Remarks at the Dedication of the Abrams Auditorium, Patton Museum of Annor and Cavalry

Remarks at the Dedication of the Abrams Auditorium, Patton Museum of Armor And Cavalry This is the res of the dedication speech by General Donn A. Starry US.

Army, Retired.

Today, we have the happy task of dedicating this superb new auditorium addition to the Patton Museum of Armor and Cavalry to the memory of General Creighton W. Abrams, Jr. It is ever important that an army remember its heroes. But it is also important that we not only memorialize our heroes, but that we do so in such away that their legacy to us survives the memorialization: in other words, it is not just a matter of naming some plap or thing after those we seek to memorialize. It is a matter of doing so in such away that we are continuously reminded, and so ever mindful, of the lessons they taught us. Like any famous man, General Creighton Abrams is different things to different people, depending on the vantage point from which his service is viewed.. Those old enough to remember World War II may remember him leading the 37th Tank Battalion and the 4th Armored Division in the relief of besieged Bastogne.. Early post-war students at the Armor School surely recall him as head of the Command and Staff department, hard at work digesting the war’s lessons into doctrine for armored forces for the next decade, perhaps more.. For those of us who were there, he is vividly remembered as commander of the 63rd Tank Battalion, 1st Infantry Division, as the Korean War fired up and tensions in Europe bounded upward.. Again, to those of us who were there, he is remembered as 3rd Armored Division’s steadfast corn-mander as we sought to react in some relevant way to the sudden appearance of the Berlin Wall.. Whomever remembers the civil disorders in Oxford and Birmingham in the civil rights years, remembers him as the guy in the rumpled seer-sucker suit who became Robert Kennedy’s man on the ground.. Many of us recall his post-Tet strategy for South Vietnam, and his conviction that, given the means, the South Vietnamese could go it alone.. All of us surely remember his all-too-brief tenure as Chief of Staff, his determination to rebuild our Army in the face of a reduction mania not at all unlike the one thrown up before us daily in our so-called postcold war time.

In all those assignments, and more: in all those crises, his professional performance was more than sufficient to cause us to memorialize him. But I have a somewhat different perspective of General Abrams, and I believe it worth reflecting on for these few moments. For I remember him for what he taught me; or what he taught all of us, especially those of us who served for him in many capacities, many times. For he represents, together with perhaps but one other officer in my lifetime, the character we strive to infuse into Army leadership in schools like the Armor School. My own perspective is drawn from a 25-year association with General Abrams. I was a platoon leader, part-time company commander in his battalion: a brigade operations ofticer and battalion executive officer in his division: a battalion commander in his corps, a regimental commander in his command in Vietnam. As his staff officer in Vietnam, wrote the plans to Vietnamize the war. As his staff officer in the Pentagon, I presided for him over post-war restructure of the Army. As TRAMX formed up in 1973, he sent me to command Fort Knox, with the parting admonition to, “Go Out there and get the Army off its ass.” It was a charge he laid on many, I’m certain; but to me it had a personal ring, for knowing him so well, I knew precisely what he meant, and that he was holding me responsible for more than my fair share of what-’ ever got done.

So, as one who has spent a considerable part of a lifetime trying to meet the demanding standards of a man who accepted no less than the highest in performance, I bear the scars of our long association. Despite that -perhaps because of that -I hold him in 46 ARMOR - MayJune 1992 the highest regard; for what he did, for what he stood for, for what he was. For my view of him is that he embraced a very few simple values, in which he believed deeply, and to which he returned again and again in everything he did. Moreover, I am convinced that those very values are at the heart of what we, following his example, would imprint in the corps of leaders of the Armored Force who pass all too briefly this way periodi-Above all, General Abrams put the highest premium on the professional competence of leaders. He was, as our battalion commander, the best tank commander in our battalion. He delighted in showing us, by example, what he expected us to know about being tank commanders.

Too well do I remember along period of study in tactics, terrain, and map reading George Patton and I endured after the two of us had attacked, with great zest, the wrong hill in alive fire exercise, in plain view of our battalion commander, watching from his own tank.

My wife reminds me of the SO-caliber machine gun that hunkered down on our living room floor for several weeks after Colonel Abrams found that some folks in our battalion weren’t too well trained in its use. His view was that the fault lay with the leaders not knowing that weapon well enough, and so not training the soldiers well enough. So we learned to do it blindfolded. I believe I could do it that way to this day.

As a trainer of soldiers and units, he was a tough taskmaster. Not because he had some kind of training fixation: but because he believed. that from tough, demanding training comes the sure ability to fight well and win on the day of battle, even though outnumbered and against weapons about as good, perhaps better, than our own. He believed that soldiers will do well in battle only what they had been trained to do to perfection before battle’s onset; and that the primary re-cally. sponsibility of leaders is to lead the way in that training. Know your job, he would say, but it was quite clear that, to him at least, it was no job, it was a calling.

So much of him can be summed in one word courage.

He blew the whistle when he found a few soldiers in his battalion selling nearly a hundred thousand gallons of gasoline on the black market every month: he tracked the problem to the source and brought the offenders to trial. Courage.

He tackled, without flinching, the powder kegs in Oxford and Birmingham.

He believed in the South Vietnamese, and stood forth for a program that would enable them to swive on their own.

He agonized at the sure outcome of post-Vietnam reductions in preparedness, and spoke eloquently so many times of the price inevitably to be paid for our folly in the lives of soldiers in the first battles of the next war. Courage.

He had the courage to let his subordinates falter, and to pick them up and start things aright; the courage to stand between his subordinates and higher headquarters witch hunters. He had the courage of good humor. He had a subtle, almost pungent wit. He liked a good story, liked to tell a good story. But there was more to it. Listening closely, most of those stories were about himself; things he’d done wrong, times he’d got caught short. They were humbling stones. I came to believe he liked to tell them because they reminded him to be humble. For the mighty to be humble requires the ultimate in courage. Know yourself, he would say. And be humble for the knowing. Courage. One of General Abrams’ most quoted statements is his observation to a congressional committee that people are not in the Army: people are the Army. His was a deep and abiding concern for soldiers. Many of us are concerned about soldiers, but his was a special kind of concern. I do believe he sincerely liked people, but his ovemding concern was that the soldiers be capable in the face of the tough tasks of battle. He was a tough trainer -some of us at the time considered him almost merciless, especially on leaders. He was that way because of his certain conviction that we all need be well enough trained, not only to slwive in battle, but to survive and go on to win.

In many forums, before so many audiences, he reiterated all or parts of that marvelous speech he delivered to the AUSA convention in Washington, the one in which he cited the tremendous price our country has traditionally paid for unpreparedness. He sized that price in terms of the cost to the nation in the resource it could least afford to expend - the lives of its young men. Always the soldiers. Know your men, he would say, and be ever watchful of their willingness and ability to survive and to go on to win, whatever the odds, whatever state shortsighted reductions in force had brought us to at the onset of battle.

Through everything he did shines those abiding values: strength of professional excellence on the part of leaders; courage to face the dangers of battle, and courage to face the more subtle but equally threatening dangers not always found in battle itself; deep faith in the soldiers, and concern that they be well enough trained and led to avoid unnecessary casualties in battle, and that the nation be sufficiently prepared that its soldiers not be foolishly sacrificed because we lack political resolve to pay the price for peace. That’s what I learned from him. That is what he taught me.

That is his legacy to us. His name on this marvelous auditorium will continue to remind us of those lessons. He will teach generations anew what he taught all of us. Let us hope that we learned as well as he taught. Thank you.

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