MY NEW COMMANDING OFFICER, MAJOR GENERAL HENRY E. “THE GUNFIGHTER” Emerson, had taken over the 2d Division at Camp Casey just a few months before I arrived in Korea. I got an early hint of what he might be like from my change of command ceremony. I was replacing lieutenant Colonel Zeb Bradford, another officer also out of the Depuy staff, and a battalion commander who had done a first rate job with the Bucs. Changes of command tend to be somewhat uncomfortable. There is only so much you want to hear about how the other guy ran his ship. I prefer the overlap to be brief, and in this case it was.Never before read a book and wished to know more about the life of one of the characters. I wished the next book in my bag was Gunfighter Emerson’s biography.
I left this chapter moist eyed grateful to Colin Powell for expanding my knowledge about (what I have only just realized is a favourite theme of mine) – Goodness in high places.
I looked out the window of the aircraft I was in, and had one of those Kairos moments when all seemed OK with the world
I smiled and believed that if the clouds parted I would see God smiling too.I have since introduced Gunfighter to my brother and friends and we all love him.For snatching the imagination of several young men, for mentoring the definitive icon of the American dream, I place him up there with the great heroes of the twentieth century.
-Didiscottie Oct.1999
The morning of the ceremony, Bradford and I arrived at a nearly deserted parade ground. I had become accustomed in Germany and Vietnam to over blown hoopla at these events, a big turnout, and the shower of medals. But here, only a lonely looking four-man color guard stood in the middle of the field. Five company commanders and their guidon bearers, representing the battalion’s five companies, were spread out like solitary pickets. A handful of onlookers watched from the stands. “Gunfighter doesn’t care to have the troops stand in the hot sun while a couple of colonels tell each other how wonderful they are” Bradford told me. The sergeant major presented the battalion colors to Bradford, who handed them to me, and I returned them to the sergeant major. That was it. The whole business took less than thirty seconds. I started thinking I might like Gunfighter Emerson.
Soon afterward, I went to division headquarters to report to the general. He came bursting out of his office and seized my hand, which he pumped like a well handle. The man was about fifty, tall, rangy, with a great eagle’s beak of a nose, craggy features, a hot-eyed gaze and a booming voice. He never stopped pacing as he welcomed me. He had earned his nickname in Vietnam by carrying a cowboy style six-shooter rather than a regulation .45 caliber pistol, and I noticed he had a revolver engraved on his belt buckle, I was also aware that he had won a reputation there as a fierce fighter.
General Emerson scheduled a commanders call for this morning, and I stayed on to attend. As my fellow officers came in, the general introduced me, and we seated ourselves around the conference room. Emerson continued to pace. “Today’s subject” he announced, is marksmanship.” He started off in a reasonable tone. As he went on, however, he warmed to his subject. Marksmanship was important. The pacing quickened. If marksmanship was neglected, soldiers would be unprepared! The eyes began to blaze. And if soldiers were unprepared, they could not win. And what the hell kind of leadership was that? Fists now pounding. The pattern was never to change all the while I served under the Gunfighter. A modest premise, mounting fervor, and an apocalyptic windup. I observed his accelerating excitement on every subject from deploying helicopters along the DMZ to soldier correspondence courses. And his punch line was always the same, a vein-popping “If we don’t do our jobs right, soldiers won’t win!”
His performance before the troops was no different. The first time I witnessed it, we had assembled the entire division on the camp Casey parade field. Gunfighter started of calmly “Our mission in Korea is To maintain the armistice agreement reached on July 27, 1953, between the United Nations and North Korea. Further, our mission is to come to the aid of our South Korea allies should that armistice be violated.” As he spoke, Emerson’s voice took on velocity. I heard one of the sergeants whisper, “Here he goes.” Pretty soon, Gunfighter was shouting “And if those North Korean sons of bitches ever cross the DMZ, we’re gonna kick their asses!” By now the eyes were flashing and the veins throbbed on his neck. “And if the Chinese throw a million troops across the border, we’re gonna kick their asses too!” The troops caught the spirit and began shouting, “Go, Gunfighter, go”
Emerson had inherited a tough command. Morale in the 2d Division when he took over was not high and discipline was slack. I found it heartening to hear a leader sound off with spirit and show a will to change. This division could stand a little gung ho.You see gentlemen, if you play football, you’ve got only 22 men on the field. Baseball, nine men plus the runners. Basketball, ten” General Emerson had brought us together one fall morning, and I was not sure where this commanders call was headed. “But we’ve got eighteen thousand men in the division,” he continued. “And we want all of them to play. We want all of them to feel like winners. Pro-life!” His solution was “combat sports.”
Gunfighter went on to explain. We would start with combat football. Instead of conventional eleven-man, we would field whole units – first platoon against second platoon, maybe eighty men at once. We would play on the soccer field, and the objective was to get the football into the opponent’s net. How? Any way you can, the general explained. Run it, throw it, kick it, pass it. And to liven up the action, we would use two balls at once. The rules? None. You can tackle, block, clip, blindside, anything. Referees? No rules, so you don’t need any referees. And no penalties.
As soon as we started combat football, the division doctors were in an uproar. They were being flooded with orthopedic cases, some serious. Some serious. They threatened to blow the whistle on gunfighter. We instituted minimal rules. We put a referee to stop play at least when both balls went out of bounds. We replaced combat boots with sneakers. We banned kicking, clipping, and punching. The troops loved combat football, at least the spectators did, and Gunfighter Emerson adored it.
In every successful military organization, and I suspect in all successful enterprises, different styles of leadership have to be present. If the man at the top does not exhibit all these qualities, then those around him have to supplement. If the top man has vision and vision only, he requires a whip hand to enforce his ideas. If the organization has a visionary and a whip hand, it needs a “chaplain” to soften the relentless demands of the others. In the 2d Division, the chaplain role was performed by Brigadier General Harry Brooks, the assistant division commander and the first black general under whom I served directly. Where Gunfighter was theatrical, impetuous, demanding, and unbending, Harry Brooks provided stability, coolness and common sense. Brooks could steer Combat football from total to only partial mayhem. Without the flywheel of a Harry Brooks, the laudable energy of a Gunfighter would have torn the division apart. I loved, admired and learned from both men.One winter day, Gunfighter summoned his commanders to tell us we were going into something called “reverse cycle training.” We were to turn night into day. “After all,” gunfighter pointed out, “the North Koreans won’t be fighting us nine to five.” And I took my battalion to the hills around the Imjin river, where we turned the clock upside down, breakfast at 8:00pm, compass course through the wilderness until a 1:00 am lunch break, assembling and reassembling weapons and employing claymore mines and mortar fire in the “afternoon,” from 2:00am to 7:00am, dinner at 8:00am and attempted sleep from 9:00 to 3:00am. We did this for ten-day stretches trying to turn the circadian clock around, which for certain constitutions never worked.
The meals at those ungodly hours made soldiers sick, and we had to go back to serving at the same time other people ate. But Gunfighter was right. Wars assume irregular hours.
It was a crisp, clear winter day in December. The roar of artillery fire and crump of mortars were heavier than anything I had heard in two tours in Vietnam. I had the Bucs deployed on one side of the valley along the Rodriguez range, ready to storm the hills on the opposite side, “Move out, Buccaneers,” a sergeant shouted, and the men on point began to push toward the valley floor.
The North Koreans had not suddenly decided to break the twenty-year armistice. We were simply engaged in a “Gunfighter shootout,” an exercise involving live ammunition, and plenty of it, to come as close to simulating combat conditions as possible without drawing blood. We fired off hundreds of 81mm and 107mm mortar rounds and 106mm recoilless rifle fire against targets arrayed as advancing troops.
How had we come by all the firepower? One of my company commanders asked me. For a while the valley had echoed like D-Day. I said nothing. It would have been impolitic to explain. But Gunfighter did not want his division to mistake a few pops from our meager allowance of training ammo for actual combat conditions. We had fired off shells from our war reserve, a fact best not known to the north Koreans, or our superiors in Washington.I can easily put that man's occasional excesses into perspective. In the end, results are what matter. While I served under General Emerson, AWOLs in the division dropped by over 50%. Reenlistments jumped by nearly 200%. And while impetuous youths might occasionally punch each other out, racially related brawling practically disappeared. Gunfighter went on to make three stars and to command XVIII Airborne corps before he retired.
Gunfighter (marriage of)
Gunfighter remained true to himself in every circumstance. After he got the big job with the big house as commander of XVIII Airborne corps, he decided that such an elevated post required a wife. He recalled the name of a fine woman from a prominent family whom he had once met. He found her, romanced her, and proposed in rapid succession. Alma and I were among the invited guests at Fort McNair. Chaplain Gianastasias was brought in to conduct the ceremony. Father G gave a lovely homily drawn from the wedding at Cana, weaving into his remarks his service with Gunfighter in Korea. As soon as the priest started down the pulpit, the general, to the astonishment of the guests started up the steps. "Did you hear that?" he exclaimed from the pulpit. Everyone in the church sat stunned. The groom went on. "Did you hear what that fine man of God just said about Korea? Yes, he was with me, a key part of our Pro-life Program." With eyes blazing and veins throbbing, Gunfighter proceeded to give as rousing a Pro-life speech as if he were addressing the 2d Division instead of his wedding guests, with only the profanities omitted. His refined, artistic bride had not realized she was marrying an army corps, not just a man.Had it not been for a Tom Miller and Red Barrett in Germany, a Bill Abernathy and Cider Joe Stilwell at Fort Devens, a Charles Gettys in Vietnam, a Gunfighter Emerson in Korea, I would have left the army long ago. These men gave our lives a flavor, a spice, a texture, a mood, an atmosphere, an unforgettableness.
Excerpts from “Go, Gunfighter, Go”
(Chapter 8).
From My American Journey by Colin L Powell
Random House
New York
1995