The Real Army

Engineer: The Professional Bulletin for Army Engineers, July, 2002 by Monte R. Lieutenant Colonel Anderson

Everyone talks about the "Real Army," but no one knows where it is. Not really. I retired in 1990--after 22 years in the Infantry Corps--and I think I spent my entire career looking for the Real Army, that mythical Holy Grail of professionalism. I never did find the Real Army, but somewhere on my quest, I learned a thing or two about professionalism.

I started my career as a cadet at West Point. I was taught by some of the sharpest and brightest young captains of the military, many of them combat veterans of Vietnam. They were the cadre I looked up to and who set the example for me to follow. I was reminded on numerous occasions that when I graduated and pinned on that butter bar, I would join the ranks of the Real Army. Those veterans, who surely knew of such things, assured me, in no uncertain terms, that the Real Army would be more demanding and less forgiving of my ignorance and errors. My decisions would mean life or death for members of my platoon. It was, therefore, with some anticipation that I looked forward to joining the Real Army.

After graduation, I went through a series of military schools--airborne, jump master, ranger, and the Infantry Officers Basic Course--all designed to finely hone my skills and instill in me the fighting spirit that I would need in the Real Army. Much to my disappointment, I was informed that these schools were not the Real Army. For that, I would have to wait. I was told this by some of the best NCOs in the Anny. The cadre at West Point had told me that such men existed, and here they were in the flesh. These were men with many years of experience in leading and training soldiers, real soldiers from the Real Army. Nearly all were combat veterans, and most certainly knew the difference between the Real Army and the school environment. I studied hard to prepare myself, but I was becoming impatient to find the Real Army. I longed to be in a unit where every soldier was highly motivated and each man knew his duty--a place where the title "soldier" meant being proud, standing tall, combat ready, lean and mean. That's what I wanted and, by God, I meant to have it.

All too soon my military schooling ended, and I joined the 82d Airborne Division. But that was not the Real Army, I was told by senior officers who must be privy to such knowledge. It was the late '60s. Drugs were a major problem, and we were coddling drug users and trying to rehabilitate them. Combat veterans who had only a few months left to serve were "short-timers" with bad attitudes. New recruits were green and hardly knew basic soldier skills. The division was understrength and short on equipment. Even with my inexperienced eyes, I could see that, indeed, this could not be the Real Army.

Soon I was a first lieutenant en route to the 101st Airmobile Division in Vietnam. I thought my search would soon be over. When I took over my new platoon, I discovered that it, too, was not the Real Army. It was a group of scared young men just trying to keep from getting killed. They looked to me not to lead them to victory but to keep them alive long enough to take that long flight back home. They did everything I asked them to do, but they were not eager to reenlist.

Morale was low and got even lower. The young men didn't hate the Vietcong or the North Vietnamese and actually hoped they would not see one. They lived in fear, drank whenever they could, and smoked a joint now and then when I wasn't around. But together we survived. We learned how to bring superior firepower to bear without exposing ourselves to enemy fire. We learned to conceal ourselves so well in an ambush that the enemy could not see us until it was too late. We learned not to bunch up on the trail, to move without any noise, and to keep our equipment operational. We looked out for each other. We all cried when one of us got a "Dear John" letter. We all cheered when one of us heard he was now a father. We celebrated when someone got his orders to go home. We shared our dreams and aspirations. My dream was to find the Real Army. We all made it back to the States.

I returned to the 82d Airborne for two more years. Then I went to the Armor Officers Advanced Course at Fort Knox, Kentucky; on to graduate school; and back to West Point as an instructor. I was now part of the elite cadre--and yet I had never seen the Real Army. I almost gave up my search. All the other instructors talked about it, but no one had actually seen it. One armor officer said that he almost saw it in Germany, but it apparently had departed before he got there and never returned. We pretty much agreed that it was either in Germany somewhere or maybe in Korea, but it certainly was not stateside. So Germany was the next stop on my quest. I would surely find the Real Army in Germany.

Germany was totally different than I had imagined. I was assigned to an infantry unit at Wildflecken. The Cold War was still going strong in the late '70s. My battalion had a wartime mission to be the covering force for the brigade. We expected high numbers of casualties. Wildflecken was within artillery range of the East German border, and we fully expected to be under fire from our billeting area all the way to our deployment positions. Our only hope would be early warning. We took our mission seriously. We trained in the field for weeks on end, once for 6 weeks straight. Every day in the field meant 3 days in the motor pool, maintaining our equipment. I thought, "If this isn't the Real Army, we are in trouble." But things were not as they should have been. We still had drugs. The equipment was old. I was positive that I had an M113 with Patton's initials on it. There were also personnel shortages. It was part of the "Hollow Army" -- too many missions and not enough men and equipment. I began to suspect tha t this was not part of the Real Army.