My American Journey

by Colin L. Powell

  In my final semester in grad school, Washington exploded. On April 24, over 200,000 opponents of the war swarmed over Capitol Hill to pressure Congress to get us out of Vietnam. I followed the smell of tear gas all the way from GWU to the Capitol. There I watched “Vietnam Veterans Against the War,” hundreds of them, flinging their ribbons and medals at the building. I understood their bitterness. Since I had left Vietnam, over five thousand more Americans had died in that muddled conflict. But my heart could never be with these demonstrators. I still believed in an America where medals ought to be a source of pride, not shame, where the uniform should be respected, not reviled, and where the armed forces were an honorable part of the nation, not a foreign body to be rejected by it.

  I did not bother to attend my graduation that May. Given the antiwar mood on campus and my status as a married man with three children, I felt no need for pomp, circumstance, or further protests. I picked up my degree at the dean’s office. In two years of graduate school, I had earned all A’s and the lone B in Computer Logic. My mentor, Dr. Wofsey, urged me to stay on for a Ph.D., which the Army might well have underwritten. But I had a pretty clear picture of myself. I was a good student, but no scholar, and a soldier before a student. I was eager to get back to the Army.

  The Pentagon forms part of that interlocking web of power, comprising the White House, the Congress, federal agencies, the courts, journalists, and lobbyists, referred to as “inside the Beltway.” I reported with my M.B.A. to the Pentagon in July 1971, assigned to A-Vice, the office of the assistant vice chief of staff of the Army. The holder of that position, Lieutenant General William E. DePuy, was a physically small yet dominating figure who had forged a reputation as one of the toughest generals to come out of Vietnam, famed for firing people left and right. He once explained the reason behind his severity: “I watched incompetent commanders get young Americans killed in World War II.” He told new arrivals, “You may be competent on your terms, but if you’re not competent on my terms, I’m going to get rid of you. You may do well somewhere else, but it won’t be under me.”

  By now, President Nixon had started withdrawing U.S. forces to “Vietnamize” the war. As this withdrawal went on, a sub rosa document began influencing military thinking, a survey conducted by the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, of 450 lieutenant colonels, nearly all of whom had served in Vietnam. The survey results were like dynamite. The respondents blasted the Army for not facing its failures. The most devastating attack was on the integrity of the senior leadership. The officers surveyed indicted phony readiness reports, rampant careerism, old-boy assignments, inflated awards, fictitious body counts—the whole facade of illusion and delusion. Their leaders had let them down, and they said so. As the final report put it: “There is widespread feeling that the Army has generated an environment that rewards relatively insignificant, short-term indicators of success, and disregards or discourages the growth of long-term qualities of moral strength….”

  The authors of the report did not try to find scapegoats outside the Army: “There is no direct evidence that external fiscal, political, sociological, or managerial influences are the primary causative factors of this less than optimum climate. Neither does the public reaction to the Vietnam War, the rapid expansion of the Army, nor the current antimilitary syndrome stand out as a significant reason for deviations from the level of professional behavior the Army acknowledges as its attainable ideal.” The Army had created its own mess, and the report made no bones about who was ultimately responsible: “Change, therefore, must be instituted from the top of the Army.”

  The Carlisle survey leaked out and raised a ruckus. It was not, however, brushed aside. It was acted on by generals like William Westmoreland, George Forsythe, Bernard Rogers, Creighton Abrams, Walter “Dutch” Kerwin, and Bruce Palmer. My new boss, General DePuy, stood in the front rank of these reformers. He was not happy with our doctrine, structure, or leadership or the ethical climate of the Army in the wake of the Vietnam debacle. He had nothing but disdain for the careerist games that had infected the military. This three-star general had assigned himself no less a task than remaking, or at least rethinking, the role and structure of the entire U.S. Army. To do so, he had gathered around him the sharpest lieutenant colonels he could find, and had set them up as his personal brain trust.

  I fully expected to spend my time in A-Vice installing computer systems, since that was the main skill the Army had sent me to grad school to learn. Our lives, however, turn on chance. On reporting to the Pentagon, I was interviewed by a brigadier general heading the Management Information Directorate. He kept me waiting half an hour, then kept calling me “Fowler,” even after I politely corrected him. All he wanted to talk about was Washington real estate and the money to be made in it. I was resigned to my fate. Given the education the Army had financed, I glumly concluded that here was where I belonged.

  I was rescued by an impressive officer, Major General Herbert J. McChrystal, Jr., who ran the Planning and Programming Analysis Directorate, a part of DePuy’s elite. I was summoned to the third floor, sixth corridor, “Army Country,” to see McChrystal’s deputy, Colonel Francis G. “Goose” Gosling. Gosling told me he had studied my record and did not think I should be drawing computer flow charts. I ought to be up here helping General DePuy design tomorrow’s Army. The choice was between a pompous, inconsiderate time server and men of vision. I went from Gosling’s office directly to Infantry Branch and begged to be saved from the clutches of the former and delivered into the hands of the latter. The Infantry Branch went along. Thus, the Army was spared an almost certainly mediocre computer hacker, and I was exposed at a key point in my career to the Army’s best and brightest.

  I was assigned a cubicle and, after a time, began working with General DePuy himself. As often happens, the reputation proved more fierce than the man. Bill DePuy simply could not stand the slipshod or the second-rate, and as long as that was not what you delivered, he treated subordinates well. He thought I showed communicating ability and put me to work on his speeches.

  One day early in 1972, I was invited to attend a hush-hush meeting in the general’s office. He was seated at one end of a long conference table with a handful of officers, including Herb McChrystal; my immediate superior, Colonel John P. Chandler; and a sharp office neighbor, Lieutenant Colonel A. A. “Tony” Smith. The door was closed, voices subdued, atmosphere clandestine. DePuy quickly got to the point. The Army’s pullout from Vietnam was accelerating. The failure of the war had soured the country on the military. Congress was tightening military spending. We had to look reality straight in the eye, DePuy warned, and anticipate the worst. After more bleak analysis, he said, “Powell, I want you to take a couple of bright guys, go off into a corner, and start thinking the unthinkable. I want you to figure out how we would structure a five-hundred-thousand-man army.”

  We were all astonished. Considering that in Vietnam alone the military had had 543,000 troops at the height of the war, considering that there were 1.6 million presently in the Army, considering that it had not been as small as 500,000 since 1940, this reduction seemed draconian. Was this the strength the general expected to emerge? someone asked. No, he said, but it was the force he wanted to be ready for, just in case. Security was vital. Not a word of what was said this day was to go beyond this room.

  I went off to my corner, working principally with Tony Smith, and we designed an absolute rock-bottom force called the “Base Army.” Inevitably, our work leaked to senior officers. Terror struck the Pentagon. Suppose the country came to believe that it could actually get by on a 500,000-man army? Military life could become stark. The Base Army was shelved and never saw the light of day.

  Still, no experience is ever a total loss. Just as the Army retrenched in the wake of Vietnam, all of the armed forces would have to contract after the Cold War ended. When I faced this reality as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I had already completed my graduate education in force-cutting twent
y years before under Bill DePuy.

  … … …

  General DePuy taught me something invaluable about holding on to one’s core of individuality in a profession marked by uniformity and the subordination of self. We were flying back late one night from a speech the general had delivered at Fort Leavenworth. We were alone in a small Air Force jet, one of those moments when rank dissolves and two men are just atoms in the universe. This head-to-toe soldier, this military paragon, was telling me that an officer had to withhold a part of himself from the service. “Never become so consumed by your career,” he told me, “that nothing is left that belongs only to you and your family.” We had to keep some part separate and inviolable. “Don’t allow your profession,” he concluded, “to become the whole of your existence.” I remember thinking at the time of something the staff had observed. None of us had ever seen the inside of General DePuy’s home. Now I understood why.

  In some degree, I was already living by Bill DePuy’s philosophy. Few of my Pentagon companions knew that I served as senior warden of St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church of Woodbridge, or that I taught fifth-grade Sunday school there. These activities began soon after we had settled into Dale City. One day, Alma and I had been driving around, reconnoitering the new neighborhood, when we spotted, on a hill, a simple Episcopal church. It was called St. Margaret’s, the same name as my boyhood Bronx church. We became communicants of St. Margaret’s. I worked my way up from junior to senior warden, Alma became president of the altar guild, and Michael and Linda served as acolytes. Like Luther and Arie before us, we helped organize church bazaars, pancake suppers, and the thrift shop. I became an ecclesiastical financier, soliciting the congregation as head of the every-member canvass, our church fund-raising drive.

  I once tried to sell the church. Our priest, the Reverend Rodney L. Caulkins, was a popular pastor, and his flock was growing so fast that St. Margaret’s was practically bursting at the seams. The church sat on twelve acres of prime suburban real estate, which a developer wanted to buy to put up a shopping center. He offered us a handsome price. Father Caulkins and I knew that with that kind of money, we could build a bigger, better church somewhere nearby to accommodate the congregation’s growth. The vestrymen approved the sale. The parishioners voted yes. The bishop approved. The developer came up with the earnest money. But just as I was attached to the old 1928 prayer book, we had members attached to the old church, though “old,” in a burgeoning suburb, is a relative term. St. Margaret’s, an A-frame structure, had been built only ten years before. An elderly parishioner owned a small piece of land that we needed for access to Route 1 to make the property commercially viable, and the old-timers got to her. They won her promise not to sell the parcel and thereby outmaneuvered the Young Turks. The opponents’ clinching argument was that they would never follow St. Margaret’s to a new site. They would shift to Pohick near Mount Vernon, which boasted an Anglican church dating from George Washington’s time. Score one for the traditionalists. No sale for Powell and the preacher. St. Margaret’s is still at its old location and still thriving.

  One summer, the vestrymen decided to go on a retreat at a conference center near Richmond. Quiet contemplation and the luxury of examining the meaning of life were new to me. I enjoyed it, and so did the others, until, more quickly than expected, we were soul-searched out. On the second night, one of the brethren said, “Anybody got a deck of cards?” Thus was born the St. Margaret’s poker club, a biweekly game that started for pennies and reached a point where a plunger could drop $10 in a night. The poker club made Father Caulkins uncomfortable and sparked a theological debate. Was card-playing a proper pursuit for vestrymen? More important, should we cut the pot with the church? In the end, we decided to respect the separation of church and state. There was no split.

  At this time, I was driving a rusty white 1963 Chevy Bel Air, bought from Alma’s uncle Charles Smith for $88. Alma hated to be seen in this junker. One Sunday morning, I got up early and went to People’s Drug Store and bought a can of white latex house paint. Before anybody was up, I had the job done. I woke up Alma and brought her outside. She was thrilled. The car looked new. You had to come within six feet before you could see the brushstrokes.

  Shortly afterward, the poker club volunteered to paint Father Caulkins’s rectory. The day was hot and muggy. We had brought beer along to salve parched throats. I was painting away in the back of the house when I noticed it was suspiciously quiet out front. I went to take a look, and there were my fellow vestrymen slapping red paint on my white car! They had finished a door and a half before I caught them. I blithely went on driving the new two-tone; but Alma would have none of it. There was nothing to do but give the Chevy a second coat of People’s latex white.

  During this period of our lives, we crystallized as a family in our own right, without the props of the military. We turned to public schools instead of on-post schools; we shopped at civilian stores, not the PX; and we lived in our own home, not military housing. And at the heart of this life stood our church. I was following in my father’s footsteps, counting the collection and depositing it in the bank; Alma was following in her and my mother’s footsteps, working on rummage sales and the altar guild. I watched Mike and Linda assisting at mass, and saw myself in my cassock waving the incense burner before the altar on Kelly Street. The tradition had been passed to the next generation, from one St. Margaret’s to another, like an endless stream.

  One day I was wandering through the corridors of the Pentagon when I heard a voice call out, “Come over here. I want to talk to you.” I turned to see a black colonel. At that time, you could circle the Pentagon’s five rings all day long without seeing any black officers, much less a full colonel. I went over to a stocky, distinguished-looking man who spoke with direct authority. “How come you haven’t checked in yet?” he asked.

  “Checked in? To what, sir?” I answered.

  He introduced himself as Bobby G. Burke, gave me his address, and said, “You and your wife be at my home Saturday night. Eight o’clock.” With that, he left. That was my introduction to the Rocks.

  Roscoe “Rock” Cartwright had been a black brigadier general, following in the paths of Generals B. O. Davis and Daniel “Chappy” James. Cartwright and his wife had been killed in the crash of a commercial jetliner shortly before I reported to Washington. A group of black officers in the Washington area had taken a leaf from the white power structure; with Bob Burke as their leader, they had formed an old-boys network. Originally, they called themselves the No Name Club. But after Rock Cartwright’s death, they had rechristened themselves the Rocks.

  Alma and I met them and their wives that Saturday night at Colonel Burke’s home. Most of the officers were older than I was. Most had peaked professionally, lacking the breaks early on that I was now getting. Still, they wanted to help young black officers up the career ladder, give them the inside dope on assignments good and bad, tell them about commanders able or incompetent, and talk up promising candidates to the right people. The Rocks also went to colleges to pass on their experiences to promising black ROTC cadets. They awarded an annual prize to the best ROTC cadet at historically black colleges. And sometimes they did nothing more than provide a sympathetic ear. They had bloodied their heads against the walls of prejudice, and now they wanted the next generation to climb onto their shoulders and reach the top.

  The spirit of the Rocks appealed to me. They looked out for me along the way, and, in turn, I have tried to spot young black military talent and help these officers realize their potential. Blacks have probably looked after each other better in the military than in almost any other American institution, and I think we offer a model to the rest of the black community.

  The Rocks had good times too. Our major social event has been the annual Soul Food Dinner, or, as Alma calls it, “the heart attack special.” The social life was the same as at Fort Leavenworth, people getting together out of an affinity, in this case, cultural, and no different from
bowlers or dentists enjoying each other’s company. When blacks go off in a corner for their kind of music or dancing, I’m tempted to say to my white friends, “Don’t panic, we’re just having fun.”

  There may be one moment in our lives we can look back on later and say that, for good or ill, it was the turning point. For me, that day came in November 1971, while I was still in General DePuy’s office. A major in the Infantry Branch called to tell me he was sending over an eight-page application for me to fill out by that weekend. An application for what? I asked. For a White House Fellowship. I had no idea what he was talking about, and after he explained, I said that I was not interested. I was already in one of the most prestigious and promising offices in the Pentagon. I was not looking for a detour. Besides, the idea of my becoming a White House Fellow seemed farfetched, especially since, at thirty-five, I was right up against the program’s age limit.

  The major made clear that Infantry Branch was not asking me. It was ordering me. The then Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, had been displeased because so few military candidates were applying, and consequently the branch had combed the personnel files looking for prospects. I had been drafted. I filled out the forms, provided the required references, met the deadline, and promptly forgot about the matter. I was one of over fifteen hundred applicants.