Booknotes

DAVID HACKWORTH: Well, I had a lot of people over the 18 years of rumination and I thought about writing this book -- a lot of authors came to me to write it with me or for me, and I waited for the right one. And Julie Sherman came along, and after looking at her work and talking to her, I concluded that what I really needed was a woman's feel, a woman's touch. War is about men, and men take life, but the horrible result about war is it takes the life -- young men in the main -- and it's the sons, the daughters, the husbands of women. Women give life. And I felt that if we could discuss war and discuss it with that man's passion from my own experience, but with a sensitivity and the depth and feeling of a woman, we could tell the complete story.

HACKWORTH: Oh, probably a half dozen. There were a number of qualified people that came to me. But I wanted also to insure that I had my head together so the message that I was going to give would be clear and would be objective and would be without bitterness and vindictiveness and the need to even the score.

HACKWORTH: Well, in 1971 I said to the nation that Vietnam was a bad war. And I said it from my heart from the experiences of almost six years, over a six-year period in Vietnam. That it was a bad war. We were losing it. We were bleeding unnecessarily. And there was just simply no way we were going to win it. People were involved with the South Vietnamese, were going to win it, and we should get out now. What I didn't realize that when you sound off against a big institution like the U.S. Army and say they are all wrong, I didn't realize what happened to whistle blowers. And I got thumped about the head and shoulders in a very severe way. And that created the bitterness. And that caused me to leave America, leave my roots, and go to Australia and be angry for a long time.

HACKWORTH: Well, I certainly was. You know in 1966 I told the Army Chief of Staff, Harold K. Johnson, we were losing the war. In 1968 I wrote in a paper which went to General Westmoreland that we had botched the war. The following year in '69 I told the Secretary of the Army, Stanley Reisler, that we were losing the war. And I told anybody and everybody that would listen to me. I wrote this in Army publications and it was pretty evident were I was coming from.

But nothing was done. I took a draftee battalion full of untrained kids in '69 and turned them into a guard that just turned the battlefield around. And at the end of a five month period we'd killed 2,500 enemy at the loss of 25 of my men. A 100 to 1 ratio. We were fighting the war as the war should have been fought. But no one listened. No General came down and said, "Gee, how did you guys do this." How did these untrained troopers win battles like this time and time again. Because we didn't want to learn.

The government, the Army specifically, has no real deep reflection. They just don't look at the past to learn from it to grow from it. I think that's the thing -- as it built up this frustration caused me to sound off. You know as a little kid, when I was 15, I was in Italy, and General Eisenhower, who is a five-star General, stopped in front of me and probably because I was just a little 15-years-old kid, he said, "Well, how do you like it here?" So then I said, "Oh, just fine General." And he said, "How's the chow?" You know, the normal thing that a General is going to ask a little boy. And I said, "Oh, it's terrible." I said, "We eat Spam everyday."

And he went down the line and he said, "Why do these guys eat Spam everyday?" You know it went from the Lieutenant General to the Major General down to the little Major and the reply came bubbling up, "Oh the depot from the war is filled with Spam. We've got to get rid of it."

So Ike said, "Stop it. Give these guys fresh food" and so on. So from that point forward, as long as I was a soldier, I sounded off. If I saw something wrong, I told them. So when I reflect that my sounding off in '71, I tried it through the system, I told everybody in the Army that would listen to me. When I realized that wasn't going to happen, I went to the people via the media and told them the truth of what was happening in Vietnam.

HACKWORTH: I was interested in sex and adventure. And it seem to me the Army provided both.

HACKWORTH: If you lied. And I had been in the Merchant Marines for a year before so I had Merchant papers from my experience in the Pacific. And so I used those as documents to get me in the Army. I was an orphan, so the Army became a home for me, Brian. It became my family. It was something I loved very, very much. So I was very protective towards this institution. And I always loved my soldiers because I was a soldier and I wanted to keep them alive. I believed in winning battles and fighting wars. And I was a warrior but not at the expense of my men. So I think that great love for my soldiers too that made me stand up and shout, "Stop the madness."

HACKWORTH: Well, I don't know. I would from certain circles. Certainly the Army Magazine and the institution would endorse what I have to say. But I think in the book is the truth. And I think that those people who are writing the reviews -- most of them had been on the battlefield, had gone through that same experience as I -- and they are just seeing somebody finally coming out in a in a real detailed form and offering what happened in Vietnam. And it just wasn't from Vietnam. This tragedy that occurred started in 1946 when we took our Officer Corps and started this business of making everybody a diplomat and a warrior which ended up under Maxwell Taylor when he became Chief of Staff. Our Generals became corporate generals rather than the fighting generals of type that won World War II. The Ridgeways and the Pattons and so on.

HACKWORTH: Medals.

HACKWORTH: Well, I think it's in the living history of the U.S. military. What do I think of medals? I think that Napoleon said, if you have enough ribbon, you can conquer the world. And I think you have to honor your warriors for standing up and being counted. For moving into the fire across the killing zone. And you honor them with a piece of ribbon.

And at the end of World War II the household name was Audie Murphy. Audie Murphy had nine ribbons. The Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Purple Heart, Silver Star, Bronze Star and so on. They were all awards for feats on the battlefield. During the Korean War there was a fellow right here in Washington, DC named -- he lives now -- named Scooter Burke. Lloyd Leslie Burke who won all the medals that Audie Murphy won and never received any recognition because that war -- the Korean War -- was not a glorious war.

We didn't win it. There wasn't any Berlins or Tokyoes or so on. And the same thing from the Vietnam War. Those kids that won awards for attacking a machine gun or saving a comrade were certainly to be honored and to be recognized. But there was so many others that were the self-serving, careerist General officers, Colonels and so on, who used the award thing to get an award simply so it looked good on his jacket, which would cause someone to think he was warrior.

And if you take Admiral Crowe who is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On his jacket it's ablaze with medals and so on. 31 of them. But there's not one for a combat deed. They're all having-been-there awards. You're-a-good-guy award. You-moved-some paper-across-your-desk-in-a-neat-way award. Take Oliver North who's in the hot seat as we talk. He has 14 awards on his chest. But only for combat -- the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart. The rest are having-been-there awards. And he appears in front of Congress and the American people think, "Hey, this is a warrior."

Just like when Admiral Crowe perhaps appears in front of Congress, those are his credentials, and those Congressmen don't know they are just having-been-there awards. When he says we need this they believe that he knows what he's talking about from the standpoint of being on a battlefield. So I think that we've kind of put our award system at a cross purpose. Grenada -- there were 7,000 men on that island. They gave 8,000 awards. There were 200 enemy Cuban soldiers and so on that island. And they gave 200 awards for valor. One per enemy soldier.

So this is stretching it a bit far Brian. I think we need to go back and clean up our act on awards and just give awards to soldiers. The final line on awards is to me the only award -- that is, of today because it's been considerably prostituted -- that really means something to warriors is the Purple Heart and above that, the Combat Infantry Badge. That means I've been there. In Vietnam there were 100 Infantry Battalions. Of that 100 Battalions there was 1,600 Rifle Platoons.

So of the 550,000 men that fought in Vietnam that were in Vietnam that served in Vietnam only 50,000 men were Infantry out fighting the enemy. And every time they put their foot down they didn't know if they were going to have a foot, a leg, or a life. So I think that we have to look at medals in the military and in Vietnam from that viewpoint. That it's become a big corporation rather than a fighting institution. And I think we need to return our military to an organization that can serve and defend our country without all these games people play.

HACKWORTH: Gee, I don't know.

HACKWORTH: Eight. Now, that means something to me.

HACKWORTH: Now let's see. I was a little kid in Korea. Was a squad leader of an infantry squad and I was flushing out a sniper and he got me first. The bullet struck me in the back of the head and came out under the skin and knocked me on my tail. And I thought I was dead. Ringing in the ear and so on. And my buddy that was with me that was covering me thought I was dead with blood spurting everywhere. And it may have knocked me out -- I don't know.

But when I came to my senses I was by myself and I crawled out of there and it was way out in front of the enemy lines and we had just killed three enemy, a machine gun crew on the way to this position where I was firing at the sniper. And I had to crawl over these three fellows and I knew they'd be alive. And I, in panic, had dropped my weapon.

So I finally crawled over them and got back to the American lines and was patched up and back to the hospital. And I wanted to return because I wanted to get back to my unit. Because again that point that I brought out earlier, it was my family. The guys I really loved. And there's no bonding like that on the battlefield -- that among combat infantrymen.

HACKWORTH: Yeah. As clear as a bell. It's something I don't think you'd ever forget.

HACKWORTH: Oh, gee. I think the one time I was lying in a position and we were being shelled and my platoon Sergeant flung his arm over my back and a shell exploded right next to us. And the platoon Sergeant said, "Oh, I'm hit." And when things settled down and we started, Well, what you normally do is start checking out your body because things are thumping up against you -- dirt and so on -- and just check out if you've been wounded. And I realized I hadn't, and I said, "Well, let's get out of here." And Greer found that his arm was nailed to my back. And the shrapnel had gone though his arm and nailed it to my back so we had to pry his arm from my back. So that was one that I wouldn't forget.

Another time was in Korea again in 1951, 4 November -- I had a hand grenade blow up underneath me. And it blew me way up in the air and flung me down on the ground and tore my arm almost off. And I thought I was going to die and a Sergeant named Jack Speed from Memphis, Tennessee came running up and he said, "Well, the old man's dead." And I thought never am I going to die on this hill. And I got up enough strength and walked to where the doc was patching people up.

So you don't forget those experiences. And they all kind of happen in slow motion, Brian. Now you recall the whole thing. And it's something -- all of us had been at one time or another have been in danger of some sort -- in an accident with a car and you can see that car swerving over and everything slowed down and you can see the other car coming and you think, "Why can't I stop?" And that's the way combat is. I think when it comes to the time where you're in the utmost danger, you're whole system slows down where you're recording every micro second of it.

HACKWORTH: Well, on the battlefield you're frightened all the time. And you live with it. And the beauty of being a leader of being a squad leader, a platoon sergeant, company commander and so on was you were busy. You were looking after your troops. Shepherding your herd, so to speak. You were calling in artillery fire, bringing in air, maneuvering your unit, talking on the radio and you simply didn't have time to be as concerned as that warrior is who's just waiting behind a wall for someone to say, "Let's get up and go." So that's the real problem.

And another problem is the brighter you are, the more imagination you have and the more things your brain can conjure up can happen to you -- so if you're a "dolefoot," and you're not too clever, you know, you might make it through the night without a lot of stress. And I think that one of the things from Vietnam is this Vietnam stress syndrome -- is that those kids endured something that the American soldier in the history of our country from 1776 forward didn't experience in battle -- and that was that minute to minute experience of walking through a field laced with booby traps that were carefully camouflaged. You know that 50 percent of all casualties in Vietnam came from mines and booby traps. And I think that that business, if you were lucky to survive for the 365 days our infantry fought in Vietnam, that would sear your mind. And I think that that is one of the causes of disturbances among the men that fought in Vietnam.

HACKWORTH: Well, it took five years Brian. Five long years. And what Julie and I first did was worked out a game plan. We decided to tape every experience that I had and that before the taping -- this is audio tape -- we took all of the documents, the notebooks, the papers, the things I had saved throughout my 25-year military experience and we "compartmentalized" -- we envisioned we would be writing 18 chapters.

And maybe it was a notebook, a little small book I'd carried in Korea, which had only six or seven lines in it, or a letter from a friend, or letter that I had sent home that was saved by my brother or my sister-in-law or someone. And once we'd organized those 18 boxes of information then we went through those and recorded those experiences. Then that became a transcript about this -- about 57 tapes worth.

Then Julie went through that and set out what the story was. And then she would write a chapter and give me the chapter. I would rewrite the chapter -- while she was doing two, I would be doing one. And then from that, names would fall out. We only started with about three or four names, and we ended up with almost 400 people who contributed to the book, which made the book alive in that we were drawing on the experiences on the memories of a lot of other warriors.

And so I was, like then, by the end of the book, driving the truck and there were 300-odd guys in the back of the truck, whose voices we could use and added to the wealth and the knowledge that's contained in the book. And the accuracy too. Because you're memory is a funny thing. And on the battlefield too you can only see over the sights of your rifle -- so you don't see the big picture. And we wanted to tell the big picture as best we could.

So then these chapters would go back and forth and we'd integrate the input from the letters from the people that we were tracing down and we'd crank their stuff into it. And then the thing would be rewritten and rewritten and rewritten. Some chapters were written 20 times. So that put a big strain on Julie and I. There's a thing -- Julie's a screenwriter, not a book writer, and there's a thing in her trade called abandon. You just get so much information -- and in my case I was so passionate about the subject because I felt the book would cause people to learn. The book would cause people not to make those horrible mistakes again.

So I wanted to get every little detail in so I might -- for example, one chapter which is called, "The Wolfhounds," which deals with Korea of 1950 and '51 and early '52. When it was completely done, locked in concrete, I had gotten some information from the National Archives that really lent a lot of information to that particular chapter. And I went to Julie and I said, "Look, golly, this is great stuff, we need to put it in." And she felt we had reached a point of abandonment on that chapter. And so we had that kind of friction. We would give and take friction to get the book together and get it done correctly. And that's why it took five years, which is a lot of your life.

HACKWORTH: We wrote it in Australia. This was supported by three or four visits to the United States by Julie where she went and interviewed the people that we had tracked down in their hometowns. So she traveled all over America recording people's comments and collecting data and so on. So we tried to make the book as complete and accurate as possible.

HACKWORTH: We made it a full-time job. We decided it was such an important message -- that you know the war has changed so significantly from the time that say my ancestors came to America in 1622 and landed in James City and they were firing old musket weapons at the Indians and the Indians were firing bows and arrows back at them. And by the time I was to leave the military we had awesome weapons in our inventory that one alone could bring about the destruction humankind. We saw what Chernobyl brought about. Well, if Chernobyl was a bomb that was on a submarine or an airplane or at the end of a missile it would be a very small one in what the Soviets and the Americans and the English have in their inventories. So I felt that we had to bring out the point that through our story that war is no longer probably the means to resolve conflict. We got to find a new way to do it. And that's kind of one of the bottom lines of the book.

HACKWORTH: Oh, we sure did. And the advance was small because Simon Schuster didn't know us from Adam. We had never written a book before of any significance and so the advance was really small. And Julie dipped into her savings, and luckily I was retired Army so I had my little magic blue check coming in every month and that's what kept us going.

HACKWORTH: Well, Jim Webb said that, and I know he worked hard to do his research..

HACKWORTH: Yeah, that's right. But I think that's an error, and I'm glad you're going to correct it to the nation. I did do well, but I didn't -- well, in those kind of numbers. I used my military experience and my military training which I found that were very appropriate and applicable to civilian life. If you thought things out and made your decisions rationally and logically, it was very easy to be a success. So I used my military training in running restaurants and establishing a duck farm and so on, and I found that civilian life is a piece of cake.

HACKWORTH: Well, I came home mainly to promote the book. But I think an important part of this which I didn't understand last May -- my son graduated from school and I came to his graduation at Berkeley. And at the same time brought the manuscript back -- the final manuscript to Simon and Schuster. And then I left there and went out to Montana to spend a few days with my best friend. And I suddenly realized that I wanted to come home.

That the book had had such a cathartic effect on me -- such a healing effect, such a purging effect -- that it had taken all of the bitterness out. It had taken all of the need to strike out and get revenge for what happened. And I realized that I wanted to return home and return to my roots. And in this score from that "Parade" piece I have received hundreds of letters and many of the people writing those letters had also read the book because the article told about the book.

And so many Vietnam veterans, so many wives of soldiers that were killed in Vietnam, parents of soldiers who were killed in Vietnam wrote to me and said the book had a healing effect for them. And I'm really thrilled with this, that here maybe we've explained what happened and now to parents who over all of these years have thought, "My God, why did my son die and what were the circumstances?" And as one lieutenant wrote to me said, "Now, I understand."

I felt so guilty over all of these years that I was the one who told men to die and they followed my orders. And I realize that I was fighting in a bad war. Maybe in an unjust war. In a war that perhaps my country shouldn't have been in the first place. So I'm glad that that kind of message is coming out of it because that's the kind of effects it's had on me, Brian.

HACKWORTH: You're darn tootin'.

HACKWORTH: I think in Montana or Colorado. Someplace up high where I can be out in the country. I like the wilderness, and I'm not into the big cities. I've just been in New York for three or four days, and I couldn't sleep from all the noise. Because I live in Australia on top of a little hill all by myself, and when I hear a car coming down the road, they're coming to see me. And I don't hear that many cars coming down the road. So to suddenly to be thrust in New York City where they're collecting the garbage at midnight and there's crash bang boom, it was like living on a battlefield. So I'll live probably up in the hills where my family came from. So I'm really had this passion to return to my roots.

HACKWORTH: Ward Just is a writer. He wrote for Newsweek, Washington Post, he's now a novelist and a very good one. And Ward Just had a profound influence on my life. It started with in June of 1966 during the battle of Duc To. Ward was with one of my platoons -- a reconnaissance platoon that found themselves in a very tough fire fight deep into enemy positions. And they were surrounded and had a great number of casualties and Ward was wounded in this action. And that night we couldn't get to this sieged unit with infantry to reinforce them. We were working toward that end -- the unit had eight seriously wounded men who in terms of the medic that was on the ground reckoned they wouldn't make it till first light when we could get them out with choppers.

So we got an all-volunteer Air Force chopper crew that flew over the battlefield, took a lot of fire, but "winched" them out. And while I thought that this reporter would come out too, he refused and he gave up his seat so a fellow in his judgment who was more severely wounded could get out. He stayed on the ground, stayed surrounded and so on, when he had a free ticket out, which was so untypical to reporters in Vietnam. And he won me for life. And he joined the brotherhood. He joined the brotherhood of infantryman. And when the fight was over. I went to the hospital. I awarded him the Combat Infantry Badge. I took him a rifle that we had captured in the fight a Chinese rifle and he became my friend for life.

And then, coincidentally, I was from that assignment assigned to the Pentagon right here in this city. And as was Ward. He became the Washington Post military correspondent. So we dealt a lot together, and I learned from him. He wrote his very brilliant book, "To What End," and he asked me to review the manuscript. And then I realized the war wasn't only a war of tactics and strategy but a war of winning the people to the side of the government in South Vietnam. And there were so many other political implications other than the "wham-bam" of the battlefield. And so Ward became my teacher and caused me to kind of wake up. So that I knew that he had the sensitivity to write an introduction that would really tell what our book was all about.

HACKWORTH: Well, I think that that there are a lot of arguments about what happened at Enchong. But meanwhile back at the Pusan perimeter we were getting stronger and stronger. So we were about to break out anyway. And he took an enormous risk to employ the forces that he did against the recommendations of the Navy, the Marine Corps. It was a very daring thing to do. And it might have been a desperate thing to do.

I think that what happened to General MacArthur was he became a law unto himself. I think he had developed to the point where he didn't have to follow orders. And the thing about a soldier is you must follow orders. And I think that we experience that with MacArthur and a much lower level we experienced it with Oliver North. His failure to follow the Constitution and his failure to follow the instructions that he received. The law. And once you go beyond the law when you've got military forces at your disposal our only purpose as soldiers is to defend this country. And when you start doing things on your own you're violating your charter.

HACKWORTH: Yeah. I always broke the rules. OK, I was never a soldier that followed the rules. But there's a difference between breaking an Army regulation than breaking a law of our country and violating the Constitution. And that's why when I became so frustrated over what was happening in Vietnam. I didn't shred the Constitution. I stood and took the message to the people because I believed and this was the thing that hurt me that we were a nation of the people by the people and for the people and what our nation was all about was exactly that.

And that's the thing that I found scary. That the people were asleep. And the people were not in charge. And they left the running of our government to the generals to the politicians to the presidents and so on. And I think that those cats needs us to tell them what to do. And if we think they are in charge we're making a mistake because this country should be ran by the people. That's what democracy is all about.

HACKWORTH: Well, it's a prerequisite that the general the guy in charge to ensure that if he's in a war that he's fighting the war as effectively as frugally as brilliantly as swiftly as possible. The whole key to war is not a very complicated thing is get there, with the mostest, grab your enemy by the short of the stock and give him a punch that he won't forget. And make a real impression on him. Now when you do that you've got the initiative on your side.

What is happened in our military is that since 1946 we've become our generals have removed themself from the war. They've become, as I said earlier, corporate generals. They've become people who are involved in the politics of things rather than the war of things. And in becoming politicians they've developed a kind of go along to get along attitude. Now this is wrong.

What's a general should do if I am you general and you've task me to fight in Vietnam? Let's use that situation then. I would say "Mr. President, you realize that the security is not at stake there. Why are we fighting there?" And you'd say, "Well, we've got to contain communism there." And then I'd argue that perhaps we wouldn't be containing communism there. But if you said General it's my instruction that you will fight there.

I say right sir. I will deploy my forces accordingly. Now I need to fight there 12 divisions of infantry I would deploy them simultaneously. And I need to destroy the Port of Heipong .I need to destroy the dikes in the Red River Delta. I need to destroy Sinookville the port. I need to destroy all of the enemy sanctuaries. And the President would say Well, we can't allow you to have those divisions. We won't allow you to use your Navy to blockade and destroy Heipong.

Then it is my obligation to say I can't go into that war with these two mighty fists tied behind my back. If you won't allow me to do it correctly and to win I quit. Find another boy. And then I'd quit and you'd find another boy. And if we had those kind of warriors that's what Ridgeway would have said and he did say that in 1954 when our administration was considering going into that war and that is what Patton would have said. And that's the kind of generalship we need. We don't need corporate generals. We need warrior generals that know and are willing to stand in the door. Who are willing to say that piece of equipment is junk.

I mean why today are we spending for example a half a billion dollars on a bomber -- a stealth bomber -- when they're not even sure it'll fly. Or why we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the B-1 bomber and they're grounded to be used only in war. Or why we have tanks like the Sergeant York divisional anti-aircraft system which cost two billion dollars was quietly folded up because it didn't work. But after the taxbearer had spent that kind of money.

So if you had generals who knew what the hell they were doing you wouldn't have these problems. So what we've got to calculate and what our Congress has to do -- and their at fault in this whole military procurement thing, too -- is that they've got to insist that we produce those kind of people. And those are the kind of people that we put stars on their shoulders. That the fighters from the past not the writers from the present and the future.

HACKWORTH: Well, he's got -- generals simply can't say "I won't do that." But they'll give the reasons why. And then they're willing and the European sense to resign if it's not done correctly. But we have developed a system of selection of our generals that you must have a Masters Degree you must have gone to the War College and have you been to Harvard. And have you had all of these different experiences.

So that by the time you are a general you've forgotten what it is to lead troops. We'll take Westmoreland for example, who I think is a great corporate general on the battlefield of Europe. He would probably have been another Eisenhower. He's a good man. I'm not saying that he's a bad man. But he was the wrong fellow for that show in Vietnam. But if you take a guy like Westmoreland -- his whole background is one of an administrator. Certainly he had the cursory command experiences. But he didn't know what was going on the ground. His background was he was an artilleryman. He had never been in an infantry platoon, in an infantry company, in an infantry battalion in his life. Yet he was the leader of a war which was purely an infantry war fought at those levels. So he was like a car designer that had never driven a car. And many of our divisions were commanded in Vietnam by those type people who simply didn't know their trade.

They may have at one time. And I think that one of the problems is most of the generals in Vietnam were the young Colonels of World War II. The best and the brightest. And by the time they were 23, 24 years old they were a Lieutenant Colonel. Today a fellow who is 23 years old is a Lieutenant and he'll probably be a Lieutenant for a couple more years. So he's getting a lot of experience at platoon level. Patton said an officer wasn't worth a pinch of salt until he had 10 years with troops. But our soldiers and our officers and leaders today don't get that kind of experience.

I think today right now in 1989 the Army has recognized this. Now I've just been to the 7th Division the 25th Division and the National Training Center out at Ft. Erwin and I've talked to the young leaders. And these people are good. And the battalion commanders that I spoke to had been with their battalions a long time and were immanently qualified. And I think where it happens is once they leave battalion and become a Bird Colonel or above that's where the corruption begins. And then these are the fellows who become the generals and they are the ones who go along to get along and won't stand in the door.

HACKWORTH: '46 to '50.

HACKWORTH: Nope came at the end of World War, just when the war ended.

HACKWORTH: Private.

HACKWORTH: Yes.

HACKWORTH: In Korea.

HACKWORTH: On the battlefield I was a squad leader then a platoon sergeant then a platoon leader and then a company commander. And I was trained in in Triest in almost a time warp. It was an isolated command. All of the NCO's were sort of Burt Lancaster "From Here to Eternity" kind of guys.

HACKWORTH: The non commissioned officers. All of the officers were imminently qualified from the war. Combat veterans and so on. So I thought that was what the Army was all about. Meaning I thought the whole United States Army was like Triest.

HACKWORTH: In Triest, in Italy. It was called Trust United States Troops. Triest United States Troops. And when I left that command I was well trained in the basics. And my platoon sergeant would beat it into our heads if you don't learn it right you won't do it right. And we learned it right. By repetition. By iron discipline and by great motivation, great spirit.

So I took those values and for the next 21 years imposed them on any unit that I served in. And I was always in trouble for being too tough for being too disciplined. But I'll tell you one thing Brian -- very few of my soldiers died because I made damn certain that they were well trained. And if you're going to have an army then that's their function. You've got to make certain they are well trained. If you have an electrical company that's playing with electricity you want to make damn well sure that all your electricians have played with electricity before and know that if they touch the wrong thing they're dead.

HACKWORTH: Seventh grade. Oh at that time, seventh grade, yes.

HACKWORTH: University degree. The army was incredibly good to me. They educated me. They sent me to University. I went to Austin Peay University in Tennessee and got a degree in History. And so I'm not just knocking the Army in terms of attacking and institution. I have a great love for this institution because it was my home. It looked after me and I just want to make sure that we'd never repeat the mistakes of the past.

HACKWORTH: Well, that's hard to say and I don't have a crystal ball. I don't think that I don't think you'll see a war between super powers. I think both the Soviet Union and the United States realize that the destructive powers that they have at the end of their canons is so mind boggling that it would destroy their countries and destroy the world.

HACKWORTH: But I do think -- if I just finish that -- I do think we will see wars of national liberation similar to what we had in Vietnam. I think we'll see wars in Latin America. Latin America is exploding and I think that is where our strategic interests was really threatened and I think that we need forces who know how to deal with that.

And more important we need diplomats right here in your city who can solve the matter without conflict. Who can solve the matter through programs of education and stopping this whole gringo thing of the arrogant yank coming in and taking advantage of somebody that doesn't have the good things that we have. I think that a lot can be done in Latin America to preclude a war. But I think we've got to be prepared for that contingency.

HACKWORTH: I was there in 1950, '51, '52. I went to Ft. Benning in 1952.

HACKWORTH: Yeah. Just kind of like a mid level course on infantry which went from the company to regiment. Then I went back to Korea '52 to '53.

HACKWORTH: '65 through all of '65, '66, part of '67 and '69, '70 and half of '71.

HACKWORTH: Well, that's a very good question because in Korea we made a lot of mistakes. We simply went there with the view that here come Uncle Sam. We just kicked the Jap's and the German's tail and if anybody gets in our way, it was like John Wayne and the "Top Gun" type thing better stand aside.

And we thought our presence would stop the North Koreans as we did the same in Vietnam as we did recently in Lebanon. Our presence would cool things off. And we sent an army that was badly trained badly led by a lot of tired old men and badly equipped that hadn't been trained for the battlefield. And we made a lot of mistakes. And the things didn't turn around until we got a leader, Ridgeway.

When General Walker was killed Ridgeway took over and he turned winning one of the most important events of military history. How one man can take a defeated army and turn it around. That's why leadership is threaded through this discussion so much. If you've got the right leader you can get the job done.

HACKWORTH: He was on the battlefield. He knew his trade meaning he knew what attack strategy was about. And he was not afraid to tell the President of the United States Truman at that time when things were not going right.

HACKWORTH: I never knew him personally but I've admired him and I served under his command of course in the 8th Army.

HACKWORTH: In Korea -- oh, at the most it would be a rifle company -- a couple hundred men.

HACKWORTH: I talked to my soldiers. I was there. I would never give an order that I wouldn't do myself. And I loved my soldiers I never wasted them. They knew that and we formed a very perfect team. I was very hard on them, meaning I was like a father that took his children and laid a very disciplined trip on them.

But we were not playing in the back yard. We were playing in a life and death game. And if I could train them where they were competent and confident then I knew they could make it though the night. And the most horrible experience a human can endure and that's being an infantryman on the battlefield when shells are crashing in, booby traps are exploding, machine guns are ripping away. So it's a one big raging atrocity Brian.

HACKWORTH: No I always lead from the front. And that was Ridgeways way of leading.

HACKWORTH: I'd physically go to the front.

HACKWORTH: Well, in the Delta of Vietnam I took over a battalion that was so badly trained, it was filled with draftees and bad leadership and so on that I virtually had to become a squad leader again. Meaning that I virtually had the lead from the front. But as soon as I got them trained up I got back to where I could command.

You know you really can't fight a battalion or a brigade by playing squad leader. You've got to get back and look at the battle and see it from an overview point. But there's always a time that you've got to go and understand the pulse of it. You've just got to grab on to the pulse of the fight and to find out what's going on. The great generals of history the Jacksons and the Rommels and the Ridgeways and the Gavans and so on, were guys who lead from the front. Not from their helicopter as was in Vietnam. Or not from their command and control bunker that's in the Pentagon. They were there and they knew what was going on. And they had a good feel for the war.

HACKWORTH: I knew him well.

HACKWORTH: He was my company commander in Korea for awhile. And I worked with him in the Delta and is a guy I admired a great deal.

HACKWORTH: He was one of the kind of guys that we're talking about. He wasn't afraid to stand up and tell the truth.

HACKWORTH: Oh yeah, but that's when he was killed. And I flew around in one of those planes too. But I wasn't reluctant to land the damn thing and get on the ground and lead my troops nor was John Paul Van. He was a doer a shaker and a maker. And I liked him and I thought he was a good man.

HACKWORTH: Well, Neal Sheehan goes into his personal background and I don't know if I cared for all of that but I didn't write the book. That's up to Neal Sheehan to say what he had to say. But I think, I enjoyed the book very much and I think that our book certainly dove tails very neatly with it as a companion piece. Because we're talking about the war from the standpoint of the U.S. where that was the Vietnamese side. Even though we have one strong chapter that deals with Arvin and the Vietnamese from my almost two plus years experience working as an advisor at brigade and division and special zone level in Vietnam with the Vietnamese.

HACKWORTH: No I don't think you get a lot done by screaming and yelling. I think that by setting the example by winning their confidence, letting them know that you're not a butcher, that you love them that you're going to care for them and that you really know your trade.

And once your soldiers know that and I'll give you a good story that's told in an about face. I'd taken over this battalion this one I'd described of draftees and on the first day and I just couldn't believe the condition of this unit. It was total disintegration and I reckoned that their defensive positions wouldn't hack it. If we were attacked if the enemy hit us we'd be in serious trouble.

So my first order after taking over the unit was by midnight I want us to be fall back three hundred yards. I want new positions dug. And I want all this junk taken out. There was cokes and soft drinks in little containers on position. Men slept in cots. The weapons were rusty. Ammunition was in the mud. It was just simply not a professional military organization. It was an organization that had been blooded for six months and they were just waiting for disaster.

So I fell them back. They dug in their new holes got their new positions together with a lot of grumbling who is this new guy that they would call me G.I. Joe who going to change this thing around and blow our nice soft life apart. And exactly at midnight that night as if I would have planned it we got hit with everything that the enemy could throw at us. With rockets and with artillery and fire of all sorts.

And the men went to their defensive position and I had been away from troops from combat troops OK I'd had a battalion at Ft. Lewis just before I came to Vietnam on this tour but I'd been away from the war for a couple years and I was nervous as Nellie you know I grabbed the radio and thought, "jeez," I hope I don't blow this thing.

Here's with all my combat experience you can imagine these dilettantes that came in who hadn't been with troops for 10 or 15 years and took a battalion, OK, and as I was adjusting artillery and calling in air and getting flare ships and all these good things you do under those circumstances a young lieutenant ran by to go into his fighting position and he said I'll tell you what he's a mean son of a bitch but he knows what he's doing.

HACKWORTH: And the next day the grumbling slowed down. And those words were probably spread throughout the battalion that I knew what I was doing. And if we had more people in Vietnam who knew what they were doing, I think the outcome of that war at the tactile level on the battlefield would have been a lot different. We would have come out with real honor rather than the Kessinger peace with honor. Meaning where we sold out our allies.

HACKWORTH: I got lots of them.

HACKWORTH: Oh sure. There's Jim Mussleman, Johnny Howard, Jim Mukyama. Kids that I knew who were young lieutenants, young majors and so on. Don Hilbert right here in your city. You got a lot of very competent guys. I'm very pleased with the number of generals that I know that I've soldiered with Glenn Mallory. I could name probably a dozen. So I think that somebody who's picking generals are picking the kind of guys who will stand in the door and who will give us who bring back that warrior leader spirit that we had in this country before the Pattons and the Ridgeways.

HACKWORTH: Well, I had a lot of time to ruminate about it. And it was a hell of a decision because I knew I was cutting my throat in terms of the military. I knew I was all washed up if I sounded off. But I felt it was necessary that I did and so I did my homework and, meaning, I knew I was going to talk about training. I was going to talk about, "Vietnamization," I was going to talk about how the war was being fought about the senior leadership. So when it came to filming it I had my act together.

HACKWORTH: Right in Vietnam in the Mekong Delta.

HACKWORTH: Yeah. A guy named Howard Tuckner from ABC and a Nick George who was the ABC grill chief. Later Nick George was very responsible for I think probably keeping me alive. Because the Army became immediately angry and a lot of funny things happened to me and Nick George just simply assigned a camera team and a narrator to me. Wherever I went along with this ABC team and I had the power of the press. It was a great insurance policy in my back pocket.

HACKWORTH: Well, the ABC people had been asking for about three months to do this interview. And I was trying to weigh up whether I wanted to pay the price or go to War College and get a star and go onward and upward so ...

HACKWORTH: Ward just wrote a book called "Military Men." I don't know if you remembered that book and there was a chapter in there called "The Colonel." It didn't mention me by name but, and he tried to shape me so you couldn't, like he made me 5'9" and changed my appearance a bit and so on but among the media they knew that that was David Hackworth. And they knew those words were mine and they could feel the anger. And what they were trying to do is get me to be the first senior guy to sound off. And in retrospect I'm glad I did it. I'm sure that I caused us to get out of that mess a little bit earlier.

HACKWORTH: The reaction to the military the current military that's running things right in your town has been very favorable. They allowed me, first of all General Bagnell commander of the western command out in the Pacific invited me out there to talk on my Vietnam experience. To talk about how to fight the guerilla to his commanders and staff. I visited the 25th Division the 7th Division by invitation of their commanders.

I visited the National Training Center so I think that I'm rather surprised that they are letting somebody who had once gave them a good blast in the nose back. But I think that they think that there is some good lessons learned in this book and they can learn something from me. So they've forgiven me and I've forgiven them. And remember the guys running the Army today weren't the generals in Vietnam. They were the majors who where mumbling and grumbling and bitching and moaning just like I was. They knew the truth.

HACKWORTH: My pleasure.