James Webb |
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James
Webb was graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1968. For his service
in Vietnam as a MEMORANDUM To:
Rear Admiral C. S. Minter, USN (Ret’d) From:
Captain James H. Webb, Jr., USMC (Ret’d) Subject:
After-action report Sir:
This is in response to your letter of 12 May 1964, congratulating
me on my acceptance to the Naval Academy and outlining my education and
training should I report for duty as a midshipman. Please excuse the
35-year delay, but I did in fact report for duty, and it would not be an
exaggeration to say that I have had a busy time of it ever since. As
you instructed, when I received your letter I gave it my close
personal attention (italics yours), so that I might fully understand
what would be required for me to commence a career
in the United States Naval Services (italics yours), with the
understanding that the Naval Academy exists
for this purpose only (italics, you guessed it, yours). That
was a great letter, Admiral. It was honest, unapologetic, and immensely
challenging. You might imagine the impact on a young man just past his
eighteenth birthday to receive such a message, written by an admiral in
the most powerful and
well-led navy in the world, who like so many of his peers had cut his
teeth in the dramatic
and punishing arena of World War II. Reading about
the struggles of that war had formed the template of my childhood. The
theme song from Victory at Sea
coursed through my brain as I opened the envelope. Film footage from
great naval battles danced before my consciousness, as familiar to me as
MTV music videos are to the children of today. I knew that you and
others whom I might soon meet—and better yet, serve under—were
at the forefront of the greatest battles in history. And
here arrived your letter, outlining the conditions under which I might
be allowed to join you. I want you to know, even though you are
long‑retired, that your blunt warnings motivated the living hell
out of me. To be perfectly honest, they also scared
the living hell out of me (italics mine). I doubt you had some
Deputy Assistant Secretary of How To Make Nice peering over your
shoulder as you wrote about what would be expected of me and my future
classmates once we were “sworn in to the Naval Service and commenced a
career.” If there had been such a Make Nice person in the Department
of Defense in 1964, his or her authority would have ended somewhere
between the E Ring of the Pentagon and the Marine guard at the Academy
gate. For what do bow-tied academics and vote-groveling politicians know
or care about the hard, usually thankless, and often messy task of
finding and building combat leaders? Unfortunately,
we learned the answer to that question just a few years after you wrote
your letter, when Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara turned loose his
systems analysis Whiz Kids inside the Pentagon, treating the Vietnam War
as if it were an Edsel to be conceived, designed, and marketed by
Management (them and their bow-tied friends), while Labor (that means
us) were supposed to remain quiet and do the dying and just keep those
cars coming off the assembly line. But that is the subject of another
memorandum. Your
letter. I love that letter. Even now, some 35 years having passed, I
take it out and read it from time to time. It was not some cheering,
recruiting-slogan attaboy for my having passed through the wickets of
anonymity to try my hand at the elite Trade School that my non-Academy
military father had always praised for the quality product it delivered
to the operating forces. In fact, the only reference you made to the
Academy instead of the Navy at large was to point out that “since the
founding of the Naval Academy in 1845 its graduates have served their
country with distinction in war and peace.” That was it. No loud
ring‑knocking. No recitation of the long list of accolades. No
need to parade out Nimitz, Halsey, Lejeune, and Rickover. The Academy
existed to produce leaders, and everyone knew that. Your
focus was on the serious task of taking the raw material the nation sent
forth every year and finding and developing leaders therein, for the
good of the Naval Service and of the country. There were no euphemisms.
Your ultimate goal was “to produce an educated leader of character,
physically sound, and dedicated to the service of his country.” There
were no apologies when you warned that the plebe system was
“traditionally tough; not by accident but by design.” You explained
that “This is a period of testing—a time to separate the performers
from the non‑performers. It requires midshipmen to produce under
pressure, to stand on their own two feet, to respond instantly and
reflexively to orders, and finally to meet the highest standards of
conduct, honor, character, and morality.” “The
highest standards”—a severe and unforgiving gauntlet thrown at my
young feet. And there were no promises of touchy-feely counseling
sessions if we from time to time failed to meet those standards. You put
the onus right back on us by warning that plebe year was “fully within
the capabilities of those young men
who possess proper motivation.” (Italics...well, you know. You
wrote it). And there were no seductive be-all-that-you-can-be
invitations to come to the Navy to find the inner me. If I lacked this
“proper motivation,” you suggested, I should withdraw my application
and pursue another career. In
retrospect it’s almost surprising that I showed up after reading your
letter. I was already doing quite well on an academic scholarship at one
of the country’s best universities, located not far from some of
California’s nicest beaches. I spent many a bleak and nostalgic night
over the next four years looking back at what I had given up in order to
answer your challenge. I had no desire to have your mandatory
engineering degree shoved down my throat. I hated the exhausting
viciousness of the plebe system, a regimen so punishing that more than
one classmate told me years later he had come through Vietnam fine but
was still having nightmares about plebe year. I considered it absurd to
be losing even the most normal of college freedoms—no radio in my room
for a year, no dating for a year, no riding in a car for nearly three
years, no television privileges for three years, having exactly 40
seconds to be out of my bed when the reveille bells went off in the
morning, suffering the unbroken, 24-hours-a-day scrutiny of every part
of my conduct by those above me—the list, as you know, goes on and on.
But
there was something else, not only in your letter but in the eyes of my
father and in the hollows of my own subconscious. No, it was not simply
the matter of a challenge to my pride—whether I was good enough to
endure and triumph in this crucible. It was a summons, up from the
depths of the past, glimmering before me like an unwelcome but certain
promise: Our history showed that during my adulthood the nation would
never be fully at peace, and would most likely at some point be at war.
On my shoulders, should I be entrusted with the lives of other Americans
in such circumstances, would be the burden of momentous decisions
involving life and death. Would I be prepared to do my duty? As I grew
older in this profession, I would be challenged to anticipate threat and
response to aggression in an ever-changing world. Would I do my part to
ensure we as a nation were strong enough to protect our interests and
our allies? The
best way to prepare myself for these challenges was to immerse myself in
them, both day and night. And so I packed my trash, said goodbye to my
surf board, and headed east. I
will admit my stomach did a quick, queasy turn as I crossed the Severn
River bridge and peered over at the wide, flat grounds of the Yard. The
cold grey buildings and the tall turquoise poles that marked the outer
limits of Dewey Field seemed to delineate a neatly manicured federal
prison. And I did not like it very much when the crisp-uniformed
upperclassman wearing a red nameplate hit me hard in the chest after I
walked out a door and into the true innards of Academy life. And I was
more than a little bit amazed when in the course of one quick afternoon
everything civilian in my life, from my clothes to my hair to my very
speech patterns, were torn, shorn, and beaten out of my countenance. My
first night in Bancroft Hall I cried away my youth, knowing that it
would be nine years—half as long as I had already lived—before I
could make another full decision about my life. Through
the long, dark winter of that first year, as our country slid
ineluctably into war in Vietnam, I fell just as irretrievably into your
rhythms. Memories visit me even today, mixed with pride and loss.
Posting the watch at zero-five-thirty, wondering what was happening back
at USC as the nearby stairwells began to fill with plebes jogging up and
down the steps as they prepared for their reveille come‑arounds.
Trudging around Farragut Field and then Hospital Point in three pairs of
sweat gear in the wintry pre‑dawn darkness, watching the lights
slowly come on in real homes just across the ice‑clogged Severn
River, desperately missing my family, then forcing my mind onto the
professional questions that would soon be asked of me. Fighting to stay
awake in class, all the while worrying more about what was going to
happen to me at the hands of upperclassmen back in Bancroft Hall or at
the tables in the mess hall than I did about the remote and seemingly
arcane laws of physics and calculus. Days falling into weeks, never with
sufficient sleep, feeling exhaustion seeping so far inside me that it
seemed to rest like a lead weight inside my bones. Weeks falling into
months without the opportunity even to talk to a member of the opposite
sex. Asking myself over and over, why did I do this, and why did I not
simply walk away and go back to a calmer, more enjoyable existence. And
then remembering the proud and somewhat envious face of my own father,
who would have given anything to have undergone this misery in order to
better prepare him for the demanding task of a military career. You
did not lie to us, Admiral. You made it tough. You held the ring up
there, always just a bit higher than we could reach. You held a mirror
before all of our faces, daring us to look at ourselves and claim we saw
a man who could compare with the great leaders of the past. That
lonely and demanding first year fell quickly into a second, then a
third, and finally a fourth. The summers were, as they liked to say,
“real world,” with only a minimal amount of leave. One was spent
cruising with enlisted sailors on two different ships out of Long Beach,
transferring Marines and equipment from California to Hawaii for their
further transplacement to the burgeoning war in Vietnam. Another was
spent working under junior officers aboard an aircraft carrier in the
Mediterranean just days after the 1967 Arab‑Israeli war, chasing
the emergent and aggressive Soviet fleet, and monitoring the tinderbox
of the Middle East. Inside the Yard, I learned many things, not the
least of which was the gut‑wrenching emptiness that comes when one
discovers that good friends have died in battle thousands of miles away.
One had to process this, as the psychologists would put it today. Could
it really be that the hard‑assed, optimistic friend who had lived
just down the corridor and walked alongside me on the way to class and
joked and crabbed about the adolescent rules of Mother B, and dreamed
only of graduation and the future was now dead from a bullet through the
stomach in the jungles of Southeast Asia? Was it really true that all of
this preparation, all of the timeless lessons about loyalty and courage,
could result simply in a quick, unrewarded death? Where did they tell us
that in our books and lectures? The
reality was timeless. Our moment had come. We accepted it, inured
ourselves to it, and finally came to expect it. This was the world we
inherited, those who read your letter and responded to your call. Our
fate was to have all of the responsibilities you promised us, yet none
of the national adulation that had been given your generation of World
War II. But that didn’t matter. Our reward would be in answering the
call to duty. We persisted, and retained
our pride. Duty, always duty, in addition to resilience under pressure
and persistence in the face of loss, that was what your regimens taught
us. You
were gone by then, but the young man who walked out of your gates on
June 5, 1968, at the height of a war that was tearing our country into
shreds, was more than ready. Only some 840 of the nearly 1,400 who had
answered the challenge of your initial letter had survived to raise
their right hands and renew their oath, now as commissioned officers in
the Navy or Marine Corps. By then Your Correspondent was infused with
all the challenges of honor, leadership, tradition, and courage,
hardened, as military people must always be, against the despair that
comes from loneliness and the pain that derives from separation from
one’s loved ones. He was ready to lead, wishing only for the
opportunity to serve. And in the baking jungles and the
blood‑filled rice paddies and the murderous mountains he was
indeed called upon to serve. And
in service of the principles which have made our nation great, you may
be assured, sir, that he is ready still. Very
respectfully,
James H. Webb, Jr. OFFICE
OF THE SUPERINTENDENT 12
May 1964 Dear
Mr. Webb: I
extend my sincere congratulations upon your selection as a prospective
midshipman and want to advise you of the education and training here at
the Naval Academy. You are urged to give this letter your close
personal attention, for you are not just entering college when you
enter the Academy. Each
June the new plebes immediately commence a tough, demanding, but
intensely rewarding four-year course of instruction to prepare them for
a career in the United States
Naval Services. The Naval Academy exists
for this purpose only. Unfortunately, in the past some plebes
arrived under the mistaken impression they could pursue studies leading
to a degree in law, medicine, or some other essentially civilian
professional field. Some few others came with mistaken thoughts of
“free education” and no real desire for a naval career. Finally,
there were some who entered not because they wanted to, but because
someone else made the decision for them. Unhappily, many of those young
men resigned or were discharged because they found they could not
develop one essential ingredient for success at the Naval Academy—motivation
and a sincere desire for a career of naval service. The sad point is
that not only have they wasted their own time and that of the Academy,
but they have prevented others who had the proper attitude, desire, and
motivation from entering. The
Academy differs from most other institutions of higher learning because
it has a more comprehensive mission. It offers not only sound academic
education, but also physical and military training for a successful
naval career. As a consequence, midshipmen live in an atmosphere
considerably different from that found in college. Their life is a
disciplined, military existence with few of the freedoms normally
available to college students. Their working day begins with reveille at
6:15 A.M. and continues at a high tempo until taps, with a full and
demanding schedule designed to develop to the fullest their mental,
moral, and physical capacities. The ultimate goal is to produce an
educated leader of character, physically sound, and dedicated to the
service of his country. During
your first year at the Naval Academy you will be exposed to an exacting
program of inspection, instruction, and correction known as “Plebe
Indoctrination.” The objectives of this system are forthright,
demanding, and far-reaching. It is designed to accomplish the necessary
transition from the civilian to the military way of life. Additionally,
Plebe Indoctrination strives to increase the midshipman’s professional
knowledge, formal education, and proper study habits. Plebe Year is
traditionally tough, not by accident but by design. This is a period of
testing—a time to separate the performers from the non-performers. It
requires midshipmen to produce under pressure, to stand on their own two
feet, to respond instantly and reflexively to order, and, finally, to
meet the highest standards of conduct, honor, character, and morality. Despite
its toughness, Plebe Year is fully within the capabilities of those
young men who qualify for admission and
who possess proper motivation. It is generally those who come for
the wrong reasons who find Plebe Year too much for them. My
only purpose in writing this letter is to let you know just what is in
store for you at the finest school of its kind in the world. So,
IF you are willing to seriously consider the Naval Service as a
profession, and IF you have a
real desire to be a member of the Brigade of Midshipmen, and
IF you are willing and capable of living up to the high standards
demanded of every Member of that organization—Welcome
Aboard! You have an exciting future in store for you. If not, I
suggest you consider withdrawing and pursuing Today
the United States Navy is the most powerful in the world, and it must
remain so to ensure our freedom. To stay strong it must continue to be
led by highly skilled and dedicated officers. Four years from now the
Naval Academy Class of 1968 will make its contribution. I hope you will
be one of that group. The Naval Academy stands ready to prepare you. All
that is required is your dedication to the task. Sincerely, C.
S. MINTER, JR. |
