The long adventure that had filled thirty-five of my fifty-six years was approaching its end. In July, the British embassy gave a dinner honoring me and Sir Charles Powell, Prime Minister Thatcher’s former private secretary. David Gergen, who had come aboard the Clinton team as chief imagemeister, stopped by to say hello. “You sure you want to leave?” Dave said. “You know, it wouldn’t be hard for you to stay on.” Legally, I could. The Goldwater-Nichols law allowed the chairman three two-year terms, and I had served two. But I was ready to go. I had had a good run. And though the Clinton national security team was now working reasonably well, I was sure my departure would not be mourned.
As for my successor, Aspin and Clinton spent a lot of time evaluating several highly qualified candidates. On August 11, the President announced that General John M. Shalikashvili, then Supreme Allied Commander Europe, would be the next chairman. If anyone asks me what institution in America provides the greatest opportunity, I say take a look at what the U.S. Army did for me and for Shalikashvili, who did not arrive in this country until he was in his teens and who rose to the top after entering the Army as a draftee.
… … …
The manhunt for Mohammed Farah Aidid went on. Major General Montgomery began pleading for tanks and armored vehicles to protect his supply convoys from raids by warlords. This threat understandably confused Americans. Why, since we had gone into Somalia to feed its starving people, were our troops being shot at? This was the quicksand that the UN “nation-building” mission had sucked us into. I had been urging Aspin for weeks to demand a policy review to find a way out. He, in turn, was frustrated that his policy team so far had produced nothing usable. Still, with our commander on the ground pleading for help to protect American soldiers, I had to back him, as I had with the Rangers and Delta Force. With only three days left in my term, I was in Les Aspin’s office making one last pitch to him to give Tom Montgomery the armor he wanted.
“It ain’t gonna happen,” Aspin, the political realist, said. Many members of Congress, led by Senator Bob Byrd, were saying we had no further business in Somalia and should withdraw immediately. I had done what I had to do, a soldier backing soldiers. Aspin had done what a civilian policymaker has to do, try to meet the larger objective, in this case, to get us out of Somalia, not further into it.
I tried not to think much about my impending retirement. There were, however, repeated reminders. On September 20, the Pentagon’s senior NCOs staged a colorful ceremony for me in the center courtyard. Though I had attained the highest commissioned rank in the military, that day I received symbolic rank that I considered a touching compliment. I was made an honorary sergeant major of the Army and the Marines, an honorary master chief petty officer in the Navy and the Coast Guard, and a chief master sergeant of the Air Force.
On another day, a young major showed up from the Army personnel office to advise me of my benefits—pension, use of government stationery, wearing of the uniform, contributions toward burial costs. For retirement pay and Social Security purposes, he informed me, I had thirty-five years, three months, and twenty-one days of federal service. By the time he was finished, I expected him to hand me a gold watch. A day later, Lieutenant Colonel Gordy Coulson, the ceremonies officer for the Military District of Washington, came to review my departure ceremony. Coulson had often briefed me on other officers’ farewells. As he took me through the familiar rituals, it finally sank in that we were talking about me. He saw the wistful look in my face, and we both started to tear up.
The night before my retirement, Les Aspin hosted a memorable farewell dinner for me. The next morning began routinely, as I put on my uniform with my favorite black wool pullover sweater. Otis was waiting for me outside, and we followed the well-worn grooves toward the Pentagon. On our arrival, my office had the hollow sound of moving day. The walls were bare. My aides had packed my bust of Thomas Jefferson, the shotgun from Mikhail Gorbachev, the Lincoln quote comparing horses and generals, a print of the railroaded Buffalo Soldier, Lieutenant Henry Flipper. Gone, too, were the aphorisms from under the glass top of my desk: “Fast Eddie, let’s shoot some pool,” “Only the mediocre are always at their best,” “Never let ’em see you sweat,” and the others.
Navy Captain Gregory “Grog” Johnson, my current executive assistant, came in to tell me that President Clinton wanted to see me. I was surprised. My retirement ceremony was scheduled for 4:00 P.M., and the President had graciously agreed to preside. I wondered what this meeting was about.
On my arrival at the White House, I was ushered up to the second-floor residential quarters, where I found Bill Clinton just back from his morning jog, buttoning up a fresh shirt. “Let’s go sit on the porch,” he said, leading me out to the Truman balcony. We did a little Kabuki dance over who was to sit where. He finally took a Kennedy rocker, and I sat in a lawn chair. The day was warm, with a hint of rain in the air. The Jefferson Memorial to the south basked in the morning sun. I wondered when I would ever have another view like this.
“I don’t have any agenda,” the President said. “I’m just grateful for what you’ve done for me and the country, and I wanted us to have some time together.” He asked what my plans were.
“I’ll be busy writing my autobiography,” I said, “and I’ll be hitting the speech circuit.” I mentioned that I was also getting offers to join businesses and corporate boards “But,” I said, “I’m not going to get involved until I’ve been out awhile and had a chance to think about how I want to spend the rest of my life.” My immediate concern, I told him, was to make my family financially secure after my thirty-five years on government salary.
“There’s some part-time public service you might like to think about after you retire,” the President said. He mentioned my heading up the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a prestigious body of civilians that evaluates U.S. intelligence activities. He also suggested that I might want to serve as chairman of the D-Day fiftieth anniversary observances or work with his national service program for young people.
“Mr. President,” I said, “I think I’ll sit it out for now. But if I were to take any of those spots it would be the youth program.”
He smiled. “That’s what I figured you’d say,” he said.
We talked a little politics, a subject he clearly relished; and then we discussed domestic issues, with health care much on his mind. We turned to national security. Somalia was uppermost in my thoughts at the moment. I told him that we could not substitute our version of democracy for hundreds of years of tribalism. “We can’t make a country out of that place. We’ve got to find a way to get out, and soon,” I said.
The President admitted that he had not focused enough on the UN resolution back in June that had put us on a collision course with Aidid. “That complicated the whole nature of our involvement,” he said.
I glanced at my watch. We had been talking for over an hour. “I feel guilty about taking up so much of your time,” I said.
“This day’s for you,” Bill Clinton answered, as if he did not have a care in the world.
At that point, a frantic aide poked his head through the door and said, “Mr. President, it’s time to go to work.”
The President rose. “Colin, I’ll see you this afternoon,” he said.
I thanked him for his thoughtfulness, not just this day, but during the entire nine months that I had served him. In spite of early press speculation to the contrary, we had gotten along well and had become close.
Just days after this conversation, the Rangers and the Delta Force ran into a stiff firefight in Somalia and eighteen of our men were killed. Americans were horrified by the sight of a dead U.S. soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. We had been drawn into this place by television images; now we were being repelled by them.
The President immediately conducted a policy review that resulted in a plan for our withdrawal over the next six months. Les Aspin was severely criticized for not providing the reinforcements Montgomery ha
d requested, even though faulty policy was the real problem. This setback marked the beginning of the end of Les Aspin’s tenure at the Pentagon. In December, President Clinton announced that he would be replaced by Bill Perry. Aspin went on to other important assignments. He was appointed chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and a member of the congressionally mandated commission on roles and missions in the armed forces. He then was appointed chairman of another congressionally mandated commission examining the intelligence community. Les was perfect for these assignments. He was in his intellectual element. Tragically, his life was cut short by a stroke in May 1995.
After my visit to the White House, I held my final meetings and thanked the directors of the Joint Staff who had served me so faithfully for four years. I had my last lunch with the service chiefs and the CINCs. “I appreciate you guys standing this deathwatch with me,” I said, as the hour of my retirement approached. They had a surprise for me. A smiling George Bush came striding into the dining room. The former President seemed happily adjusted to private life. After this friendly reunion with him, I went back to my office, took one last look at the blank walls, then went home to get Alma and to put on the “suit of lights” for the last time.
The parade ground at Fort Myer began to resemble the stage of the fifties television show This Is Your Life as Alma and I mounted the reviewing stand. My sister, Marilyn, and her family, cousins from all over, friends from the Pershing Rifles, comrades I had served with in Gelnhausen, Fort Devens, Vietnam, Fort Leavenworth, Fort Carson, and Frankfurt, White House Fellowship classmates, and church friends began showing up, along with George and Barbara Bush, Vice President and Mrs. Gore, former Vice President and Mrs. Quayle, Cap and Jane Weinberger, and Dick Cheney.
Just as the ceremony was about to begin, a White House military aide came to me and said that President Clinton would be presenting me with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest nonmilitary award. Too late, I said. I had already received the medal, along with Baker, Scowcroft, Cheney, and Schwarzkopf, from President Bush for our roles in Desert Storm. This award was an upgrade, the aide informed me, the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction. “The President is going to hang it around your neck along with this sash,” the aide said. The sash he held out was big and royal blue.
“Not the sash,” I pleaded. “I’ll look like the crown prince of Ruritania.”
“The sash is negotiable,” he said, “but the medal has to go around your neck.”
With the arrival of the President and Mrs. Clinton, the ceremony began, and the sun suddenly broke through dark clouds as if on cue. Drum and bugle corps played, cannons fired a nineteen-gun salute, the President and I inspected the troops, and the Army band played, for the first and maybe the last time, “Eye of the Storm: The General Colin L. Powell March.” The President hung the Medal of Freedom around my neck, without the resplendent sash. And Alma received the Army’s Decoration for Distinguished Civilian Service. Bill Clinton then spoke about my career. I was most moved when he said, “He clearly has the warrior spirit and the judgment to know when it should be applied in the nation’s behalf…. I speak for the families who entrusted you with their sons and daughters … you did well by them, as you did well by America.”
It was now my turn to speak. As I looked out over this spectacle of color and pageantry, I would have had to be soul-dead not to marvel at the trajectory my life had followed, from an ROTC second lieutenant out of CCNY to the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. armed forces; from advising a few hundred men in the jungles of Vietnam to responsibility for over two million soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines; from growing up with tough kids in the South Bronx to association with leaders from all over the world; from a green officer who lost his pistol on his way to guard an atomic cannon to a National Security Advisor who helped superpower leaders move the world away from nuclear holocaust.
The troops passed in review. A flyover of jets and helicopters roared above the parade ground. And then the commander of the Old Guard came and saluted me. “Sir,” he said, “this concludes the ceremony.” It was over, thirty-five years, three months, and twenty-one days.
Afterward, the guests retreated to the Fort Myer Ceremonial Hall for refreshments. President Clinton quieted down the crowd and said that he had a present for me, one purchased through the generosity of my friends in the administration. An aide yanked a gray cloth away from an object in a corner. And there it stood in all its battered glory, a rusted-out ’66 Volvo. I spotted a grinning Otis. The White House staff had commissioned him to find this clunker, for which I tried to express my profound gratitude.
That night, I took off the uniform for the last time. In the years I had worn it, I had benefited beyond my wildest hopes from all that is good in this country, and I had overcome its lingering faults. I had found something to do with my life that was honorable and useful, that I could do well, and that I loved doing. That is rare good fortune in anyone’s life. My only regret was that I could not do it all over again.
Twenty-two
A Farewell to Arms
I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING WITHOUT BENEFIT OF AN ALARM CLOCK FOR the first time in memory. I got dressed in slacks, a polo shirt, and a pair of loafers, ambled down to the kitchen of the home we had bought in the Washington suburbs, and joined Alma for breakfast. I was embarking full-time on a job I had been moonlighting at for years, husband.
Alma looked up from her coffee. “The sink’s stopped up,” she said. “It’s leaking all over the floor.”
No problem, I thought. I’ll call the post engineer. Then I remembered. What post engineer? I spent my first civilian morning crouched under a dripping sink. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had become Harry Homeowner.
When I stepped from four stars, to civilian, overnight my personal staff of ninety disappeared. I left the Pentagon with my pension and a retiree ID card. Fortunately, Colonel Bill Smullen, my public affairs assistant, retired with me, and he, along with Peggy Cifrino, another Pentagon veteran, went to work, setting up a small office to manage my new life.
The change in my life was driven home on an afternoon not long after my retirement when I ran out of gas on the Beltway during the rush hour in one of my old Volvos. A Good Samaritan pulled up behind me, and we risked life and limb pushing the car onto the shoulder across three lanes of understandably impatient, honking homeward-bound commuters. I had on a baseball cap pulled low over my face, and no one, including my savior, recognized the man who could not keep a car gassed up as someone who had once moved armies. Just as I was about to call my office on a cellular phone, a traffic assistance officer arrived.
“What’s the trouble?” he asked.
I pulled the cap down lower and explained. He delivered a standard never-run-out-of-gas-on-the-Beltway lecture, then went to the hood of his vehicle. He pulled out a hose about the diameter of a straw, squirted a half pint of gas into my tank, and left, also without recognizing me. I pulled off the Beltway at the nearest exit, got caught in another traffic jam, and ran out of gas again. I told myself, Mr. Powell, becoming a civilian is going to be harder than you expected.
I have retired from the Army, but not from an active life. Writing this autobiography has been a new adventure, and my speaking schedule is heavy. My personal life remains simple, by choice. Having seen much of the world and having lived on planes for years, I am no longer much interested in travel. And after a lifetime of bouncing from post to post, Alma loves building her own nest. When we do go away, it is usually for a few days to visit friends on Long Island like the Ron Lauders or cousin Bruce Llewellyn. We will, however, walk barefoot in the snow to watch our actress daughter, Linda, perform. In 1994, while Michael and Jane were camping with us, waiting for their new home to be built, they had another son, Bryan. We are lucky enough to have our grandchildren living nearby, and we spend some of our happiest hours with them, the best of both worlds—the joy of having children, with little of the responsibil
ity. Alma and I entertain quietly, exchanging occasional dinner invitations with a few friends. My idea of an enjoyable evening is to sink into an easy chair and watch old movies on TV, especially musicals, of which I love best the aforementioned Music Man, along with Oklahoma! and Guys and Dolls. I have seen Casablanca, The Hustler, The Producers, The Lavender Hill Mob, and Moonstruck so many times that I can spout the lines. If I am not watching movies, I am reading. My taste is eclectic, running to history and biographies of just about anybody, a few novels, and only an occasional military work.
I still like to have music in the background, as I did in the Pentagon, and calypso singers remain my favorites. I also enjoy Aretha Franklin, Carly Simon, Lou Rawls, Paul Simon, Anne Murray, Natalie Cole, and any music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The appeal of hard rock and rap, however, escapes me, a generational block, I guess. I enjoy classical music, but do not ask me what I am listening to because I cannot distinguish one piece from another. I will watch football on television during the championship season, and I still find something wonderfully American about getting out to the park during the baseball season. But the days of my own modest athletic glory, a long-ball hitter in softball, a fair racquetball player, are over. Pumping the Lifecycle is the peak of my physical exertion nowadays. Getting grimy under the hood of a car remains my happiest pastime. My pride and joy these days is a 1966 Model 122 Volvo station wagon painted bile green, with about one trip to the moon on the odometer. I picked it up for $500, and only had to invest another $1,000 to get it running.
Since retirement, Alma and I have taken one trip that was like the end of a Horatio Alger dime novel. My parents kept a little safe, and one day after Mom died, I went over the contents—a few hundred dollars in cash, a couple of rings, a crude oilcloth billfold, with a dollar in it, which I had made in the second grade, and which my father could never throw away. The real treasure turned out to be the British passports that my folks carried when they came to America, containing the earliest photographs I have of them. I took out those pictures and studied them just before Alma and I left for London in December 1993. The son of those two solemn-faced black immigrants from a tiny British colony was off to be knighted by the queen of England.
My American Journey Page 73