Joe Galloway: After Almost 40 Years, One Good Soldier Leaves a Stronger Army
Joe Galloway: After Almost 40 Years, One Good Soldier Leaves a Stronger Army
About
the Author
Joseph L. Galloway
is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and a nationally syndicated columnist.
One of America's preeminent war correspondents,
with more than four decades as a reporter
and writer, he recently concluded an assignment
as a special consultant to Gen. Colin Powell
at the State Department.
Galloway, a native of Refugio, Texas, spent
22 years as a foreign and war correspondent
and bureau chief for United Press International,
and nearly 20 years as a senior editor and
senior writer for U.S. News & World Report
magazine. His overseas postings include tours
in Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Singapore
and three years as UPI bureau chief in Moscow
in the former Soviet Union. During the course
of 15 years of foreign postings Galloway served
four tours as a war correspondent in Vietnam
and also covered the 1971 India-Pakistan War
and half a dozen other combat operations.
In 1990-1991 Galloway covered Desert Shield/Desert
Storm, riding with the 24th Infantry Division
(Mech) in the assault into Iraq. General H.
Norman Schwarzkopf has called Galloway "The
finest combat correspondent of our generation
-- a soldier's reporter and a soldier's friend."
WASHINGTON -- A good soldier left the U.S. Army this week after four decades of service. John Le Moyne fought in three wars and served from private to three-star general. He says the Army he's leaving is far better than the one he joined in 1964.
Le Moyne, who will turn 60 next month, was an adviser to the South Vietnamese Airborne and an infantry company commander in the U.S. Army's 25th Division in Vietnam. During a tour with the Joint Special Operations Command, he led the liaison teams attached to U.S. forces in Panama. He commanded a brigade in the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) in the 1991 Gulf War. His last job was in the Pentagon as chief of Army personnel and human resources.
Although he says there were good people and good units in the old Army, the draftee Army, Le Moyne said there was "a terrible, criminal waste of human potential. Because we were so inefficient, we spent an inordinate amount of time painting rocks and picking up pinecones."
He said today's volunteer Army has an educated, professional non-commissioned officer corps that's unmatched anywhere -- and that standards are light-years ahead of where they used to be.
Le Moyne said that although the Army today is stressed by deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans and more than 100 other countries, over the last four years it's achieved every goal in recruiting and retention.
He said 52 percent of soldiers re-enlist today, even though combat deployments are high. "Last year at this time, I was short a thousand officers. Now we are 1,800 officers over strength. We also are 20,000 soldiers over our authorized strength . ... Our infantry strength in the Army is 106 percent. What a problem I have as the Army's personnel officer!"
He said the Army Reserve met its recruiting goals this year, and the National Guard came close at 87 percent, even though the pool from which half their new recruits comes -- people leaving the active Army -- was closed for six months due to the Iraq war and orders that froze enlistments and retirements.
What the Army has found so far, he said, is that when Guard units first come home from long deployments, 80 percent of the soldiers say they won't re-enlist. "Couple of months later, after they have had community reinforcement and family reinforcement, 80 percent of them say: `Yeah, I'll re-enlist.'"
Even more surprising, Le Moyne said, is that the attrition rate in Guard and Reserve units that have been sent to Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans is lower than it is in units that have stayed home.
Le Moyne said fears that back-to-back deployments would become the Army norm at this time are exaggerated. His office estimates that no more than 4,000 soldiers might return from one hardship deployment and quickly be sent to another. About half of them are soldiers who re-enlisted for a unit now tapped to deploy. "We are scrubbing that list," Le Moyne said. "We are offering them a choice."
JOE GALLOWAY
Reporter Joseph L. Galloway, right, is pictured with U.S. Army General John Le Moyne.
Le Moyne grew up in Gainesville, Fla., dropped out of college in 1964 and enlisted in the Army Reserve for Special Forces duty. He was planning to go Regular Army, do a tour in Vietnam, then apply for Officer Candidate School.
A tough non-com, Sgt. 1st Class Isaac Fuller of the 3rd Special Forces Group gave him good advice: "Look, you're a college boy. Go back to your hometown reserve unit and get your degree. If you don't, the Army will send you to Vietnam continually until you are dead."
He got his degree in January 1968 and was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant, thinking he would do one tour and then go to graduate school.
"But it was the people," Le Moyne said. "I enjoyed doing things in the military I knew I couldn't do anywhere else. How many mornings we watched dawn break: in the woods, in the desert, in the jungle, in the Arctic."
On a cold morning in February 1991, in an onion field in southern Iraq, Le Moyne had the only hot cup of coffee in a moonscape desert littered with burning Iraqi tanks and trucks. He poured half of it into my canteen cup, listened to me complain about a premature cease-fire and told me: "Any day a war ends, any day men stop killing other men, is a good day, Joe Galloway. A good day to be alive."
