Army U.S.

66 ARMY I March 2008 By Col. Henry G. Gole U.S. Army retired

ld soldiers may find it hard to be- lieve that Gen. William E. DePuy published his first article in ARMY Magazine 50 years ago, retired from active duty 30 years ago and died 15 years ago. His decision to publish most of his articles in ARMY causes one to pause and ask why. One an- swer is provided by Col. Lloyd Matthews, U.S. Army retired, former editor of Parameters, the U.S. Army War College Quarterly. Matthews was

March 2008 I ARMY 67 Lt. Col. William DePuy, May 1945. He served as S-3, 357th Infantry and then as battalion commander, earning a Distin- guished Service Cross, three Silver Stars and two Purple Hearts. At age 25, he was G-3, 90th Infantry Division.

then-Brig. Gen. DePuy’s briefing offi- cer in 1965, when DePuy was J-3, MACV, in Vietnam, and was in daily contact with him. He admired DePuy as a man of action and a thinker, ad- mired his lucid prose and eloquence, and maintained contact with him over the years. Despite a decades-long as- sociation, DePuy declined the fre- quent invitations of editor Matthews to publish in Parameters. He said that ARMY readership was precisely the target audience he wanted. And ARMY’s circulation was much larger than that of Parameters.

here was another link con- necting Gen. DePuy to ARMY Magazine and the Associ-

ation of the United States DePuy Family Papers Army (AUSA). It dated from 1956–59, when he ARMY Magazine and AUSA were telling the Army story, served in the Office of the Chief of Staff, Army which inclined him to publish his articles in ARMY. (OCSA) during the acrimonious fighting among Despite his skill as a writer, DePuy published only a few theT services as Army leadership challenged the wisdom of articles during his 36 years on active duty (1941–1977), all the massive retaliation strategy of the 1950s. Upon arrival in ARMY Magazine. Nevertheless, he was a prolific writer at his job in the Pentagon in 1956, he found “an amazing for his entire life. His letters, directives, lectures and analy- situation. Eisenhower was President, and massive retalia- ses of a multitude of subjects are voluminous, but they tion was the strategy. The Air Force was riding high. The were not available to the general reader until a scholar Army was feeling sorry for itself.” He might have added published many of them as “Selected Papers” in 1994. that missile-firing submarines and carrier battle groups After his second battalion command experience, where also fit the strategy like a glove, predisposing the Navy to his focus had been on training squads and platoons, he massive retaliation. published “11 Men 1 Mind” in March 1958. Conversely, the Army was left out of the atomic age as After his work in OCSA in the late 1950s, as the flexible the rifles, bayonets and hand grenades of infantrymen response strategy was emerging, his piece called “The were relegated to the dustbin of history. Case for a Dual Capability,” meaning conventional and nu- So, said DePuy, “We worked the interservice beat.” He clear capabilities in the Army, appeared in January 1960. said he helped energize AUSA, which began in 1950. His article, “Unification: How Much More?”—on the limits of “jointness” and the continuing need for the spe- COL. HENRY G. GOLE, USA Ret., served four tours in Europe cial skills and cultures of the Army, Navy and Air Force— and three in Asia. His master’s degrees are from the Fletcher appeared in April 1961. School of Law and Diplomacy, Stanford University and Hofs- The titles of the articles announce the A to Z of profes- tra University; his doctorate is from Temple University. He sional military concerns—rifle squad to nuclear strategy has taught at the U.S. Military Academy and the U.S. Army and the roles of the services—and reflect the range of War College, among others. He continues to teach an elective DePuy’s inquiring intelligence. He wanted to know how course at the Army War College. In addition to numerous ar- things work at all levels of complexity and was masterful ticles and book reviews, he is the author of The Road to Rain- in explaining what he learned. His reading and private bow: Army Planning for Global War, 1934-1940 and Sol- study were extensive; he consulted professional col- diering: Observations from Korea, Vietnam and Safe leagues, and he appeared at congressional committee hear- Places. The University Press of Kentucky will publish his bi- ings. Knowledge, clarity and personality combined to make ography of Gen. William E. DePuy in the fall. him a supremely persuasive man.

68 ARMY I March 2008 enemy defenses. “We have had it backward all along,” he wrote, and referred admiringly to the German Hutier tac- tics of World War I and to Erwin Rommel’s in that war, by- passing and infiltration being the preferred methods. When frontal assault is necessary, heavy suppression fo- cuses where a small assault force then penetrates and opens the gap for exploitation. Tests and the combat expe- The November rience of the Israelis in 1973 and the Germans in World 1980 magazine cover mentioned War II confirm that wisdom. “Nine to 1 may be an extreme the feature article ratio, but that [suppression-to-assault ratio] seems clearly by Gen. DePuy. the way to lean.”

M 100-5 Revisited” (1980) reflected on the 1976 version of that field manual intended to focus Army attention on war in Europe after a decade in Vietnam. He rejected accusations “ that the 1976 version emphasized defense and attrition war. He stressed the elasticity of In “retirement,” DePuy published numerous articles and tactics within the defensive strategy dictated reviews from 1978–1990. That work reflects his mature by aF NATO policy necessitated by unwillingness to attack thinking on issues of long-standing interest to him. to the east and the lack of maneuver space in Germany. His In 1978 he asked, “Are We Ready for the Future?” and remarks about “any other future war” were prescient. “[It] answered: Exploitation of high-technology weapons and will probably be fought under nonlinear circumstances [in] equipment to attain maximum combat power requires bet- which offensive action will dominate at the operational ter organization, doctrine and training. We need smaller and tactical level no matter what the strategic mission may infantry and tank companies, he argued, and with a higher be. ... [T]he Middle East presents the clearest example of ratio of leaders to troops so that sophisticated—and expen- that probability. sive—weapons systems are brought to bear on the enemy “The generation of officers now [1980] in command, sea- more efficiently. That means smaller, but more, battalions. soned in the airmobile environment of Vietnam, is especially He concluded: “We cannot have the best man on a $200 well suited for such operations. Accustomed to open flanks, typewriter while a less-qualified soldier operates a million- to operating on the basis of ambiguous intelligence, seeking dollar tank.” the enemy and not the terrain, concentrating rapidly and His 1979 “Technology and Tactics in Defense of Europe” adapting constantly to the flow of events—these leaders emphasizes the harmonization of tactics and modern have maneuver in their bones. Let the critics relax.” weapons. “The gap between potential and actual battle- DePuy’s 1984 article, “Toward a Balanced Doctrine,” ad- field performance has always been large and is growing.” dressed “the seductiveness of maneuver doctrine” and the It must be narrowed, he wrote. “The challenge is to use understatement of synchronization with this formulation: technology most effectively on a dirty and disorderly battlefield.” And it must be done with allies. He con- cluded this piece with an admonition he credits to Gen. Erich Ludendorff: “A strategical plan which ignores the tactical is foredoomed to failure.” (The reverse is also true, as Luden- dorff learned in the spring of 1918, when his many tactical successes failed to produce strategic success for Germany.) In “One-Up and Two-Back?” (1980), DePuy returned to a lesson from his World War II experience: learning and practicing a better way to penetrate

Gen. DePuy’s article in the November 1984 issue of ARMY Magazine.

70 ARMY I March 2008 The February 1986 magazine cover illustrates the feature article by Gen. DePuy.

The commander concentrates forces in space (maneuver); he also concentrates actions in time (synchronization). Proper doctrine employs both. Unfortunately, synchroniza- tion suggests attrition, pause in war, the kind of fussiness personified by Gen. Bernard Montgomery, in contrast to the dash of Patton. DePuy wrote, “Fast synchronization comes from good, simple procedures backed by reliable communi- cation. Without synchronization, maneuver schemes can degenerate into indecisive minuets or end in disaster.” In “The Light Infantry: Indispensable Element of a Bal- anced Force” (1985), he made the case that in “preferred terrain”—forests, mountains, urban congestion—light in- fantry is just the right tool. But, at the time of writing, it badly needed “an adequate shoulder-fired AT (antitank) capability. It must be light, short-ranged and effective against the latest armor.” Memories of fighting German ar- mor and stories of Task Force Smith in Korea bouncing AT rounds harmlessly off T-34 tanks were much on his mind as he contemplated fighting the Red Army in the 1980s.

ePuy turned his attention to Vietnam in three ar- ticles written in 1986 and 1987. In “Vietnam: What We Might Have Done and Why We Didn’t Do It” (1986), he said that we drifted through our longest war without a concept of operations tion for the soldiers at the cutting edge of combat and his aligning strategy with the political goal. Not cut- lifelong concern for synchronizing the intelligent massing ting the Ho Chi Minh Trail by extending a line of fire with adroit maneuver. His recreation of the 1966 Dthrough the panhandle of Laos, generally along the 17th combat actions of Troop A, 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regi- parallel, when the North Vietnamese Army escalated com- ment, is nothing less than inspirational. bat in 1964, restricted our activity to South Vietnam. The In “Our Experience in Vietnam: Will We Be Beneficiaries enemy used Indochina—Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia—as or Victims?” (1987), DePuy called television “the final a theater of operations. The American concept, he said, was sanction” and warned that since in our system of govern- like “setting the dinner table while the kitchen was on fire.” ment the “out” party offers “clear alternatives,” policy di- It permitted the enemy to set the tempo of the war by fighting when conditions were favorable and with- drawing to sanctuaries when condi- tions were unfavorable. Furthermore, the Washington-to-Saigon control of events cut out the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and the commander in chief, U.S. Pacific Command. “The linkage between the President, his Secretary of Defense and the Chairman, JCS, must be tight, continuous and trustful.” “Troop A at Ap Tau O” (1986) is a combat story that illustrates DePuy’s excellent narrative skills, his admira-

Gen. DePuy’s article in the June 1987 issue of ARMY Magazine.

72 ARMY I March 2008 rection can be expected to change with a change of admin- cising commander. Commanders going through an NTC istrations. Long and inconclusive operations like those in rotation could become more concerned with not making Vietnam are doomed: “Regular forces are generally ineffec- mistakes than with exercising the creativity DePuy person- tive against embedded forces because they lack local ified and admired in Rommel, Patton and Ridgway. sources of information. Who’s who? Who’s where?” DePuy’s caustic observation about Special Forces in Lebanon, 1983—“a zoo of embedded forces”—illustrates Vietnam suggests another road to hell: If a 12-man A-Team his point. Sending Marines there to keep order, he said, was effective, the U.S. Army would try to field a thousand was a feckless decision. (Sent by President Reagan to aid A-Teams. Soldiers joke about this aspect of the Army, say- Christian militias, the Marines were withdrawn after a ing: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. The matrix truck bomb killed 241 of them in October.) “The heart of may be a case in point. prudence and cold realism suggest that U.S. combat forces Historian Col. Richard Swain, U.S. Army retired, says stay away from embedded forces. Any violation of this advice is almost certain to be militarily futile and po- litically ruinous.” “Concepts of Operation: The Heart of Command, The Tool of Doctrine” (1988) called the concept the sine qua non that unifies effort in the midst of ever-increasing complexity. It is the commander’s “supreme contribution to the prospect of victory” at the tacti- cal or operational level. (DePuy thought of brigades and divisions at the tactical level and the corps as the nexus between tactical and opera- tional.) He referred with contempt to the “Tyranny of Boundaries” and to “corridor commanders,” those who merely divide missions and tasks uni- formly among subordinate units and commanders then wait for the bad news. Gen. DePuy’s article in the August 1988 issue of ARMY Magazine.

mphasizing the concept of operations as the that the matrix grew in complexity and became a part of heart of command—Rommel and Matthew doctrine via the NTC because it was easy to grade and cri- Ridgway were exemplars of leadership in com- tique. He writes that in the first Gulf War “it became the bat because they were creative and forceful— molasses in the system,” calling it “the culmination of DePuy provided a command, communications DePuy’s obsession with control over chance.” Swain, who and control matrix to illustrate the synchroniza- compiled DePuy’s papers and wrote a history of the first tion of “battlefield functions/agencies” from Gulf War, suggests that in the hands of a master, synchro- Ecompany level to echelons above corps. Imagine the nization is a force multiplier; in the hands of “mere mor- “functions”—that grew from 11 in the days of Clausewitz tals,” it might delay action as they go through a cumber- to 20 in the days of Patton to 30 in the days of AirLand some checklist. He says, “DePuy’s last legacy was the Battle—on the horizontal axis. Now imagine company to synchronization matrix, which in time became a drag on echelons above corps stacked on the vertical axis. Call it opportunism.” the “C3 Matrix.” The outcome of integrating some 30 func- Of DePuy’s 15 published articles, one appeared in Para- tions with units at some eight levels is synchronization. meters and one in Infantry. The 1989 Parameters article,“For Simple arithmetic was edging toward calculus. the Joint Specialist: Five Steep Hills to Climb,” sets out The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The ma- tasks needing to be addressed by the emerging Joint spe- trix is a useful reference for a commander, but it is also a cialists created by the Goldwater-Nichols DoD Reorganiza- means of evaluating his performance. DePuy’s efforts to tion Act of 1986. He called the act “an astounding and his- elicit creativity could be used as a checklist for writing the toric intervention by Congress in the organization and commander’s report card. Similarly, the National Training internal operation of the Department of Defense.” He cau- Center, designed for realistic training, including free ma- tioned that “there is the unmistakable presumption of a neuver and live firing, could become a tool to measure per- zero-sum game” in which “Congress seemed to believe that formance in order to write the efficiency report of the exer- strengthening the Joint establishment required the weak-

March 2008 I ARMY 73 Gen. DePuy (right) and Gen. Maxwell Thurman (left) at Fort Irwin, Calif., in 1986: Gen. Thurman served under Gen. DePuy on the Army Staff and in TRADOC and later commanded TRADOC. Army U.S.

ening of the services. This is both unfortunate and unnec- whelming fires. Assault—preferably by infiltration—with essary ... What is required is a strengthening of both.” This small teams. Exploit. He learned all of that in 1944; he article returns to a concern expressed in his 1961 article taught it to the U.S. Army for his entire life. This iteration “Unification: How Much More?” in which he emphasized of the lesson was his last published piece. the importance of the distinct cultures and unique capabili- Just scanning the writings summarized here reveals the ties of the land, sea and air services and the expertise of range, focus and lucidity of their author, a complex and their personnel and leaders, particularly in tactics. The gifted man. DePuy focused on specific issues with an in- new Joint specialists, he concluded, must figure out the tensity that both intimidated some and attracted disciples, limits of tactical jointness. but he maintained a sense of proportion that constantly informed him that the issue at hand had to fit into a whole t is appropriate that DePuy’s last publication before called the U.S. Army or the United States of America. He he died was entitled “Infantry Combat.” It appeared moved from squad tactics and the foxhole to national in Infantry, the professional journal of infantrymen, in strategy and the White House without skipping a beat. 1990. Here he returned to the Hutier tactics of World His mature public musings continue to be relevant. War I that were characterized by suppression, infil- Thoughtful readers will almost certainly benefit from tration and penetration bypassing strong points, not- thinking through issues with him and be struck by his ing that the impressive tactical successes could not be clarity and the applicability of his thinking to the here and turnedI into operational and strategic success—at that time. now. “Closing the gap between potential and battlefield Then he showed that German flexibility adapted the use of performance” is topical in the 21st century. His confidence tanks in Hutier tactics to produce the early operational in the flexibility of leaders “seasoned in Vietnam for non- successes of the Wehrmacht in World War II, while the U.S. linear offensive action dominating at the tactical and oper- Army went into World War II with pre-Hutier World War I ational level no matter the strategic mission, probably in tactics. He wrote that the linear tactics of the two world the Middle East,” was prescient. The need for synchro- wars and Korea were a thing of the past. Increased free nization and aligning military actions with the political maneuver is the future. The article, directed at junior in- goal is particularly relevant as the nation and the Army fantry officers, is pure DePuy. He advised: Read Rommel. address current issues. Where the junior infantry leader does his work, the suc- To a student of DePuy’s life and writings, this admoni- cessful methods of close combat will remain constant. tion stands out: “Regular forces are generally ineffective They call for reconnaissance, assault and exploitation. Find against embedded forces ... Any violation of this advice is the enemy while exposing as few friendlies as possible to almost certain to be militarily futile and politically ru- the enemy killing zone. Suppress the enemy with over- inous.” (

74 ARMY I March 2008