Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
senior adviser program and was hand selecting people to go back, based on their having
served their previous tour.
The sector adviser would serve for two years, leaving his family in the Philippines, with trips
back and forth. The Army needed continuity in that very important program.
General Johnson had just been out to talk to us as a class about three weeks before about how
he was going to set this program up. I thought then, "Boy, I'm glad I don't have to worry
about that one"--because he was talking about lieutenant colonels and I was still a major. Of
course I was on a promotion list, but the way he described it, I really didn't think it applied to
me.
Anyway, I got that letter that afternoon. So, there I was, selected for command and selected
for the province senior adviser program. General Johnson, the Chief of Staff of the Army,
said he'd really like to have a response from me in a couple of weeks as to whether I'd accept
the program or not.
Immediately, all of my compatriots at Leavenworth divided into two camps; one was, "You
can't tell the Chief of Staff no; you must take it," and the other was, "You ought to go to
command."
There were four or five of us who were on the list from out there. I was in a quandary
because I believed we really needed an important province senior adviser program. One of
the calls I made was to General Gribble, and I asked him, "What do you think?" At that time
I believe he was Deputy to the Assistant Chief of Staff for Force Development. He was
certainly at the Pentagon and on the Army Staff, and a two star by this time. He thought it
over for a while, and he said, "Well, it really is a very important program; we really need it. I
think you ought to just do what you want; if you want to do that, go do it; if you want to
command, go do that." Then he said, "In the end, I don't think the Army will credit that
senior advisory position like they say they will--that is, the equivalent to command. So,
although I believe it, and the Army is sincere about it, I think when push comes to shove for
future selection boards for command and things like that, it won't stand up in lieu of
command. So, if you really have your heart set on command, which is what you really told
me, you probably ought to go to command."
So, with that, I sat down and wrote General Johnson my letter. Here it was coming from my
mentor--it validated where I was in my own thinking. I had been taught through all our
schooling that a soldier, officer, should aspire to command in combat. Here I had the
opportunity to command an engineer battalion in combat. Yes, this was an important job too.
It was what I aspired to do. So, that's how I expressed it in my letter--that I really wanted to
follow my long-term aspirations to go command in combat since I had that opportunity.
Back to General Gribble. That was an instance where he was available as a mentor and very
approachable and easy to talk with.
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