Leadership has always been a subject of serious study in the American military. In the school systems of the services, starting at the academies and the ROTC classes, aspiring young officers are educated in the methods that made combat leaders successful at all levels of command. Throughout their years in the military, at each level of advancement, the officers continue this pursuit of knowledge of leadership. They progress from studying how small unit leaders have achieved success, to the study of the larger and more complicated problems faced by men like Eisenhower and Pershing. Though it has been over a century since the Civil War, much attention is still paid to the qualities that brought success to Grant, Lee, Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart. No education of an officer in the Army is complete unless he or she is completely familiar with George Patton and his flamboyant style of leadership. Just the other day, one of the U.S. Army`s most successful leaders died. His name was Bill DePuy and, outside of Army circles, his passing was little noticed. It is doubtful that his career and style of leadership will become a focus of interest to future generations of officers, which will be theirs and the Army`s loss. For Bill DePuy, although being a fine leader in combat, achieved his greatest success in peacetime. He was, in the opinion of many, the architect of the Army`s success in Desert Storm.
In some ways, Bill DePuy was an unlikely candidate to become one of the Army`s most influential leaders. He was not a large man, did not come from a military background, and graduated from South Dakota State University with a bachelor`s degree in economics in 1941. However, as a young officer in combat in the European Theatre in World War II, he earned a reputation as an unusually competent leader, winning the Distinguished Service Cross, three Silver Stars and two Purple Hearts. He missed serving in the Korean War because of a leg injury and spent the intervening years between World War II and the Vietnam conflict in normal peacetime assignments for an officer moving up in the Army. In Vietnam, he commanded the First Infantry Division, again performing well in combat, and by 1973, he had risen to become a four-star general and the first commander of the Training and Doctrine command. It was here that he was to make his mark on the Army.
To understand the scope of the challenge given to this newly created command, one has to look back in time to the state of the American Army in 1973. It was a demoralized army, racked with the same problems which plagued the nation in those days; drug use, racial animosity and a general disdain for authority. Morale was poor, discipline rapidly disappearing, training all but nonexistent and equipment old and deteriorating since most of the monies in the previous decade had gone to support the war in Vietnam rather than modernize the force. Doctrine, or the way the Army would fight, had been unchanged and almost neglected since World War II and now the American Army in Europe was facing an opponent who had become, while we were immersed in Vietnam, superior to us in both numbers and quality of equipment, perhaps even in fighting spirit. And adding to all this challenge, was the mandate to change from a conscript army to an all-volunteer army.
When Bill DePuy retired from the Army four years later, the institution had made an almost complete turnaround, and no one was more responsible for this than the economics major from South Dakota State. In the short span of those four years, 1973-1977, he revolutionized the Army training system. He discarded a system that was based on pre-World War II concepts and adopted one that emphasized a rapid ability to go to war. He instituted standards of training at all levels, not only for units but for individuals as well. His command produced understandable manuals for the troops in the field, introduced the use of simulation training, extensively utilized television as a training tool, and used technology to determine the effectiveness of unit training. Troops training in the field no longer cried out, ”Bang, I gotcha!” The DePuy system had them firing low-powered lasers which registered hits by weapons of all types. The ultimate training ground became the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, Calif., an almost completely automated battlefield where the units that later were to fight Desert Storm were to learn the tactics that served them so well in the deserts of Iraq and Kuwait. Although it opened after his retirement, it was DePuy who conceived the idea of an automated training center and laid the groundwork for its eventual existence.
As important as was his training revolution, his work on doctrine may have been even more of a key to the later successes in the Gulf War. Recognizing that the new reality was that American forces would no longer be able to count on having superior numbers, DePuy went about developing a method whereby our soldiers could fight outnumbered and win. This was no small task and it required not only finding such a system, but in convincing American troops that indeed, they could fight outnumbered and win.
Since his new doctrinal approach depended on having better equipment than the opponent, DePuy turned his attention to what type of weapons system the Army should have. From this effort were to come the weapons systems that won the ground war in the gulf; the M-1A1 tank, the Bradley fighting vehicle and the Apache helicopter. From the doctrinal debates he instigated would come other technological advances, such as the outstanding night vision devices which allowed our troops in the desert to see the enemy long before he could see them.
The doctrine used in the gulf war was one that calls for offensive action deep in the enemy`s rear. Norman Schwarzkopf`s ”Hail Mary” maneuver was based on this doctrinal concept, which was a natural outgrowth of DePuy`s persistent drive to develop ways to ”fight outnumbered and win.”
DePuy`s legacy is an Army better trained and better equipped than at any time in its history. Certainly he did not do it alone. Many others developed and improved on his concepts and ideas. But to a great number of those who served in the difficult years of the late `60s and the early `70s, it was DePuy who led the way.
What was it about Bill DePuy that allowed him to lead the Army out of its worse days? He certainly was not a copy of George Patton, nor of Grant, maybe a little like Ike, but a far cry from J.E.B. Stuart. When one analyzes DePuy`s characteristics, his speaking ability, his quick mind, and his obvious self confidence stand out. Moreover, he had an amazing ability to get things done, even to make the Pentagon bureaucracy work. He could charm congressional committees or visiting politicians. Other generals were reluctant to oppose him for they knew the power of his intellect. He developed a cadre of talented officers and proceeded to give them much leeway in accomplishing assigned tasks. He did not long tolerate a sub-par performance. His understanding of the American soldier was obviously deep. And to those that he considered friends or worthy subordinates, he was extremely loyal.
Our history is full of great Americans who have bravely led their soldiers in time of war. Our record of peacetime leadership is not nearly as replete with outstanding examples. The U.S. Army was poorly prepared to enter conflict in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, and Korea. In Vietnam, though better trained and equipped than the enemy we faced, our doctrine proved unable to meet the challenge of protracted guerrilla warfare. The gulf war was the first that we have met with a force prepared and ready to get the job done quickly and with a minimum of losses. Surely, there must have been something about leadership in the Army in the years prior to the gulf war that made this difference. Bill DePuy was a big part of that something.
