Lessons in Leadership

My Life in the US Army from World War II to Vietnam

John R. DeaneJr., John R. Deane Jr., Jack C. Mason

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780813174945
• eBook ISBN: 9780813174969
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

John R. Deane Jr. (1919–2013) was born with all the advantages a man needs to succeed in a career in the US Army, and he capitalized on his many opportunities in spectacular fashion. The son of one of George C. Marshall's closest assistants, Deane graduated from West Point with the first class of World War II and served in combat under the dynamic General Terry de la Mesa Allen Sr. After the war, he led a German espionage unit in operations against the Soviets, personally led the first foot patrol following the course of the Berlin Wall as it was being constructed, participated in the 1965 Dominican Republic intervention, and saw combat in Vietnam. In 1975, he received his fourth star and became commander of the US Army Materiel Development and Readiness Command.

In Lessons in Leadership, this exceptional soldier not only discusses working with some of the army's most influential and colorful leaders—including James M. Gavin, William E. DePuy, William Westmoreland, and Creighton Abrams Jr.—but also the many junior officers who helped him develop the leadership skills for which he became well known. Throughout, he offers eyewitness accounts of key Cold War–era events as well as wise observations concerning the leadership and management challenges facing the Department of Defense. Ably edited and annotated by Jack C. Mason, Deane's illuminating memoir also features interviews with several of Deane's contemporaries, whose comments and recollections are interspersed to provide depth and context to the narrative.

1

Growing Up as an Army Brat

My earliest recollections of army life come from growing up as a young boy at Fort Benning, Georgia. One year, there was very serious flooding on the Chattahoochee River and Upatoi Creek. The bridge across the Upatoi, at the main gate to Fort Benning, was probably twenty feet above the surface of the creek in normal times. Now the water had risen until it was only about five feet below the bridge. (The bridge to which I refer has long since been replaced by one that is much higher and sturdier.)

There was concern the bridge would wash out. Accordingly, the authorities decided that all the kids who were in school in Columbus at the moment should be returned to the post. I can remember that when the school bus reached the bridge after the ten-mile journey from Columbus, the situation was considered so serious that we were not permitted to cross. The kids dismounted and crossed on foot.

The flood waters remained high for several days, which meant we had an unexpected vacation. One day during this vacation, two of my pals and I went down to the Upatoi in a deserted area well up the creek from the bridge. As we approached the creek, we found a homemade canoe in the woods not far from the bank. It was made of canvas stretched over a frame of barrel staves. We decided to launch it and take a ride on the creek. I guess we were eleven or twelve years old then, but we considered ourselves mature outdoorsmen. There were no paddles, so we cut saplings to use as poles. We put the canoe in the water and got in. We used the poles to keep it fairly near the shore. One of my friends was in the front of the canoe and, as he tried to use his pole one time, it did not reach the bottom of the creek. The momentum of his thrust caused him to momentarily lose his balance. The canoe took on some water.

My buddies lost their nerve and jumped for the bank and scrambled ashore. Their action caused the canoe to take on more water and it began to sink. By this time I was too far from shore to jump. The water had become deeper, so my pole was useless. As the canoe settled deeper into the water and began to go under, I tried to get out of it and swim for shore. I was a fairly strong swimmer, so I had no sense of fear at the moment.

From my earlier Berkeley, California, days, I still liked to wear corduroy trousers. I was wearing a brand-new pair my grandmother Deane had sent me from San Francisco. A nail in the framework of the canoe pierced my new cords just below my knee. The nail entered at such an angle that it would not free itself. The canoe, now completely submerged, began to pull me under.

I went to Sunday school every Sunday while I was at Fort Benning. When I visited my grandmother Wood in San Francisco, I accompanied her to Grace Episcopal Cathedral every Sunday. Despite the hours spent in these holy places, I did not think of myself as a particularly religious person. I believed there was a God, and I believed in God, but it was sort of a passing belief, or at least nothing substantial. When the canoe began to pull me under, however, I began to pray. I can’t remember what I said or what my thoughts were, but I know I was praying in some sort of a fundamental way. It was natural, not something I had learned in Sunday school or elsewhere. Then, just as I thought I was going to go under, I found myself afraid, but not in a state of panic. I looked for some means to help myself to get out of the clutches of the sinking canoe.

Suddenly, right before me was the branch of a tree. It extended from its partially submerged trunk out over and just inches above the water. It was a substantial branch, probably three or four inches in diameter. Protruding vertically above this branch were several small branches, maybe an inch in diameter. I grabbed two of these and braced my forearms against the horizontal branch. I desperately kicked as hard and violently as I could and the nail ripped its way to the bottom of my trouser leg and tore the cuff.

Mother was not happy with the condition of my trousers when I returned home. She was not at all happy about my stupidity in going in that flooded creek, but underneath her scolding, I could tell she was really happy to see me home.

This event in my life brought a deep and abiding faith in God. I know I am always in his hands. He has saved me from death and disaster on countless occasions, many times in combat situations. I know he will continue to do so until he decides he wants me to enter his heaven.

Growing up on a military installation, young Deane came to visualize his future at an early age. One childhood incident he vividly remembered came when the Deane family was waiting at the local station at Fort Benning for the train that would take them away on leave. His father noticed a young private from his company, looking somewhat disheveled, waiting for a train himself. Captain Deane knew that the soldier didn’t have a pass and was therefore AWOL. As he talked to him, he learned that the young man had just received word that his mother was dying and, without thinking or even stopping to get any money for the trip, he ran off to take the next train to see her. Deane called his company duty officer to put the young soldier on emergency leave, and then gave him $20 out of his own pocket to get him home.

My father and his friends, who were army officers, profoundly influenced me and my whole life. From the time I was perhaps ten years old, and living at Fort Benning, I observed my father and his friends and thought that they were a great group of people. I thought, “That’s the kind of life I want to live.” So that decided where I would go in life. It also gave me an inspiration, which led later to a philosophy: I tried to do things that I thought these people whom I admired would approve of. That profoundly influenced how I governed my life.

One of my father’s friends gave me a set of books when I was about ten or twelve. The author was an army general officer named Paul B. Malone. The books dealt with a young man who had been a soldier in the Philippines and had subsequently won an appointment to West Point. Three of the books described his life at West Point. Reading them greatly influenced my desire to go to the military academy. From then on, everything I did was aimed at getting into the academy.

Between 1932 and 1934, my father was assigned as company commander of K Company, 15th Infantry Regiment, in Tientsin, China. We went from Fort Benning, stopping in San Francisco for a couple of weeks to visit my grandparents. My grandmother Deane was quite a sketch: an Irish lass of the first order, full of pep and joie de vivre, who loved to take a nip from time to time. After World War II, when she was a widow, every time I went to San Francisco, I would take her and her good friend Launa Goodwin out to lunch at the Palace Court in the Palace Hotel, a lovely European-style hotel. Launa was the widow of a great guy who had been a frontier fighter, among other romantic things, in his youth. Invariably, as soon as we were seated, I would ask if they would like a cocktail, knowing that they could scarcely contain themselves. They would always say that it was a little early in the day, but for me to go ahead. I would demur, saying that I did not want to drink alone. Thus began a back-and-forth banter lasting perhaps ten minutes and ending with us all ordering a drink, an outcome we all knew from the beginning was foreordained. It was always fun.

We sailed from San Francisco in the late summer of 1932 on the US Army Transport Republic the largest ship in the Pacific at the time, much larger than the Matson Line and the Dollar Line ships that plied the Pacific waters between San Francisco and Honolulu. I do not recall the original name of the Republic a ship that had belonged to the Germans before World War I and was seized by our government as a part of the reparations levied against the German government.

Traveling on the army transports was a combination vacation cruise and social gathering. The army was small in those days, so most people knew each other or had close mutual friends. Card games, especially bridge, parties, and other social activities began before the ship even left the dock at Fort Mason, the port of embarkation in San Francisco.

The arrival of the army transports in any port was always a festive occasion. Service people stationed in or near the port crowded the dock to meet friends they might not have seen for years. Bands played, paper tape and confetti filled the air. The passengers continuing on the voyage usually got off the ship to stay with friends during the layover. Our first port of call was Honolulu, where we were greeted not only by the band and a crowded deck, but by hula dancers and friends bearing leis. It was the first of many visits there, but I have little recollection beyond the hoopla that accompanied our arrival and departure.

In the dining room, the four of us—Dad, Mother, my sister Peg, and I—were seated at a table with Carl and Ann Fritzsche, a young couple Mother and Dad had met not long before we left Fort Benning.¹ Carl was a West Point graduate, class of 1928. He had been the NCAA heavyweight boxing champion while at the academy. He would have represented the United States in the 1928 Olympics had he not severed one of his tear glands playing lacrosse that spring. It did not heal in time for him to try out for the team. He played a considerable role in my life in later years.

Carl taught boxing classes each day on the trip for boys ranging in age from about nine to thirteen. The lessons culminated in a boxing exhibition conducted just prior to our arrival in the Philippines. We had a large audience of parents and people interested in something different for an evening’s entertainment. Fortunately, out of deference to my parents, Carl matched me with a kid who did not have enough talent to make me look bad.

Our second stop was in Manila, where we stayed for several days. One of my shipmates who disembarked there, Willis D. “Crit” Crittenberger Jr., became a lifelong friend. Crit and I later went to Beanie Millard’s Prep School in Washington to prepare for the entrance examinations to West Point and subsequently became classmates at the academy. While we were in Manila, I spent a couple of nights at Crit’s new home at Fort McKinley. I remember going to the club in Manila, perhaps an Officers’ Club or just a club in which many army officers were members. It had a great swimming pool and snack bar.

Crit Crittenberger was the son of Major Willis Crittenberger, G2 (intelligence officer) of the Philippine Department. The younger Crittenberger, who retired from the army in 1978 as a major general, recalled that after traveling for three weeks aboard ship, sharing in all the activities twelve-year-old boys enjoyed, Jack and he had grown to become good friends. As the transport ship remained in Manila for several days unloading cargo, Crit invited Jack to stay at his family’s new quarters. The two boys spent their time swimming, playing tennis at the Army Navy Club, and watching the ships in the bay as they came and sailed away. When the Republic was ready to depart, the Crittenberger family drove Jack back to the ship, where he embarked on the final leg of the voyage to China.²

As we sailed on to China from Manila, we encountered a typhoon, the Pacific version of a hurricane. We only touched the edge of the storm, but the seas became very rough. The ship’s crew had to put ropes down the passageways so that we passengers had something to hang onto. There were not many people using the ropes because so many were seasick. Stub Oseth, who graduated a couple of years ahead of me at West Point, and I made our way back to the very stern of the ship. I am sure no one saw us or we would have been hustled back to where it was safe. We spent half an hour or so on the very lowest open deck. The stern of the ship would go down as the bow rose over the waves up front. We would go down so far that Stub and I could almost reach out and touch the water. Then we would go up so high that the propellers would come partially out of the water and we could hear them thrash about and the ship would vibrate. I would guess our vertical travel was something like one hundred feet since the stern was probably sixty feet above the water when the ship was in calm seas. When we finally went forward to go to lunch, I was beginning to feel a bit woozy. Mother was in bed, deathly seasick. Dad brought her a baked potato from the dining room. She could not eat it so Dad gave it to me. I devoured it and immediately felt fine.

When we finally reached our port at Chinwangtao, we boarded a train and traveled for three or four hours to our final destination, Tientsin. The house that had been rented for us was not ready, so we stayed with Captain and Mrs. Leeper and their daughter, Beth Ann. The Leepers were old friends of my parents and Beth Ann was the age of my sister, Peg. Shortly after our arrival, Beth Ann was diagnosed as having scarlet fever. The doctor ordered a precautionary inoculation for each of us. That was our trip and introduction to our two years in China.

Tientsin was divided into four sectors, large areas of the city—the British sector, the French, the Japanese, and the Italian. Each had military units stationed there. The Americans did not have a sector as such. They had a so-called compound, an area the equivalent of two or three city blocks, located in the British sector. This is where the troop barracks of the 15th Infantry Regiment and several recreational facilities were located. I have a vague recollection that we lived on Wellington Street. We went to school in an escort wagon that had been converted into sort of a bus. It was pulled by mules and driven by a tobacco-chewing mule skinner named Swayze.

There was a gymnasium where I learned to play basketball and a YMCA. The YMCA was a gathering place for the American kids. There were various games to be played there. I remember Battleship was one game that we played a lot. There was a library in the Y that had books of interest to youngsters. There was also a soda fountain that was the center of attention when we had a little money but did not have the time to go to Kiesling’s.

Kiesling’s was a real treat. It was a German bakery located in the British sector. It had been in existence since before World War I, when the Germans had a large presence in China. The adults used to gather there for tea. The kids went for the marvelous ice cream, ice cream sodas, malted milk shakes, and sundaes. In all these years, I have yet to discover an ice cream that beats my memories of Kiesling’s.

In the summer months, the 15th Infantry Regiment sent contingents of troops to Chinwangtao for target practice. The camp where we stayed was several miles outside the village of Chinwangtao. The rifle range was constructed on the shore and the bullets went through the targets, out into the sea. During the winter, the regiment maintained a detachment in the village to keep the range and equipment stored there.

At the invitation of Carl Fritzsche, who commanded the detachment in Chinwangtao, I went there to hunt duck and geese with him one autumn. It was an interesting trip. We went hunting with a couple of sergeants. We stayed in the homes of Chinese in the area. We slept on Chinese beds, called kangs which were sort of like an adobe box with a hole in one side and a convoluted flue system. We slept on top of this “box.” The Chinese landlord at each place would stuff kaoliang sort of a sorghum-like growth, under the bed through the hole and light it. The ensuing fire would heat the bed up and get really warm. Although we would be sleeping in a bedroll, like the army had in those days, the forerunner of the sleeping bag, the bed would become uncomfortably warm. When you threw back the covers to cool off, you would freeze on top while burning up on the bottom.

One thing that really amazed me on the trip was the appetites of the sergeants. They would eat a dozen eggs for breakfast like it was nothing. Before that, I had never seen anyone eat more than two eggs at a single meal.

The families of the officers went to Chinwangtao for the whole summer. We lived in sort of camp-like structures with many rooms but no windows, just screens on the doors to keep out the insects. There was a central mess where we all ate. Once my mother took Peg and me on a short cruise to Shanghai, Japan, and back.

There was a magnificent beach where the kids and many of the wives spent a good part of each day and where those of dating age spent considerable time in the evenings. In the afternoons those who liked tennis could go to the town of Chinwangtao. I think we went by bus of some sort. The tennis courts were at a British club connected with the Brits involved with the port. The fondest recollection I have of that club was the ginger beer, something I had never had in the States, and rarely see here even now. After a tennis match in the hot sun, an icy-cold ginger beer was fantastic.

During the summer of 1932, Major Crittenberger arrived in China for an inspection visit and brought along his son in the hopes that his official duties as the intelligence officer might be easier with the Chinese and Japanese officials. Crit described Jack’s devilish personality when the two reunited and resumed their adventures together.

On our first morning together, we mounted two separate rickshaws and off Jack flew, already knowing where he was going. In the heavily trafficked Chinese roads, he went faster than I did and kept going, not waiting for me to catch up. In short, he ditched me. I had enough sense to just keep ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• 1. Growing Up as an Army Brat
• 2. Terry Allen and the 104th Infantry Division
• 3. Operation RUSTY
• 4. Lessons Learned Serving as a Cold War Staff Officer
• 5. Korea
• 6. James Gavin and Research and Development
• 7. 2nd Battle Group, 6th Infantry Regiment, and the Berlin Wall
• 8. Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering
• 9. 82nd Airborne Division and the Dominican Republic
• 10. Vietnam: 1st Field Force, 1st Infantry Division, and 173rd Airborne Brigade
• 11. Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Force Development
• 12. 82nd Airborne Division Commanding General
• 13. Defense Communication Planning Group
• 14. Defense Intelligence Agency
• 15. Army Materiel Command/Development and Readiness Command
• 16. Retirement
• Appendix: General John R. Deane Jr.’s Service Career
• Notes
• Index