’ 

fn Tribute to 

Gener*aE M/if&am E. DePuy 
COMBAT STtJDIES IlYSTITUTE 

The Combat Studiee Institute was eatabliehed an 18 June 1978 aa a 

dqartmenfdevel act&i@ w%kin tke U.S. Azmy Command and General StaB Callega, 

Fart; Leavenwwtb, Heneae. CSI ba8 the followiqg mi&nks: 

a Prepare and present in&action in military history at USACCSC and assist other 

WE&CGSC &partmwxt+sin integrating military bietgy into their instxuctio~. 

i Publish work in a variety af formate fog the Active Army and Reeeroe 

Components on histori& topics pertinent to the doctrinsl ctmcerns of the Army. 

GSI publi&ioruJ wver a vatiety of mi&ary bistury topike. The views expressed berein 

are the of the authrs aad not necessarily those of the Department of the Army or the 

lrlfq&mmtofDefense, 
In Tribute to 

General William E. DePuy 

Remarks by 

General Maxwell R. Thurman 

Lieutenant General Orwin C. Tafbott 

General Paul F. Gorman 

Combat Studies Institute 

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College 

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 660276900 
Introduction 

General William E. DePuy changed the U.S. Army. As the 

first commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine 

Command (TRADOC), he created the mechanisms to restore 

the Army’s self-image as a conventional combat force trained 

and configured for continental warfare. He made it a doctrinal 

Army for the first time in its 200-year history. He laid the 

foundation for the training revolution that followed in the 1980s 

and for the development and fielding of the extraordinary 

combat systems that proved themselves in Operation Desert 

Storm. Personally, and as the leader of a major Army 

command, he took hold of a defeated and discouraged Army 

and put it on the road to victory. 

After his retirement, General DePuy became something of a 

philosopher of war. He wrote frequently for Army magazine on 

topics of doctrinal interest and, even more important, remained 

a figure to reckon with internally in the Army high command as 

the mstitution followed through on the reforms and initiatives 

he had set in motion. General DePuy in later life became a 

teacher and mentor to the Army’s rising leaders. Those young 

men who remember the general’s visits to the Command and 

General Staff College, especially the School of Advanced 

Military Studies, will remember his great wit, his charm, his 

extraordinary intehect and understanding of war, and his 

compassion and interest in those who followed him into the 

profession of arms. 

This pamphlet contains three eulogies presented by men who 

need no introduction to the Army -General Maxwell R. 

Thurman, Lieutenant General Orwin C. Talbott, and General 

Paul F. Gorman. The memorials were read at General DePuy’s 

memorial service at Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., on 

16 September 1992. 
General William E. DePuy 

Remarks by 

GeneraI Maxwell R. Thurman, U.S. Army, Retired 

Our friend, Bill DePuy, was a soldier -an infantry soldier. 

He was a leader and trainer of combat soldiers -an 

infantryman’s leader.. 

Bill was a wiry son of the northern wind-swept prairie, born 

and raised in North Dakota. He moved with his family to South 

Dakota where he joined the National Guard, became a squad 

leader, graduated from South Dakota State, and accepted his 

ROTC commission in the Infantry. He had applied to be a 

Marine-thank God for the Army there was no room for him in 

the Marine Corps because he was destined to lead Army 

soldiers in combat. 

Bill DePuy joined the 20th Infantry regiment in 1941 at Fort 

Leonard Wood. As a platoon leader, he walked 500 miles to 

the Louisiana Maneuvers and back- Bill said he learned to 

“‘soldier” in that six months. 

In 1942, he joined the 90th Division, the first of four divisions 

in which he would serve. He would train with, deploy with, and 

fight with this division for the next three years. 

Bill landed on Utah Beach at noon on the 8th of June 1944, 

D + 2. He was the S3 of the 1st Battalion, 357th Infantry. He 

fought through the hedgerows of Normandy, through the 

Falaise Gap, and on the Moselle River as both the battalion 

and regimental operations officer (on the 4th of December 

1944). 

After six months in combat, Bill DePuy was given command 

of an infantry battalion, the 1st Battalion of the 357th Infantry. 

In the next six months, he would lead his battalion in heavy 

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combat across the Moselle, through the Siegfried Line, and on 

to Czechoslovakia at war’s end -earning the Distinguished 

Service Cross, three Silver Stars, and two Purple Hearts. You 

see, he was a leader of infantry soldiers in combat! A battalion 

commander, age twenty-five. 

Bill came home from Europe in 1945 and went to Fort 

Leavenworth, and then he came to Washington for the first of 

five assignments, He was integrated into the Regular 

Army- he could have returned to his father’s bank, but he 

loved the military. He then studied Russian language because 

he thought it would be important in the years ahead. He was 

posted to Hungary as an attache, the first of several 

appointments in the intelligence arena. His Hungarian tour 

over, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency working in 

China operations. He met Marjory Walker of Salem, Virginia, 

and they were married in June 1951. 

Bill Jr. was born in July 1952, and Joslin arrived in July 1953 

on the eve of the family’s departure for Germany. It was the 

third of four periods of service in Europe. After a year on the 

V Corps staff in Frankfurt where Daphne was born in 1954, Bill 

and Marjory became the command team of the 2d Battalion, 

8th Infantry, in the 4th Division. Bill was back with the troops, 

leading and training soldiers for combat in the cold war. 

The DePuys returned to Washington for his third assignment. 

Bill was in the chief of staff’s office -writing “learned papers” 

for three years, he said. 

The family returned to Europe, this time to England to 

attend the Imperial Defence College. From there, on to 

Schweinfurt - Marne Division country -where Bill once again 

commanded his beloved infantry troops-the dog-faced 

soldiers of the 1st Battle Group, 30th Infantry, in the 3d 

Division. He trained them in battle drills. He was the combat 

leader responsible for the Meiningen Gap. 
3 

And then back to Washington in 1962 for two years on the 

Army staff. He served in the special operations business when 

that field was emerging as an important element of our Army. 

May 1964 -combat called in Vietnam. Bill went to the 

sounds of the guns, and for two years, he was the operations 

chief for MACV [Military Assistance Command, Vietnam]. 

And then the call came- Bill DePuy to command the 1st 

Division- the Big Red One! Again, combat leader of 

infantrymen. It was right that this great combat leader and that 

great combat division should rendezvous at a critical juncture in 

U.S. combat history. The two-were made for each other- War 

Zone C, War Zone D, Ap Tao 0, Minh Than, Golden Gate, 

Attleboro, Soui Da, Song Be, Helper, the Rung Sat-the legend 

of the Big Red One led by Bill DePuy -combat infantryman, 

combat leader! 

Bill returned to Washington- now his fifth tour blending his 

skills in combat operations, intelligence, and special operations. 

He served on the joint staff as the special assistant for 

counterinsurgency. He then moved back to the Army staff and 

became the first assistant to the vice chief of staff. In this role, 

he became the counselor to secretaries of the Army, as well as 

the assistant to the chief of staff. He promoted the Big 5 

weapon systems -the Apache, Abrams, Bradley, Patriot, and 

BIackhawk that we saw perform so magnificently in Operation 

Desert Storm. 

He led the charge to streamline the continental Army which 

brought about the formation of TRADOC and FORSCOM 

[U.S. Army Forces Command]. 

Bill and Marjory moved to Fort Monroe as Bill took 

command of TRADOC in July 1973. This, too, was right for the 

Army! A combat-tested battle leader at the helm of the Army’s 

training and doctrinal institutions. An opportunity to change an 

Army-and change it he did. 
4 

Bit1 and Marjorie made their final move to Highfield in 1977. 

Bill? work was not yet done. He toiled with his mind and his 

pen to enlighten us on future combat doctrine and thoughtful 

analysis of the wars he’d fought. 

All the while, he was the, tough, wiry Virginia farmer -a stroll 

from the Highfield house to the foothills of the Blue Ridge with 

Jefferson, Suzie, then Molly, barking at his heels, inquisitively 

discovering the scents and beauty of the fields. Cerebration and 

celebration. 

Bill loved his family, his friends, his grandchildren-but most 

of all, he loved soldiers. 

You see, he was a combat leader of soldiers. 
General William E. DePuy 

Remarks by 

Lieutenant General &win C. Talbott, U.S. Army, Retired 

Second Lieutenant William E. DePuy -yes, he was once a 

second lieutenant-was transferred in April 1942 from the 20th 

Infantry at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, to the very recently 

formed 90th Infantry Division at Camp Barkeley, Abilene, 

Texas. He was assigned to the 357th Infantry regiment, while I 

was in another regiment of the 90th. By the time the division 

arrived in England before the Normandy invasion, Bill was a 

captain and, shortly thereafter, became the regimental S3. 

The 90th stumbled badly, had many difficulties at first. 

Senior commanders were relieved, mostly with sufficient cause, 

this including one of Bill’s regimental commanders. Another of 

his commanding officers was killed. Bill has described the first 

six weeks of the division’s time in Normandy, saying, “the 90th 

lost 100 percent of its soldiers and 150 percent of its officers. In 

the rifle companies that translates to losses of between 200 and 

400 percent. Those losses compare with the worst of World 

War I.” Colonel George Bittman Barth, an artilleryman, 

succeeded to command of the 357th during those difficult days. 

He knew no one in the regiment, and Bill, as S3, became his 

very strong right hand. The two of them became a very 

effective team and ensured the 357th was “born again” as a 

competent, thoroughly credible combat unit, one which in time 

became comparable with the very best in the whole theater. 

About the 1st of December 1944, shortly before the Battle of 

the Bulge, Bill was named the commanding officer of the 1st 

Battalion of the 357th, a position he held for the rest of the war. 

In the cold, miserable fighting in the snows of the Ardennes, 

Bill very quickly established that he was an unusually gifted 

combat commander, one with the gift of imagination and the 

nerve to carry his ideas through - all the way through. 

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During that period, he more than once in the middle of the 

night lined up one of his companies, or his whole battalion, in 

single file and sneaked them through the German lines. In 

doing this, they always stayed within range of supporting 

artillery9 and the units just could not be dislodged from their 

newIy gained territory. 

There is a recent book out on the 90th Division, War Fmm 

the Ground Up. In the book, there are several references to 

Bill’s bravery and to his very special competence as a combat 

commander. His regiment’s direct support artillery 

commander, for example, wrote during the war: 

Last night DePuy sent a patrol across the river with the mission of 

getting information about German preparations on the other side. 

Not more than a couple of hours later, the patrol returned to 

report they couldn’t cross because they were being 

machine-gunned. DePuy about blew his top. He loaded them in a 

jeep and took them back to the river. He discovered the 

machine-gun fire they had heard was not diiected at them but 

down the river. He ordered the patrol, “By god! Get across now!” 

Not surprisingly, they did. The patrol went as far as the main 

road, along the river, without being challenged and found the 

German trenches full of water and no mines or barbed wire. 

* In another place in the book, Bill is described as “small, 

tough, wiry physique, courageous, brainy, and innovative on the 

battlefield. Became a master . . . of the night infiltration attack 

. . . DeFuy always looked for ways to do the job with minimum 

loss of life. . . . He was one of the Army’s most advanced, 

innovative thinkers.” 

It was because of this exemplary leadership and 

demonstrated competence that, shortly after V-E Day, while 

the division was beginning to prepare itself for the Japanese 

invasion, Lieutenant Colonel DePuy was made the division G3 

at the ripe old age of twenty-five! 

* * * * * * * 
7 

Bill’s other great combat command was as commanding 

general of the 1st Infantry Division- the Big Red One -in 

Vietnam. He assembled-his words were, “the division was a 

magnet for” - a group of leaders and staff officers of unusual, 

even spectacular, capability, some seven of whom became 

four-star officers and thirty more became general officers. 

Several of these distinguished officers are present today. 

Bill found the division tended to be too plodding, too prone 

to do the expected rather than the unexpected. Using the 

aviation assets of MACV, he quickly taught the division, and its 

individual brigades, to be flexible, to move around, to mass 

quickly and surprise the enemy with overwhelming firepower, 

most especially at times when the enemy was trying to ambush 

American units. In the oral history of his Vietnam experience, 

he gives great weight to this aspect of his command. Division 

members, with some pride, called their outfit the 1st Infantry 

Division, Heavy (Airmobile)! In 1967, I met an Air Force 

major, just returned to the states, who had been a ‘“sidewinder” 

with the division- that is, he had been attached by the Air 

Force to the division and flew light planes close to the ground 

while directing Air Force strikes in support of the 1st. Even as 

an Air Force officer, he was immensely proud of being from the 

1st Infantry Division, Heavy (Airmobile), and he wore the 1st 

Division patch on his Air Force uniform to prove it. I don’t 

know how long the Air Force let him continue doing that! 

* * * * * * * 

I had the very great privilege of also commanding the 1st 

Division in Vietnam. There was nothing I was prouder of then 

and nothing I am prouder of now than the division’s great 

military professionalism while I was with it. General George 

Forsythe, commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division, told 

me that he had fought his division beside every division in the 

theater, Marines included. He went on to volunteer that 

“without a doubt,” I repeat, “without a doubt the most 

professional division in Vietnam was the 1st Division.” -Now 
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that is quite a statement from the commander of another proud 

division. Where, where did this professionalism come from? 

Why was it so great in the lst? 

Well, General John Hay, who succeeded Bill as the division 

commanding general, speaking on the twentieth anniversary of 

his command, told a large group of 1st Division veterans the 

answer. He stated the professionalism of the division he 

inherited was superb, that it was specifically due to General 

DePuy. And it continued through General Hay’s successor, 

General Keith Ware, and was certainly there when I assumed 

command on Keith’s death and, hopefully, was still there when 

I left the division‘ I think all of Bill’s successors would agree 

this professionalism, which was inherited from Bill and for 

which he deserved the fullest credit, was unsurpassed. It set the 

standards of performance in every activity, from close combat 

to combat support to combat service support to administration. 

* * * * * * * 

But as justly proud as he was of his command record, nothing, 

nothing was closer to Bill? heart than the 1st Division’s 

scholarship program. It had an interesting origin. Sergeant 

Nunez had been a member of the division’s long-range 

reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) and had been killed. His widow 

wrote the commanding general- to Bill-saying how proud 

Sergeant Nunez had been to be in the 1st Division and she 

hoped his two sons would grow up to be as fine men as their 

father. Bill was so moved that he had the letter published in the 

division newspaper along with a comment the division ought to 

do something for the sons. The very next day, an envelope 

appeared on Bill’s bunk with several hundreds of dollars in it. 

From that grew the idea of scholarships for the Nunez sons; 

then it became a scholarship for the eldest son of every 

battlefield fatality. Now, it includes all children of soldiers of 

the division who die in its service, not only from Vietnam and 

from Desert Storm but to include any current training 
9 

accidents, and scholarships are also available for soldiers 

currently in the division and their families. 

There are also scholarships for children and grandchildren of 

veterans, etc. Today, over $1 million has been given out in 

some 549 scholarships. General DePuy served as head of the 

society of the 1st Division’s scholarship program from the day it 

started until his hospitalization. He gave a great amount of 

time to this program, which was so very close to his heart. And 

he very carefully ensured it was organized to continue without a 

misstep on his passing from the scene. This program brought 

great satisfaction to a truly great American, William E. DePuy. 

* * * * * * * 

I want especially to thank you, Mrs. DePuy -Marge-and 

Bill, Joslin, and Daphne-for the opportunity and very real 

privilege of participating in this memorial service for my very 

great friend of half a century. He was not only a true friend of 

mine but was unquestionably the finest professional soldier 

with whom I served in my thirty-five years in uniform. Bill, I 

salute you. 

* * * * * * * 
.--? . 

-... ..- 

General William E. DePuy 

Remarks by 

General Paul F. German, U.S. Army, Retired 

A husband, a father, is dead. 

Our hearts go out to the family of General DePuy. We, his 

friends and professional colleagues, share their bereavement in 

the limited ways that outsiders can. 

A dis’tinguished officer of the United States Army has passed 

away. Here, the Army, in its ancient ways, expresses mourning. 

Mourn, we all should, for a man whose brilliant mind and 

fervent spirit touched each of us and who has passed from our 

midst. 

It is also fitting, however, that we here, all of us, rejoice in his 

full life of unmatched accomplishment, now inscribed in the 

annals of the Army and recorded in the history of this republic. 

My friends, we have come together to commemorate 

General William Eugene DePuy, who uniquely embodied the 

American warrior ethos during the past seven decades: 

tumultuous, conflict-torn years, encompassing a procession of 

great events that have profoundly affected the attitudes and 

aspirations of every citizen of this country. General DePuy was 

one professional soldier who, in his time, made a difference in 

his chosen life’s work. He was, all his life, a force for the 

improvement of the Army, both in war and in peace. He 

transformed the institution that he served so well. 

DeFuy had a fire within him, a consuming passion to foster 

progress in any responsibility that accrued to him. Mission by 

mission, from the plodding marches of the Louisiana 

Maneuvers to the triumphant drive across Central Europe 

during World War II, from the menial tasks of a subaltern in a 

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mobilizing Army in 1941 to his apotheosis as commander of the 

1st Infantry Division in Vietnam, from his origins in 

mid-America to the highest councils of leadership in this land, 

he brought to his duty cogency, competence, and deep caring. 

And he succeeded! Whenever and wherever he. put his mind 

and heart to a task, he did what he set out to do! 

Some of his achievements loom above the others, but do not 

allow my recounting to obscure the centrality of the intensity 

that he brought to all matters, great or small, within his 

purview. He was a committed man. With all his considerable 

intellectual energies, his physical stamina, and his emotions as 

well, he pursued betterment. I have often thought that his way 

with any problem mirrored the tactics of celerity, suppression, 

and indirect approach that he learned during World War II. If 

his attack promised to stiffen bureaucratic resistance, he 

suppressed objections and moved to flank, or he quietly 

penetrated the opposition to seizeymoral high ground beyond. 

He aimed in all matters at what he sought in battle: progress at 

least cost. 

Fortunately for the United States, and for its Army, General 

DePuy eventually rose to the top of his profession and was able 

thence to influence broadly its future. 

Here was no scholastic, no principle-bound intellectual. 

DePuy was a pragmatist, generalizing broadly and 

advantageously from what he himself had experienced, 

observed, or sensed or from what he understood of reliable 

reports. To convince him, one had to show him how the matter 

at issue worked in combat, or a reasonable approximation of 

combat. He believed that what counted in battle was not what 

the Army’s schools taught, or what weapons were in issue, but 

how American soldiers, sergeants, and officers behaved under 

stress. 

In this respect, I compare him to General George G. 

Marshall, for like Marshall, DePuy distrusted officers who 
13 

yearned for or, worse, depended upon sets of academically 

propounded rules, formulaic solutions for the vagaries of 

combat circumstance. Both taught officers to expect the 

unanticipated and schooled them to cope with surprise as a 

normal concomitant of conflict. Both prized innovators and 

innovations. Both understood that the Army’s principal 

responsibility, and its main occupation in peace or in war, was 

to train for future battle in a place and at a time no man could 

foresee. Both exhibited a personal commitment to ways and 

means of fashioning American youth into combat-competent 

infantry soldiers. 

In the months before he fell ill, I spent hours with General 

DePuy, talking about the past and its portent as he perceived it. 

Once I asked him if, looking back, he would have done anything 

different. He replied that he would have spent more time 

teaching, especially in the years since retiring from the Army. I 

was astonished: this from a general whom I had often watched 

lecturing from down in a foxhole to a gathered ring of company 

leaders on how and why properly to dig or gesticulating before 

the map to show his division staff how to think about the 

campaign they were about to prosecute and to motivate them to 

reach for decisive results or using deft graphics on butcherpaper charts to lead colonels and generals to understand how to 

modernize the Army. I told him that I thought he had done his 

share of teaching on active duty, but he would not be dissuaded. 

General DePuy was, as far as I know, the first commander of 

an Army major command to make extensive use of television 

for training, and I believe that when he retired in 1977 he had 

taught more subordinates through that medium than any other 

general before him. He was the same sort of teacher as 

General Marshall, whom one National Guardsman praised by 

saying that “he makes us understand.” A teacher General 

DePuy was, and a teacher he remained until the end of his life. 
14 

After he retired to his Virginia farm, Highfield, he spent long 

hours writing for publication, sitting at the kitchen table, 

scrawling his prose across yellow lined pads. His themes ranged 

from apologia for minor tactics and grand strategy in Vietnam 

to expositions on sound doctrine for future wars. Usually, he 

wrote for Amy magazine, because therein, he said, young 

.officers would be more likely to read what he wrote, picking up 

that widely distributed periodical when they had time, perhaps 

as a staff duty officer or relaxing at night after duty. 

It is entirely characteristic of the man that one of his last 

compositions was a letter to General Colin Powell, chairman of 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offering suggestions for joint doctrine 

and training. The chairman, then working on the draft of KS 

Pub I, J&O War&e fox the US Armed Forces, found his ideas 

thoughtful and timely. 

Of the many commanders I have observed in combat in two 

wars, General DePuy is the only one I would unhesitatingly 

describe as an authentic tactical genius. He possessed that 

tactical acumen the Germans celebrate, an instinctive, uncanny 

sensing for the location and intent of the enemy and for the ebb 

and flow of a battle. Moreover, his grasp of combat kinetics 

extended to guiding subordinates charged with combat support 

and combat service support: he would make a broad gesture on 

the map, saying, for instance, “we will need, within 36 hours, a 

capability to operate here, for at least a week.” Those 

subordinates planned and executed well aware, however, that 

the general would unerringly detect the slightest inconsistency 

or delay in any of the numerous organizational networks that 

undergird a division in combat. He himself personally 

disciplined his divisional voice command communications in 

Vietnam and set new standards for austere transmissions amid 

stress. He visited his troops often and spoke with individuals or 

groups in a patient, inspirational, tutorial fashion. The soldiers 

under his command knew that their general fought hard, fought 

smart, and fought to win. 
15 

General DePuy was slight of frame but impressive of 

intellect. Original of thought, with an unconventional bias, he 

was inquisitive, perceptive, and pungently humorous. He was, 

in all respects, admirably equipped for the prominent role he 

was called upon to play in American intelligence and special 

operations during the cold war. I have known no other general 

officer so quick as he to absorb complex information, to form 

judgments, and to deliver crisp, cogent decisions in matters 

small or great. 

In 1973, as assistant vice chief of staff of the Army, his 

purview included the major restructuring of the Army of that 

year. He assigned two of his staff officers to spend a month 

studying the problem of how to configure the Army in the 

aftermath of Vietnam. Then, based on their staff study, within 

one week, he decided what to do, persuaded the chief of staff to 

accept his solution, and obtained the approval of both the 

secretary of the Army and the secretary of defense-possibly a 

standing Pentagon record for lightning-like staff action. Out of 

that organizational stroke emerged the U.S. Army Training and 

Doctrine Command (TFL4DOC), a conceptual breakthrough 

that modernized the Army. TRADOC was peculiarly his 

creation, for he was the general staff principal at its birth and its 

first commander: more than any other individual, he 

established its tone and set the azimuth upon which it marches 

to this day. 

He picked that name: Training and Doctrine Command. 

“‘Command,” it surely was, for to the degree that any general 

can shape and guide a major command of the Army, DePuy 

commanded. We, all of us who served in TRADOC, from the 

junior drill sergeant at Fort Jackson through the commander of 

the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, felt daily his 

drive and enthusiasm, his restless’ pursuit of perfection. He 

simply ignored any among us who were unprepared to advance 

with him, but for each of us he deemed able and willing, he 
16 

devised a particular formula to elicit our energetic pursuit of his 

goals. He communicated to us a deep faith in the American 

fighting man. His experience had been that any soldier who 

understood what was expected of him would unfailingly do his 

job, even amid the most terrifying and confused of battle 

circumstances. He taught us to ensure that soldiers knew what 

to do, how, and when. Working for him was always a challenge, 

for we were all hard-pressed to keep up with his ever-active 

mind, but I can attest that I enjoyed under his command more 

freedom of action and more assured support than under any 

other commander for whom I ever served, in peace or at war. 

General DeFuy was a resolute, concerned, bold, adaptive, and 

innovative leader, and like all great leaders, he brought out the 

best in all of us. 

“Doctrine” was one of the main purposes of TRADOC, and 

command at Fort Monroe empowered General DePuy to 

pursue the preoccupation of his lifetime: those ideas that, 

lodged between the ears of soldiers of all ranks, led to 

concerted action under fire. TRADOC, as he conceived it, was 

to serve not just the forces in the continental United States, as 

had its predecessors, but was to serve all the units of the entire 

Army-wherever they might be located, whatever their 

mission- by developing the concepts and the materiel they 

needed for combat and by training soldiers and leaders to fill 

their ranks. With General Robert J. Dixon of the Tactical Air 

Command, he opened a new era of Army-Air Force 

collaboration on how to fight on the modern battlefield, and 

together they sponsored a new genre of doctrinal publications 

addressing joint warfare. DePuy perceived doctrine as an 

operational term, that consensus that enabled tactical, 

operational, and strategic coherence within the force afield, and 

underwrote requirements for new equipment. He sought to 

shape both, to modernize the Army mind as well. as Army 

materiel. He enjoined TRADOC to ready the Army to win the 

first battle of the next war and to develop equipment and 

training techniques so that it could do so fighting outnumbered 
17 

against a well-armed enemy. Victory in that first battle, he 

held, would stem from superior doctrine as well as superior 

weapon systems. For him, the rudimentary combat element, 

the rifle squad, was above all else an idea shared by its 

members, no matter what their numbers, no matter what their 

equipment. For him, a foxhole was an embodiment of crafty 

ways to foil a foe’s attack and to accomplish a squad’s mission 

with minimum loss. He knew that no weapon system, however 

endowed by advanced technology, could function effectively 

without combat-proficient operators, maintainers, and 

replenishers, and he understood that a maladroit tactician could 

compromise the best of these. ‘He perceived battalions as 

instruments for controlling ground with surveillance, fire, and 

movement. Ife described brigades, divisions, and corps as 

systems of systems requiring of a commander, above all else, 

synchronization. Thus, he bade TRADOC: develop, write, and 

teach. 

So began the evolution of contemporary doctrine. General 

DePuy put the doctrinal pot to boil. In fact, in telling us in 

TRADOC how we should work on producing doctrine, he used 

the metaphor of the pot-au-feu on the stove in a French 

farmhouse, the ever-ready stew to which various partakers of 

the family’s meals were expected to contribute vegetables now, 

a piece of meat then. He was certain that TRADOC’s doctrinal 

recipe would not be right with our first efforts. Convinced of 

likely imperfection, he directed that the 1976 version of Field 

Manual 100-5 be published in a loose-leaf, ring-bound 

notebook, the easier to change the manual once better ideas 

were presented. That adaptable edition of F&I 100-5 soon gave 

way to fresh-written successors, but the antecedents of 

contemporary doctrine -that of the Army, and now joint 

doctrine as well-can be traced to DePuy’s black pot on the 

TRADOG stove top. 

“Training” was TRADOC’s other principal objective. I 

doubt if the Army has had in this century a general officer who 
18 

devoted more time and effort to small-unit tactics. TRADOC 

itself came to reflect General DePuy’s determination to 

improve the ability of our Army to succeed in close combat. He 

ruled that his subordinates would evaluate TRADOc”s schools 

and training centers by the performance of soldier-graduates in 

the force, especiahy by their demonstrated combat-related skill 

and knowledge. 

One year ago at his farm, talking about training and its 

importance to the future of the Army, he told me that it was 

easy enough to find a general who understood how to draw the 

arrows across his operation map to the discomfiture of an 

enemy, but that there were only a few senior officers who 

understood what truly happened at the point of those arrows, 

and even fewer who knew how to train soldiers to advance the 

point. General DePuy considered all military training a 

simulation of war, and at TRADOC, he vigorously pursued 

more evocative, more instructive simulations of close combat. 

He inaugurated the Army Training Evaluation Program and the 

training technique known as Tactical Engagement Simulation. 

He launched the progenitors of the equipment and facilities 

now associated with these- the Multiple Integrated Laser 

Engagement System (MILES) and the National Training 

Center. The present-day Joint Readiness Training Center, the 

Combat Maneuver Training Center, the Battle Command 

Training Program, and the Army’s latest forms of simulation, 

such as SIMNET and the Close Combat Tactical Trainer, are 

all lineal descendants of his prototypes. Again, his instincts 

proved to be both reliable and fortuitous. 

Late on a February afternoon in 1991 amid a blowing 

sandstorm in Iraq, the 2d Squadron, 2d Armored Cavalry 

Regiment, was moving in the van of the covering force of VII 

Corps with the mission of finding Iraqi Guard units. Find them 

the squadron did, a brigade equipped with late-model, 

Soviet-made tanks and other armored fighting vehicles dug in 

around the Iraqi Guard’s own armor training center. In five 
19 

hours of combat, heavily outnumbered, the American 

cavalrymen demolished that brigade. This year, General Larry 

Welch, former chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, and General 

Carl Vuono, former chief of staff of the Army, had an 

opportunity to examine that battle in detail with troop 

commanders, platoon leaders, and platoon sergeants who had 

fought the action. General Welch noted that none present had 

previous combat experience, and observing that the 

performance of the American Army in the first battle of 

previous wars had been mediocre at best, he asked them how 

they explained the squadron’s smashing success. Here is the 

recorded reply of one troop commander: 

Sir, this was not our fh-st battle. This was our tenth battle! We 

fought three wars at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, 

California; we fought four wars at the Combat Maneuver Training 

Center, Hohenfels, Germany; and a lot of other simulations like 

SIMNET, the Unit Conduct of Fire Trainer, and the Battle 

Command Training Program. Yes sir, we had been “shot at” 

before. Many times. This war was just like our training. 

General DePuy would have asked for no better response. 

In our talks, he told me that he sensed that the Army was 

making progress. He attributed much of the gain to the Army’s 

decision to employ centralized selection from the most highly 

qualified officers for battalion and brigade command positions. 

However, he also credited doctrine and training- the 

contribution of TFMDOC - for raising the Army’s readiness for 

battle from about the 20 percent level to at least the 60 percent 

level; moreover, he believed that the Army had learned how to 

add to that percentage. He was quite optimistic that, despite 

the structural pruning, the budgetary uncertainties, and the 

strategic amorphism now confronting the Army’s leaders, the 

force would become more proficient, more effective, year by 

year. 

Three decades ago, in a letter to the editor of West Point’s 

alumni magazine, William E.1 DePuy posed a poignant question 
20 

about Army leadership, and about life and death. He had 

visited his regimental commander from the Battle of France, 

George Bittman Barth, on the occasion of that old soldier’s 

retirement. He penned for West Pointers a description of 

Colonel Barth’s taking command after the regiment had been 

badly mauled during its first battle amid the hedgerows of 

Normandy. It was an infantry unit, he wrote, composed’of 

. . . plain, ordinary, bewildered Americans. Hounded by 

misfortune, utterly devoid of leadership, this regiment had lost its 

soul. . 1 . By the strange chemistry of leadership (Cal. Barth’s) 

inner strength, supreme confidence, and bull dog determination 

flowed into the hearts and minds of that regiment and rekindled 

the flame that burned so low . . . his was the magic that turned bad 

into good, which lifted the crushing weight of failure from 

thousands of battered spirits and inspired to devoted sacrifice a 

motley of common men. . . . 

As I walked down the steps of Wainwright Hall into the 

gathering December night I couldn’t help but think that the old 

breed is moving on, and I couldn’t help but wonder where will we 

find the men to fill their shoes? 

William E. DePuy, by his life and work, answered his own 

question. The answer is that our Army found in him a breed of 

leader ready to meet the strains of the Army’s severe 

contraction in the aftermath of Vietnam, prepared to provide a 

sense of direction and of purpose to Americans bewildered by 

the meandering of politics, and battered by the ostracism of the 

American public. The Army found in General DePuy a breed 

of leader who could inspire the entire institution to pull itself 

up by the bootstraps. The Army found in him a breed of man 

prepared to fill the shoes of his predecessors. Indeed, the Army 

found him capable of teaching leaders of future generations to 

take his place when their turn came. 

General DePuy, rest in peace. There will never be another 

exactly tike you, but you have armed your Army for the future. 

Your impress is on the Army of today and the Army of 
21 

tomorrow. When rifles bark again and cannons roar once 

more, American soldiers will fight advantaged by your 

crystalline mind. Rest in peace. 

*U.S GPO 1993 0 756-626 
j 

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