Prodigal Soldiers: How the Generation of Officers Born of Vietnam Revolutionized the American Style of War (An AUSA Institute of Land Warfare book)
by By Kitfield, James
Category: Political Science , General

The unprecedented display of prowess and efficiency in Desert Storm revealed a military unlike any the nation had ever seen before. From the disarray in the aftermath of Vietnam to the "Be All That You Can Be" campaign in the 1980s, the U.S. armed services did no less than reinvent themselves, with stunning results. In Prodigal Soldiers, James Kitfield chronicles that remarkable revitalization of the military by following the lives of a unique generation of officers, the senior commanders who led the nation to victory in Desert Storm.There is Colin Powell, the nation's youngest and first African-American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose epiphany on leadership came not in Washington, D.C., but in the 1970s as a young commander in South Korea in the midst of anarchy; Chuck Horner, the irreverent combat pilot who watched the Air Force fall into the habit of lying to itself in Vietnam, and who was seemingly at the end of his career before being called on to lead the air war; Barry McCaffrey, the infantryman wounded three times and nearly killed in Vietnam, who went on to become Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf's most aggressive division commander and the most highly decorated general in uniform; Adm. Stan Arthur, the decorated naval aviator who had to temper the Navy's fierce streak of independence to fight a joint-service war; and Walt Boomer, the laconic Marine commander from Tennessee whose own experience as a grunt in Vietnam helped him to face an agonizing decision that seemed to pit the good of his beloved Corps against the lives of his young Marines.In a tightly woven narrative tracing the lives of these officers through three decades, Kitfield reveals how their experiences as young men in Vietnam changed forever their ideas about how wars should be fought and what is worth dying for. In the dark aftermath of Vietnam marked by racial tension, drug abuse, and insubordination, each of the services confronted a demoralization within the ranks that threatened far more than the outcome of a single war. Significant social upheavals, including the end of the draft and an increased reliance on the reserves, and integration of women into the ranks, also pulled the military into new and uncertain directions in the 1970s.Tactics and training were revised as military leaders abandoned the old warfighting model of wearing an enemy down with industrial might in favor of a hotly debated strategy of gaining technological superiority and limiting casualties. Visionary mavericks in uniform provoked Congress to enact the most sweeping reorganization of military command structure in forty years, heralding an era of joint operations that drew synergy from the armed services.Prodigal Soldiers is the stirring tale of the American military's renewal and redemption.