Generally Speaking (8 page)
But the male commander of another company was old school. As soon as he got his drunken soldiers out of jail, he would slam them up against the brick wall a few times. His first sergeant asked me, “Why do you mother your men, ma'am?” He believed illegal beating of soldiers was an effective control measure. I did not.
He had his methods. First Sergeant Benson and I had ours. My plan was to reestablish Army standards in my company and lean hard enough on the marginal performers through legal means to modify their behavior.
With the cooperation of the Military Police, I kept up steady pressure on the unruly men in the barracks. It was simply unacceptable that there could be a housing unit on a U.S. Army post in which the company commander and senior NCOs could not enter without fear. First Sergeant Benson and I were determined to resolve this situation. We staged the first of many unannounced inspections while still working on the supply problem.
It was late at night and what I found was shocking. Normally the second-floor troop bay would have been divided by partitions into equally sized living quarters. But the dominant, most violent men had pushed the partitions back, usurping the space of the weaker soldiers. The barracks were filthy, with cigarette butts stubbed out on the floor, dirty latrines, and curtains hanging askew from the windows. Even though I had once chafed at the rigidity of barracks inspections in my early training, I realized the importance of establishing physical order as a precursor to more subtle but profound personal and professional order.
The MPs moved ahead of me, enforcing the first sergeant's commands.
“Stand up when the commander is in your area,” First Sergeant Benson ordered a soldier lounging on his bed.
From the other end of the poorly lit barracks, we heard a woman's grumbling voice as she hastily departed. Someone moaned from that direction, “Give us a break. We're off duty.”
“Yeah, First Sergeant,” the man on the bed echoed, “we've been working all day.”
The big MP corporal glared at the soldier.
“You won't stand up?” First Sergeant Benson asked.
“On your feet,” the MP echoed.
“Hey, man, I told her. I'm off duty.”
I nodded to the MP. He dragged the soldier to his feet and handcuffed him. We had a paddy wagon waiting downstairs. Now the rest of the MP squad covered the doors and I searched the area. A short time later we had a pillowcase heavy with drugs and knives. First Sergeant Benson's notebook contained the names of over ten men to appear for Article 15 hearings or face court-martial charges for drugs and weapons possession.
As we walked out into the hot night, the men on the second floor went back to their cubicles, still defiant but now subdued.
The next week we were back. And the week after that, never on the same night or at the same time. Slowly, the message was getting out. This new captain seemed serious. We kept up our nighttime barracks inspections so that the men would be present and witness our resolve. The paperwork forwarded for courts-martial on repeat drug and weapons counts was solid. Convicted soldiers went to the stockade to serve three or six months.
Article 15 punishment included reduction in rank, extra duty, and restriction to post. A few men didn't seem to care. Soon after I arrived, I processed my first Article 15 against a private first class named Hall, who clearly had little use for the process. When I read the charge, using the exact Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) formula, I missed a couple of words. Private Hall corrected me from memory, having been down this path before. Later, when the first sergeant was absent and the orderly room outside my office was uncharacteristically empty, Private Hall tried to physically intimidate me, striding in to plant his fists on my desk and glower over me.
“Private,” I said coldly, “you come to attention and you stand two feet back from this desk.”
He did as he was ordered. I told him to return later when it was convenient for the first sergeant to see him about the new charges he faced.
Our inspections of the men's barracks continued, but were becoming less arduous, as some of the men began joking to First Sergeant Benson that they'd see her later that night. We could sense the relief among many that we were regaining control of the barracks from the hard-core troublemakers. On the whole, my company had the highest number of courts-martial and Article 15s of any unit on the post during the first year of my command. But we were making progress. The men's barracks now looked like part of the Army. Men stood at attention when I entered. They had also learned that all of them faced restrictions unless the quarters were kept clean. And the all-pervasive scent of marijuana did not hang in the air day and night. Still, drugs were readily available, if less evident. However, discipline in one area carried over to productivity and discipline in other areas. AWOLs decreased. Drunkenness was reduced. More soldiers completed their GED high school equivalency training. And there were reduced levels of domestic violence among the married soldiers, and of violence in the barracks.
About a year into my assignment, two events occurred that gave commanders more options. The Army introduced the Expeditious Discharge Program under which perennial problem soldiers could be more easily separated from the service. If a soldier had a marginal discipline record, but did not deserve a Less Than Honorable Discharge, we could use the program to discharge him. I assembled the company at a hasty commander's call to explain the new process to them.
“If you don't want to stay in the Army,” I said, looking at some of the really marginal soldiers, “I'll put you in for an Expeditious Discharge. You don't like it here, and we certainly don't like having you.”
But, to my amazement, when faced with the prospect of civilian life, many of these would-be renegades pulled up their socks and began acting like real soldiers.
Others didn't. One I'll never forget was a private named Ramirez, a member of a gang who were more like street thugs than soldiers. After I had preferred court-martial charges against him, he'd gone AWOL. Then the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) called to inform me that Ramirez and his group had a hit list of company commanders and my name was on it. “We're pretty sure he's trying to kill you and the first sergeant,” the investigator told me.
The CID taught me how to search my car for a bomb. I accepted the threat as one of the risks that came with the command.
Early one morning that week, my clerk, Specialist Gomez, called my off-post apartment and announced, “Ma'am, the office is on fire.” Someone (later it was determined to be Private Ramirez) had thrown a firebomb through the window, setting the interior ablaze.
“Have you called the fire department or the first sergeant?”
“No, ma'am.”
“Well, get off the phone and call the fire department. I'll call the first sergeant.”
The orderly room was a mess. Although it was connected to a barracks, at least no one was injured.
The incident did not slow us down in our effort to restore discipline. We kept up the pressure on the less disciplined soldiers, now using the leverage of the Expeditious Discharge.
One day I got word that Major General Joseph R. Kingston, the commander of Fort McClellan, wanted to see me and the acting battalion commander in one hour at my office. The first sergeant was at post headquarters, so I flew into action. “Gomez,” I instructed, “mow the lawn.” One of the clerks, Specialist Allen, had just turned on a huge pedestal fan, scattering papers around the office. “Get all those papers in one place and hide them,” I told him. “The general is coming.” I wondered why he was coming to see my company.
When General Kingston, a decorated Infantry officer, arrived, he got right to the point.
“Captain, your company has the highest number of courts-martial, Article 15s, drug referrals, and Inspector General complaints of any outfit on this post,” he said sternly.
“Yes, sir.” I swallowed. The office was hot and I was flushed. I knew he was going to fire me. I'd just had too many courts-martial. It looked like I was running a prison colony over here, not a company.
Here it comes,
I thought,
the request for my resignation.
“I want you to keep it up,” General Kingston said. “If you've got good cases on these people, see them through. I'll support you with anything you need. My entire staff, IG, JAG, and Personnel will handle all the administrative work expeditiously.”
I could hardly believe his words. “Sometimes it takes so long to push through a discharge, sir. There've been so many cases, so many rehabilitation attempts. I've had to give so much justification on each of these cases.”
“The Army is getting serious about the quality of its soldiers, Captain,” General Kingston said. “Let's just do our duty and get these bad apples out of the service.”
Like all good leaders, General Kingston kept his word. He made sure the Judge Advocate General (JAG) processed all of my requests for court-martial quickly and fairly. Once more word spread through the ranks: Screw up bad enough and you'll be punished. During the second year of my command, the number of courts-martial and Article 15s each dropped by one half.
In the fall of 1974, the civilian social revolution of the women's movement resonated throughout the military. Rather than simply assigning WACs on permanent detail to other branches, the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff took the monumental step of opening up Military Occupational Specialties to women in every branch except the combat arms. It had only been five years since the Basic Course, in which I felt we were being trained for separate support roles rather than being fully integrated in the Army. Now we had a wide variety of branches and specialties to choose from.
Like all of my WAC colleagues that fall, I completed a form, listing in order the three branches I preferred. My first choice was Military Intelligence (MI), followed by Military Police and Transportation Corps.
In April 1975, just before the fall of Saigon, I got my orders to report that summer to the MI Officer Advance Course at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. I was leaving the Women's Army Corps. The Army I was entering was hardly the same institution I had known when my father had sworn me in on that June day in 1969. Now all women officers were authorized to command men as I had. We could serve in every branch except the Infantry, Armor, and Artillery and in every MOS except those involving direct ground combat. Combined housing units for men and women, with privacy strictly maintained—an innovation I had introduced out of necessity when my company was forced to move into tight quarters at Fort McClellan—had now become standard Army-wide. Women no longer faced mandatory discharge with pregnancy and parenthood. And within a year, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point would accept its first women cadets.
As I prepared for my new assignment, I felt a sense of satisfaction that six years of persistence had borne fruit. And I was optimistic about my future as a soldier.
Devotion to Duty
T
he optimism I felt about my future Army career was tempered by the tension underlying my personal life. In November 1974, I had married a man I'd met at Fort Devens. He had just returned from Vietnam, where he'd served a year in combat as a platoon officer and company commander conducting long-range reconnaissance patrols with the 1st Infantry Division. He was an Airborne Ranger Special Forces-qualified captain who had earned two Silver Stars for valor. While I worked as a WAC recruiter in New England and commanded a company at Fort McClellan, he was discharged, finished his university degree, and was ready to pursue a civilian career when he joined me in Alabama.
But now we found ourselves in an awkward situation. He was a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, prepared to get on with life outside the military as the traditional breadwinner. Yet I was a partner in the marriage and already had a profession. I was an Army officer, a career that soon required me to uproot to an empty corner of southeast Arizona to attend the seven-month Military Intelligence Officer Advance Course (MIOAC) before moving on to my next assignment, whatever that would be. It was impossible for us to reconcile our joint personal and professional needs.
This put an unusual strain on our relationship. Before the mid-1970s, there were relatively few married women career Army officers. In the past, the Army wife had been the partner in the marriage who surrendered her professional aspirations to accompany her husband on the frequent moves that were a normal part of Army life. But when I completed my training at Fort Huachuca, I would have to ask a man who came from a traditional background to accept the socially uncomfortable and professionally uncertain role of an Army spouse for at least the next thirteen years, assuming I would complete a twenty-year career.
After the Military Intelligence Officer Advance Course, I would have spent seven years in the Army. I would then need an overseas assignment, a tour of duty where I could gain the operational experience vital to a successful officer's first ten years. And my choices of overseas assignments were limited. Tours in Europe—where my husband could join me at Army expense— were three years. But he had no job prospects in Germany. Alternatively, I could request a one-year, unaccompanied assignment in Korea, which would entail a twelve-month separation. And I'd be practically guaranteed a three-year tour back in the States afterward. Then my husband and I could live together and build a more conventional home life. If I chose this course, my husband could begin work with at least a guess that I would be reassigned to the East Coast of the United States after my tour in Korea.
I'd been told the workload in Korea would be heavy, but that I would be sure to learn a lot, so I knew the assignment would help me fill in much of the professional MI background that I'd missed as a WAC officer. When I did manage to think optimistically, that seemed the best plan: trading the emotional pain of a year apart early in our marriage for greater stability later on. But that optimism still masked the prevailing conflict inherent in reconciling a woman's marriage and her career, an issue that has still not been successfully resolved for military and civilian women professionals who are required to move frequently in order to advance in the decades since the 1970s.