But then I found myself on a frozen plain between the mountains, leaning into a gale sweeping down from Siberia, listening to Lieutenant Colonel Pheneger explain the developing situation while the tanks and armored personnel carriers (APCs) of the mechanized infantry around us belched diesel smoke as they churned through the thin crust of wind-blown snow, enveloping an “enemy” salient. I wore two sets of longjohns, fatigues, a black turtleneck, a heavy GI wool sweater, and a parka with fur-lined hood, a wool hat, a helmet, double gloves, two pairs of green wool socks, and rubber galoshes over my combat boots. But still I've never been so cold in my life.
There were several evenings when another officer and I accompanied Lieutenant Colonel Pheneger in his open Jeep, jolting over the icy roads, charting the progress of the WAREX. The brief time I spent inside the heated G-2/G-3 vans was a welcome respite. But then we were back outside, coordinating with different elements of the 2nd Division.
Meals were C rations; you got a can that had been heated in boiling water and tried to open it without burning your fingers. By the time you'd removed the lid with the little GI opener, the contents were tepid. An indispensable ingredient of every Army meal is Tabasco sauce. It is the key to edible eggs, meatloaf, potatoes, everything except cake and hot chocolate.
The second night as the clerk and I got back to our tent, longing for a few hours' sleep beside the diesel stove, a sergeant greeted us in the muted red glow of his blackout flashlight. “Well, ma'am,” he said, shaking his head, “your stove blew up. So we moved your stuff into our tent.”
I stuck my head into our originally assigned tent. This wasn't some prank. The notoriously unreliable oil stove bulged near the stack pipe and was streaked with reeking soot. Our sleeping bags and personal equipment had been removed.
The men's tent was a general purpose medium with an insulated outer cover and a wooden floor. Their stove was working perfectly. The temperature inside must have been around 40 degrees. Even though, at the time, it was highly unusual for men and women, officer and enlisted, to share their sleeping quarters, I can assure you nothing untoward took place. We were all half-frozen. No one could bathe. No one would undress regardless of the mixed-gender tent. My washcloth froze after the first use. I slept in my full uniform inside my sleeping bag. In the morning, my feet were so cold, I couldn't feel them, and I thought I might be jamming my numb toes into my boots crooked. I used the enlisted latrine—a wooden seat over a frozen hole, surrounded by a wind-whipped tent—because the officers' latrine was too far down the road.
Today you hear a lot of nattering among critics of the military, including many in Congress who never served in uniform, about excluding women from the Army's core activities, which by definition involve field deployment. Since that WAREX in Korea in 1977, I've certainly noticed no greater hardship for women than for men in field conditions and no damage to unit cohesion when women and men serve together.
This issue has given rise to ongoing confusion about “gender-integrated” training, which has been intentionally exacerbated by politicians with strong biases against women in the military. Their reasoning is based on a false premise: that the Army has been “feminized” and subsequently weakened, starting with Basic Training, where physical training standards are allegedly lowered to accommodate women. The ostensible result of this process is that the Army is training weaker, less qualified soldiers for the combat arms: Infantry, Armor, and Artillery. These critics often resort to the argument that the Army should emulate the Marine Corps by training men and women enlistees separately.
As a three-star general, I joined other military leaders to testify on this issue to a congressional commission. It was surprising that so many in Congress were not aware of—or chose to ignore—the true state of Army training. These are the facts: Soldiers enlisting in the combat arms, who are by
regulatory
definition all men, undergo both Basic and Advanced Individual Training in gender-segregated (all-male) units, in what is known as One Station Unit Training. Therefore there are no women trainees to “weaken” the combat arms as political critics persist in implying. Their argument is without merit.
Soldiers enlisting in the branches other than the combat arms, both men and women, train in gender-integrated Basic and Advanced Individual Training. They train side by side because that is the way they will serve in the combat support arms and the combat service support arms.
As to the critics' call for the Army to copy Marine Corps patterns, the Marines have too few women to be able to integrate men's training units. Concerning the Army developing an elaborate structure of gender-segregated training units, the cost of this effort would be enormous in this time of scarce resources. And an unwanted and unavoidable consequence of such segregation would be to erode the cohesion of units in which men and women trainees will eventually serve together.
I was working as Colonel Black's XO when the approval for my Regular Army commission arrived at the unit. A traditionalist, the colonel insisted on personally commissioning me. For all of his eccentricities, male chauvinism was not one of them. Every day, he'd use equal vigor chewing out both my men and women colleagues. But I was his XO, and I did learn a lot, probably because of the variety of tasks and responsibilities he gave me. After the brief ceremony, Colonel Black and his deputy commander, Lieutenant Colonel Larry Runyon, insisted on christening my commission in proper Army fashion.
“Come on, Claudia,” Colonel Black said. “We're going to the club.”
We rode in the commander's gleaming sedan, driven by Mr. Yee, the short distance from the headquarters to the officers club. As soon as we entered the room, my colleagues at the surrounding tables looked self-conscious and avoided eye contact, lest Colonel Black seize the moment to task them with additional work.
But the colonel was in a benevolent mood. He and Lieutenant Colonel Runyon were sincerely interested in my future career, especially now that I had a Regular Army commission. I felt bold enough to relate what I had learned at Fort Huachuca: MI officers needed tactical experience to advance, but that path was closed to women. This was the dilemma I faced.
Colonel Black considered this. “What do you think, Larry?” he asked his deputy.
Lieutenant Colonel Runyon explained that SIGINT was evolving rapidly on the strategic level and that many future leaders of Military Intelligence would have well-developed careers in that discipline, which
was
open to women officers. “You should attend the Junior Officer Cryptologic Career Program,” he said.
Colonel Black concurred and allowed his deputy to continue the discussion.
Lieutenant Colonel Runyon explained that the National Security Agency had developed the JOCCP in 1971 to give young military officers three years of intense training and on-the-job experience at the super-secret agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. The Army, Navy, and Air Force provided ten 0-3s (Army captain level), and the Marines, one, to the program. These officers rotated through six jobs over a three-year period. The assignments involved the major subdisciplines, including traffic analysis, collection management, and reporting, as well as challenging special projects.
As they described the program, I knew this was exactly the type of challenge I wanted. The program would be an ideal way to learn cryptology in depth. If, at the end of that time, I didn't see a realistic future for myself as a military officer, I'd still be young enough to seek a fulfilling civilian profession. Colonel Black said he would recommend me for the JOCCP and would seek the support of Brigadier General Jim Freeze forwarding my application.
He took command of the new 501st Military Intelligence Group, and I spent my final months as an operations officer in the Tactical Support Element of the Intelligence unit of U.S. Forces Korea, based in Seoul. Since this was an “all source” (using all sources of intelligence: SIGINT, imagery, and HUMINT) operation, and tensions along the DMZ remained high, the long workdays that I had experienced after arriving in the country continued. Further, just before I returned to the United States, another major incident flared up in the DMZ when the North Koreans fired on an unarmed U.S. Army CH-47 cargo helicopter, causing it to crash among the minefields between the two heavily defended demarcation lines. Although certainly not as severe as the axe murders, the situation kept us all on alert right up to the day I boarded my flight.
It took me a little while to decompress from the tense atmosphere in Korea to the calmer, more relaxed life of late 1970s America. It seemed strange to wear civilian clothes again after fatigues and combat boots for twelve months. But the work and classes in the JOCCP at Fort Meade were engrossing.
The ultrasensitive NSA—sometimes referred to as “No Such Agency”—remains one of the most secret organizations in the U.S. government. My colleagues and I were instructed to simply tell anyone who asked that we worked for the “Defense Department.” That seemed like a practical expedient. But when my friend Irene Sanders, an NSA civilian, couldn't find her driver's license while trying to cash a check at a nearby store, she used that ploy with the clerk. “Oh,” he said, “you work at the NSA. Just show me your badge.” So much for airtight security.
Once inside the huge building, however, security did reign. Formal classes were part of the curriculum of the National Cryptologic School. One of my favorites was a course on intelligence reporting, taught by an admirable and brilliant white-haired lady named Vera Filby, who had been one of the legendary code-breakers at Bletchley Park near London during World War II. She used both historic cases and immediate developing incidents to teach us what and how essential intelligence elements had to be reported.
One day I got a call from a friend. “Claudia, your name's on the promotion list.”
I couldn't believe it. This meant I'd been promoted to major “below the zone,” one year early, ahead of my year group. “Read me the full name,” I asked warily. She did. “Read me the Social Security number.” She did. My name was on the list, no doubt about it.
When I finished my three years at the NSA, I was a major and what we call “branch qualified” in Military Intelligence. It had been just over ten years since I had driven my old Ford Fairlane to Fort McClellan to begin the WAC Basic Course. Now my plan was to spend ten more years in the Army, to reach the rank of lieutenant colonel, and perhaps even to earn command of a SIGINT battalion as my last assignment. For a woman soldier at that time, this was quite an ambition.
But by this point, I had come to love the Army and its mission as the ultimate peacekeeping force in the precarious Cold War world. And I loved my fellow soldiers, both men and women, because of the camaraderie we had shared, and because they did their jobs so well, often under difficult conditions. We stayed in the Army not because it was just a job that we tolerated, but because it was an exhilarating adventure. You'll often hear people who served a term of enlistment in the Army when they were young yearning for the comradeship and adventure, the sense of purpose greater than one's own self-centered life they knew as soldiers. This was the intensely satisfying experience that devotion to duty in the Army brought me. But I didn't enjoy just a brief time in uniform. I was fortunate enough to spend thirty-two years as a soldier.
The Art of Mentoring
D
uring my long military career, I learned more practical leadership skills from the experienced noncommissioned officers I commanded and from my senior commissioned officers, who took it upon themselves to mentor me, than I did from any formal military school I attended. This lesson undoubtedly also applies to my colleagues who earned their commissions from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, through the ROTC, or the Officer Candidate School program. Once commissioned, we were often like junior executive graduates of business schools in the civilian world, who somehow feel they have been endowed with innate leadership powers and do not realize that leadership consists of a complex combination of acquired skills. But I soon learned otherwise.
The most fortunate path for any aspiring leader to follow is to be consistently mentored by the junior and senior leaders in her or his organization at the critical junctures of the developing leader's career. For this process to work, of course, the person being mentored has to set aside arrogance, be willing to learn, and be receptive, especially when it involves being guided by people who are junior in rank. It is essential for leaders to realize that they are always works in progress, in continual need of guidance and development, even as they reach senior positions. Once a person decides she is complete, she is announcing her growth is ended and her potential is fulfilled. This signals to everyone the end of her progress in that field.
There is a personal component to this issue beyond professional considerations. I firmly believe a person's life involves much more than achieving distant career goals. In other words, the process of “getting there” is more fun and personally rewarding than the ultimate “being there.” When I was a young lieutenant in the WAC Officer Basic Course, a chaplain addressed our class, explaining that the ambition of completing a twenty-year Army career should not be the most important factor in our decision about staying the Army. Equally, in the civilian world, the search for job stability at any cost often stultifies personal and professional fulfillment, and ultimately quashes leadership potential.
We all can profit from advice. But the flow of guidance moves up and down the hierarchy. Civilians sometimes get an inaccurate picture of the personal interaction between commissioned and noncommissioned officers in the Army. Just because a senior NCO uses military courtesy and addresses a lieutenant or captain as “ma'am” or “sir,” it doesn't mean that the respect between them is not mutual. In reality, the partnership between officer and NCO is mutually supportive, especially at the company level, where junior officers first learn their leadership skills. That was certainly my experience.