know, but it certainly seemed that way.

I wrote a manual for the division on convoy operations when I was there and I ran the first so-called infiltration convoy of the war, from Lai Khe to the old French Michelin rubber plantation at An Loc, a 7-day affair, if memory serves me correctly. And Depuy was his old smoke-bringing self. He was aided by another hell-raiser, his ADC 2-3, Jim Hollingsworth (there's a great blurb about Hollingsworth in Cornelius Ryan's The Last Battle). The main difference was that the teaching-gloves were now off and guys who couldn't cut it or who screwed up real bad were quickly gone. This was no longer CPXs and FTXs. This was "Charlie," the NVA, and dirty pool. DePuy wanted no excuses, no nonsense, none of the "corporate" charts showing casualties and captured rifles, none of that stuff. He wanted results. Operations were brilliantly planned and he used massive air assets, heliborne operations for everything, speed, stealth, surprise, and massive firepower. He had so many attachments I think the division at one time numbered more than 25,000 troops. Again: mortars instead of men. Then send in the troops. I would be given convoy instructions by the DTO. (They only used us as decoys to flush Charlie out; virtually everything was re-supplied by air.) I would always ask who was providing road security. The inevitable answer was, ARVN. My reply was always the same. "Negative, sir." It would then immediately go back to Hollingsworth or DePuy and I got US troops (most of the time George Joulwan; he musta loved that!).

DePuy was also very big on base-camp perimeter patrols and in the year I was there, our huge camp was not hit once, rather remarkable for 1966-1967. Once in a while I was allowed to attend a division staff meeting during an operation. Maps were used; the charts disappeared. He hated them. And the division was the most professional organization I have ever served in, again, with extremely high morale. The man was indefatiguable, all over the place, and I must say, many careers were ruined by him, Hollingsworth, and the ADC 1-4, Deane (or Dean, I can't remember which any more). And I will say this, with all deference to other units: we were always pulling guys out of hot water: Tropic Lightning, the Old Reliables, a couple of those LIBs. I constantly ran convoys to other divisions, yet no one ever ran them to us.

I don't ever remember us taking severe casualties and our operations were always kept reasonably quiet despite the ARVN "support." DePuy was an attrition general, but he defined it in a way that was different from what most think: "... we continued to hope that we could inflict such losses on the VC or the NVA that it would be more than they would be able to take. That's the alternative to cutting the trail. That's an attrition war." Many think it's the other way around. He was also the innovator of the "search and destroy" operation and never believed in letting the enemy off the hook. He always had something going on. I think if I had to pick one thing, however, about his tactics, it would be surprise. The enemy that faced the 1st Inf. Div. when Bill DePuy commanded it, was never given a breather, was always looking around him, was always off balance, never knowing where the next battalion was going to land, where the next attack was coming from. DePuy was a master at it.

Another thing I really liked about him was he was not afraid to admit his mistakes. That's a very rare quality, even in the "duty-honor-country" society of the military.

So that's it. You will love the C&GS stuff on his papers, especially chapters 24-28. The first ones are good, as well. They're the ones that give you his squad and platoon tactics. Great stuff. I wonder if we use them today. Boy, oh boy! did they make sense. Try moving a platoon that way instead of the old, 1962 Ft. Benning madness.

Best wishes,
Fred.