Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters (18 page)

On the week of my promotion to the rank of captain in 1998, my boss told me the brigade commander, Colonel John Della Jacono (“DJ” for short), wanted me to compete for assignment as his senior logistics officer (brigade S4). Far from being flattered, I was terrified. The job was rated for a major, not a captain—and certainly not a newly minted captain. And I was a military policeman, not a logistics officer.

Responsibilities included logistical oversight of five battalions totaling about 800 instructors and 1,800 soldiers, a $1.2 million annual budget, and $4.5 million in contractual obligations for weapons ranges and dining facilities.

The duties were intimidating enough, but added to the equation was the fact that Fort McClellan would permanently close in fifteen months. This meant the new brigade S4 would also have to account for everything in the vast organization—thousands and thousands of pieces of furniture, equipment, and property—then turn it in or move it to the new brigade’s home at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. In other words, double the normal workload. No thanks!

But before I knew it, I was sitting in front of DJ for an interview. He was cordial, but direct. “So, tell me why I should select you to be my S4,” he asked.

“Ah, sir, I think there’s been a mistake,” I replied. “I didn’t express any interest in being the S4, and honestly I don’t think I’m qualified in experience or rank.” I wasn’t trying to be modest; I simply knew my limits. I also knew rank and authority mattered; most of the officers I would have to work with would be majors and lieutenant colonels with
years
of experience.

DJ shifted topics, and we spent most of our time focused on things that had nothing to do with logistics. I left his office confident he would pick the senior captain or one of the two majors who had applied for the job, one of whom was a career logistician.

About a week after that interview, I was told my new assignment to the brigade staff was effective immediately. DJ later explained that he knew my rank and experience would offer some unique challenges, but he liked my character and personality. He said he saw an officer who knew how to work hard and wasn’t afraid to be bold, and he thought that was going to matter more than anything else with the challenges ahead.

I was furious. I thought DJ’s judgment was shortsighted foolishness. I already felt that I was in over my head with my master’s
program in history at Jacksonville State University. Kristin and I had just been forced to leave our rented home and were in the process of moving onto the base. And changing to a new job beyond my grade and experience would be like sending me into a boxing ring with one arm tied behind my back. Would it be my fault if I couldn’t get the work done to standard?

As it turned out, the attributes DJ spoke about did make up for my lack of rank and experience in a thousand little ways over the next fifteen months. I was even asked to perform tasks outside my duties. When DJ saw my presentations and written reports, he signed me up to prepare briefings for the installation commanding general and asked me to write his speech for the deactivation ceremony of the brigade.

On the one hand, it felt great being able to contribute in such unique ways. On the other hand, I knew I was doing extra work because others weren’t willing or able to do theirs, and that really pissed me off—just as it had when I was a kid I and was “rewarded” with most of the household cleaning chores because I was “so good at it.”

Not everything went well in my assignment. Having a can-do attitude and fresh perspective was appealing, but with no rank or formal training and experience, I was like a kid trying to wear his dad’s suit. This put me at a great disadvantage when there were differences of opinion about big decisions. It wasn’t uncommon to get looks from people that screamed, “Who do you think you are,
Captain
?”—even from DJ, who loved it when I did bold things for him, but scoffed if I did them on my own.

One event in particular underscored this paradox.

The officer taking DJ’s place at Fort Leonard Wood was Rod Johnson, an easygoing and mild-mannered personality who had recently been promoted to colonel. (Eight years later, he would become the provost marshal general of the army.) Johnson was a stark contrast to DJ, who was a fiery, temperamental combat veteran of the Eighty-Second Airborne Division.

During one of our planning meetings at Fort Leonard Wood, Johnson asked if we had any money that we could spare for his fledgling command. He had been given a shoestring budget, and asked if we could spare about four thousand dollars, which was like asking for pocket change, considering the cost of the move. But out of respect for my boss, I didn’t reveal we had eighty-five thousand dollars left over in the budget that we were not going to use at Fort McClellan.

When I returned to Alabama and raised the issue with DJ, his answer was an immediate and emphatic “No!” He was downright dismissive. “You know what they’re spending their money on there? Furniture. Brand-new furniture, for God’s sake!” he fumed. He thought such money should be spent on soldier equipment or not at all. As far as he was concerned, senior officers could sit at a card table.

DJ wasn’t alone in his assessment, but the “new furniture” issue was a real problem for Johnson. The army had no intention of spending ten thousand dollars to move beat-up, worn-out, 1970s-vintage steel desks and chairs from Alabama to Missouri. And the bottom line was that Johnson’s staff needed desks and chairs to do their job.

I pleaded with DJ, “Sir, this is money we don’t need, and it’s a pretty insignificant sum of money in the grand scheme of things.” The conversation lasted a good fifteen minutes, and he started to get upset, so I let it drop. Then I paid a visit to the officer who managed everyone’s money at Fort McClellan to see if I could find another way to meet the request.

“Why don’t you just send the money from your account?” the officer said with a puzzled look on his face. “The transfer is legal, and the money is available in excess. Why are you coming to me to do it for you?” Of course, I wasn’t going to tell him that DJ didn’t want to.

I weighed all the information I had in hand, banked on my
reputation with DJ as a stand-up officer (which he’d said he liked when he hired me), and then conducted the money transfer.

A week later DJ called me to his office, confirmed my actions, and then leveled the most devastating tongue-lashing I have received in my life—then or since. “You are a captain!
I
am a colonel! What is it that you don’t understand about that, Weber?” And that was the politest part of the exchange.

My explanations didn’t seem to matter at all. He wasn’t more than four inches from my face, and there is no doubt everyone in the surrounding offices heard it. I saw his objection coming, but I did not anticipate the degree of outrage—not after all we had done together.

Still, as shortsighted as DJ’s order may have been, telling me not to transfer the money was lawful, which made me dead wrong to disobey. I walked out of his office dizzy and a little numb and went to an abandoned classroom down the hall to try and collect myself.

The incident made me question everything I thought I knew about leading and managing in tough environments. My annual evaluation was due in two weeks, and I concluded I had horribly misjudged a whole host of professional issues.

I didn’t think my career was over (army officers can be melodramatic about what actually ends a career), but I wondered if this one incident was going to take the shine off a year of backbreaking labor.

When I finally sat down for my evaluation, DJ revealed an example of professionalism I have carried with me ever since. He set aside his personal hang-ups and gave me the most impressive evaluation I had ever seen. A week later, he pinned a Meritorious Service Medal on my chest, an award normally reserved for his commanders.

A few days later at a golf outing over a couple of beers, DJ shared a moment of candor that still warms my heart today. He
nearly gushed, telling me how proud he was of the work I had done, and that my efforts over the previous year had ultimately proved him right in selecting me for the job. Clearly, he’d had doubts.

Ten years later, I experienced the same sort of rub with a boss in the Pentagon. Shortly after our assignment was complete, we shared a similar moment, which speaks volumes about the “cuts both ways” nature of being bold, courageous, and imaginative:

Tempered wills, imagination, and temperamental tendencies clearly require ruffling feathers and tipping over apple carts to spur the team to solutions.

How much effort is enough effort? How far is too far? How hard, how soft, how unpredictable or excitable? How much imagination? Again, I can only offer observations and a few illustrations like the ones above, not clear-cut answers
.

When I reflect on the word
temper,
I think of balance, moderation, and compromise—softening and hardening without being unyielding or impenetrable. There is a point, after all, when your tempered will becomes zealotry or a suicide pact, and your temperamental predominance of courage becomes reckless. Through trials and countless errors, I’ve learned that being reasonable and level-headed carries great utility in work, politics, religion, money, and love
.

It is striking to me that despite the timeless virtue of finding common ground and practical solutions, too many people fear that such thinking will make them appear weak or lacking in conviction. All I can tell you is that this has not been my experience at all. In fact, it’s not even really reflective of the American experience as a whole
.

I propose to you that you’ll find answers to your questions by taking just one step beyond the place where others will tell you to stop. Be curious and ask just one more question. Be persistent and insist on just one more consideration. Speak out. Try
.

Be as prepared as Ullman would be (and MacArthur likely would not) to sit down before every fact as a little child, to give up every preconceived notion, and to follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads
.
^‡

And when—not if—failure comes, you’ll be much stronger and wiser for it
.

 … 
TO BE MODEST SO THAT YOU WILL APPRECIATE THE OPEN MIND OF TRUE WISDOM, THE MEEKNESS OF TRUE STRENGTH.

January 2006

OCTOBER–DECEMBER 2011

With the arrival of fall and the cold Minnesota weather, the cancer once again took on the characteristics of hibernating flies—down, but not out.

Things finally seemed stable, but the calm didn’t even last a month. The silver dollar–size abscess that had developed on Buford in September returned just a few weeks later, the antibiotics stopped working, and the pain was worse. I had rarely rated pain over five on a scale of ten, so my doctors took notice when I rated Buford a nine.

My medical team was baffled. One doctor cut into the abscess with a scalpel and even tried draining it with a syringe, but he got nothing but blood. “This is incredible,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I expected fluid to come gushing out, by the looks of this thing.” A scan didn’t show them anything either, and I had no other symptoms of infection. If I could tolerate the pain, they wanted me to simply observe and see what happened as my body attempted to resolve it.

That was Thursday afternoon.

By 3:30 a.m. Saturday, I’d had enough. Armed with a small Swiss Army knife and believing I could hardly do worse than the ER at this point, I cut into Buford, deep and wide.

Once.

Then twice.

That abscess burst open like something out of a scene from
Alien
. I don’t know where all that fluid had been hiding two days
earlier, but I found it, deep past the muscular wall. I could fit my index finger in that hole all the way past the first knuckle.
^*