Letters

* In "Leading Our Wounded Warriors" ("Company Command," February), I was very happy to see that some of the leaders mentioned some of the lessons I've learned about our injured personnel in my civilian job as a firefighter in our nation's capital.

Some of our firefighters who were badly injured on the job last fall have had someone there for them and their families every day since. The chief himself spent the first night with them, and there was home-cooked food from one of the firehouses for every meal in the hospital-more than two months worth for the most seriously injured.

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I believe so strongly in this kind of dedication to our injured comrades that when a friend of mine who is in the fire department wrote me from Iraq to say that one of his soldiers had been badly injured, I went to visit her several times to make sure that she was getting everything she needed and to let her know that he was still watching over her care. Having watched how bitter people can become when they feel abandoned by their leadership and how well they do when they feel like they're still a valued member of the team, I can say without reservation that this is a critical factor that allows people, and particularly soldiers, to go beyond the wildest expectations of their physicians in their recovery.

2ND LT. ANNE GUGLIK, MDARNG

Bowie, Md.

The Army Uniform

* When the January issue of ARMY Magazine arrived, as usual I first turned to "Front & Center" to see if there was an article by a former boss, Gen. Frederick J. Kroesen, U.S. Army retired. Then I turned to the "Letters" section. The two colonels were right on the mark in their letters regarding adaptive leadership and the reviews of Col. Cole C. Kingseed, U.S. Army retired. After I read CSM Lowell A. May's letter, I did not know whether to shout "Hallelujah!" and "Amen!"-or come to attention and salute-so I did both. In the late 1950s and the '60s, at Fort Benning, Ga., you couldn't wear fatigues off post; after 5 P.M., you couldn't wear them on post. Battle dress uniforms, Army combat uniforms, physical training uniforms and fatigues are for combat and "sweat" work. Dump the black beanie and keep the green Class A uniform with a sensible garrison or overseas cap.

CW4 A.P. (KELLY) SCHANZENBACH, AUS RET.

Lawrenceville, Ga.

Billy Mitchell

* The myth of the prophet scorned by his contemporaries is a powerful folk genre, but it is still surprising to see it perpetuated in ARMY Magazine. In a piece entitled "Sometimes a Court-Martial Isn't the Last Word" (February "Front & Center"), Richard Hart Sinnreich portrays William (Billy) Mitchell as the omniscient seer, the visionary who predicted with "astonishing prescience how the Japanese one day would attack Pearl Harbor and the Philippines."

It is true that Mitchell, the Nostradamus of air power, made some correct forecasts about future military events. Given the vast number of his pronouncements, that he hit a few is hardly surprising. But imagine if Congress had taken seriously his declaration that "airplane carriers are useless instruments of war against first-class powers ... the most vulnerable of all ships under air attack ... entirely at the mercy of submarines." Naval aviation, according to Mitchell, was-and would remain-a complete waste of money. Exactly how accurate was his conjecture that "an attempt to transport large bodies of troops, munitions and supplies across a great stretch of ocean, by seacraft, as was done during the World War [I] from the United States to Europe, would [in a future war] be an impossibility"?

Because air power had played only a supporting role in World War I, Mitchell was usually dismissive of history: "In the development of air power, one has to look ahead and not backward and figure out what is going to happen [as opposed to] what has happened." Unless, of course, the past made his point: "The performance of the ground armies in World War I is a perfect indication of what they will do in the future. ... no army can advance or drive the other from a prepared position. A war on the ground ... will decide nothing."

Mitchell wanted for the United States what the British had established in 1918, an independent air force. As is well known, the Royal Air Force, like Mitchell, emphasized strategic bombing at the expense of air superiority, close air support and naval aviation. Thus the U.S. Army was forced to extemporize its tactical air units and doctrine in the middle of World War II.

Possibly the most damning indictment of Mitchell came from Gen. Henry H. Arnold, a far more clearheaded and effective proponent of air power. Late in World War II, this chief of the Army Air Forces remarked of Mitchell's campaign in the 1920s: "Military aviation really couldn't have amounted to very much then, even if everyone had agreed with him." Simply put, Billy Mitchell's vision outraced the technology of his day. Had the United States followed his recipe for national defense by restricting the ground army to a gendarmerie, by scrapping all naval vessels except submarines and by putting all aviation dollars into strategic bombers, the Axis quite possibly would have won World Warfi.