Generally Speaking

by Claudia J. Kennedy

  Historically, almost no men had served at the WAC Center and School before 1970, aside from an occasional cook or the chaplain on permanent duty. And most of the men in my company were far different from those who had served in the past. One of the first duties of a new commander is to inspect the company's barracks.

  “Ma'am,” First Sergeant Benson cautioned, “you can't just walk into the men's barracks. It's too dangerous. We have to get MPs to accompany us.”

  I looked at her doubtfully. But the first sergeant explained that the cooks, administration clerks, and supply specialists living in the men's barracks, located across the post in the Headquarters Company's area of the U.S. Army Garrison, were dominated by a small, violent, antiauthoritarian clique who had so far managed to flaunt their disregard for basic military courtesy and discipline. They blatantly used drugs in the barracks, brought in women from the nearby town of Anniston, and held all-night parties. Racial tension compounded this already serious discipline problem, with fierce antagonism separating blacks, whites, and Hispanics. Fistfights occurred almost nightly in the barracks, which were more like a cell block than Army housing. The majority of the men were not rebellious, but they were easily dominated by the bad apples, and were understandably afraid of them.

  As I sat alone in my office reviewing the situation that first afternoon, I felt a sense of deep unease, but I also recognized that my senior officers had in fact given me the most demanding command because they thought I could handle it. There was going to be a test of wills. Either I was going to reimpose Army order through the application of leadership and discipline or that mob was going to usurp my legitimate authority. And I did not intend that to happen.

  Colonel Mary E. Clarke, commander of the WAC Center and School, came to my company on the day I was scheduled to make a courtesy call on her. She was an inspiring leader who did not stand on ceremony. She strode directly into my small office and informally suggested, “Let's take a walk around your company area.”

  As we walked, she asked what I saw as the company's immediate priorities. I told her about the state of discipline and an issue my battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Harrison, had brought to my attention: a problem in the supply system.

  Given the rapid expansion at the Center and School, tons of barracks and office furniture, ranging from bunks and dressers to desks, tables, fans, and typewriters, had simply been dumped on the ground floors of our barracks. We now faced dusty, jumbled heaps of equipment and furniture, much of it obsolete or broken. Most of it should have been junked as unusable surplus, and the worthwhile pieces either retained or sent to units that needed them. But the property books that Staff Sergeant Macon, my supply sergeant, had inherited were virtually useless. Few of the entries matched the stenciled serial numbers or faded and torn decals on the desks and mimeograph machines. A property book in the Army, however, was a sacred document, and it was also legally binding. If I had blindly signed those books on taking command, I would have been responsible for thousands of dollars of property that might or might not have been in the area. Fortunately, I hadn't signed. Despite good intentions, Staff Sergeant Macon had not been able to prod any of his contacts in the three property book offices into helping him cut this Gordian knot.

  I explained some of this to Colonel Clarke. She listened patiently for a moment, and then nodded decisively. “Take care of the problem as you see best, Claudia. I'll back you up with assistance visits by teams from the Director of Logistics.”

  Even though I really didn't care about the difference between a single and a double pedestal desk, I tackled the supply situation first because I recognized that in the military if you don't have accountability for property, you don't have authority. And I was not going to abdicate my responsibility as company commander by signing off on property books I knew were inaccurate. Had I done so, word would have quickly spread among the men and women in the company that I was a leader who didn't maintain Army standards. I learned another valuable leadership lesson: One's authority is undermined by lack of adherence to institutional values.

  But once it was clear that I was serious about straightening up the mess, Staff Sergeant Macon became less discouraged. First Sergeant Benson helped by getting enough soldiers in to provide the heavy lifting. For several sweaty weeks in the Alabama summer sun, we moved that mountain of junk out of the barracks and rearranged it into coherent foothills, which could then be identified and inventoried. The result was a truck convoy to the civilian salvage broker, a small, neat stack of usable equipment at our own supply room, and three correct company property books, which I duly signed after closely inspecting each serial number decal.

  At the end of that year, a major in the WAC Center received the Legion of Merit, a high Army decoration, for “solving” the logistics problem at Fort McClellan. On the surface, this episode was about fixing a company's property management problems and the resulting cleanup of related supply functions. But to me, the exercise was not entirely about logistics. It was about leadership and integrity, and establishing a healthy command climate.

  But I faced challenges with the company that were much more intractable than the supply situation. On any given day, it was likely for the mess hall to be short-staffed because men would be Absent Without Leave (AWOL).

  One morning when one of the cooks failed to report for duty, First Sergeant Benson called his home and spoke to his wife.

  “I just shot him,” the woman announced. “He's fooling around with another woman. He's been stealing meat from the mess hall and tires from the motor pool.”

  “Did you call the ambulance?” Benson asked.

  “He's out in the backyard. I called the police.”

  The cook lived and returned to duty. The wife was never charged.

  Some of the cooks were drunks and gamblers who insisted on taking their pay in cash rather than in direct bank deposit, so that their wives in town couldn't get their hands on it. First Sergeant Benson did her best to intervene and was often successful in making sure the women at least had some food money for their families. But every payday we could count on a minor crisis in the mess hall when some cooks went on a bender and were reported AWOL.

  If First Sergeant Benson couldn't locate them at the usual after-hours clubs or sleeping it off, she began calling the local hospitals and jails. The police were generally understanding about minor drunk and disorderly charges, since Fort McClellan was a major local industry. But the sheriff's deputies would not release my arrested soldiers to my control until I came back “with a man.” So I began taking my executive officer to escort the soldiers back to the post where they faced their Article 15 (company punishment), a step below court-martial. We never resorted to physical violence.

  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 to
ok 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.

  3

  Devotion to Duty