Making a military phone call in Germany in the late Sixties was maddening.  I was stationed in Goeppingen, which is 30 miles East of Stuttgart and about a hundred miles South of Nuernberg.  I was assigned to the 4th Armored Division and our troops had relocated around Nuernberg and Bamberg.  So every call to the field was a real adventure.

First, I would dial O to get a Goeppingen operator (all were military or German civilians working for the US military).  I would say, “Hello Goeppingen, give me Stuttgart.”  Then, if I were lucky enough to get a Stuttgart operator, I would say, “Stuttgart, give me Nuernberg.”  Each connection seemed to drain the energy out of the line.  If I actually got a Nuernberg operator, the voice would be distant and low.  I would be shouting, “Nuernberg, give me Bamberg (or Erlangen or Ansbach).  The funny thing about Ansbach is that it is only 50 miles up the road, but you had to run through 250 miles of telephone wire to call them.  I can remember telling my wife as I left for work,  I have to call Bamberg this morning.”  It was that big a deal.

Sometimes, everything would click like magic.  I would give the Bamberg operator the number and the next thing I would hear was a busy signal.  Then, I would try to compose myself and start over.  “Hello Goeppingen, give me Stuttgart.”  Whenever anyone in the office was making one of these calls, everyone knew it.  Shouting to be heard on the other end was business as usual.  Screaming when the call went dead was also quite common.

Our Deputy Staff Judge Advocate was Major Joe Donahue.  After I had been in the office for about six months, Joe was promoted to lieutenant colonel.  Both colonels and lieutenant colonels referred to themselves on the phone as colonels.  So, the former Major Donahue was now a telephone colonel.  Pretty heady stuff.

On the particular day in question, one of our legal clerks was talking to a battalion legal clerk in Bamberg.  When a battalion completed a special courts-martial, they had to assemble the record of trial and send it to us for review.  The trial had been completed for over two months and we were still waiting for the record of trial.  Our clerk was very loud, as required, and very annoyed.  Joe Donahue heard the commotion and asked our legal clerk what was wrong.  After he found out about the late record of trial, he took the phone.  He said, “This is Colonel Donahue, let me speak to your Adjutant.”  The battalion adjutant ran all the administrative duties such as processing record of trial.  When the lieutenant got on the phone, Colonel Donahue told him that he wanted the record of trial at Headquarters (Goeppingen) the next day and hung up.  The crowd that had gathered, including me, was really impressed at how Joe had got things done.

Of course, things didn’t get done and it is great when you can learn tough lessons without being the subject of the lesson.  The Adjutant went to his battalion commander to report that he needed to send a vehicle the next day to Headquarters to deliver a record of trial.  The battalion commander was mad and reported to his brigade commander, who was also upset that someone at Headquarters was jerking them around.  The brigade commander called the 4th Armored Division’s Chief of Staff (both full colonels) and asked, “Who the hell is Colonel Donahue?”

Joe had to go explain to the Chief of Staff what he had done.  I suspect Joe spent most of his time listening.  I learned that promotions are great, but you need to be cautious, because there is always someone out there senior to you.  Also, I had been chewed out on the phone any number of times by senior officers.  Sometimes, I deserved it, and sometimes, I didn’t.  But, I could usually tell when the officer on the other end was playing for the crowd in his office.  I resented that and made a decision. Whenever I had to call a subordinate on a difficult subject, I made sure that no one else was in my office.

The good news is that the little blip didn’t keep Joe from having a fine career, and I became a real student of human nature.

Four years was the longest I ever stayed in one place during my military career.  It was the Pentagon.  The first challenge is to figure out how to get to your office (and back out of the building).  Then, little by little you learn how to get to other places.  Most who have worked there will be glad to explain how to navigate the building.

The Pentagon has ten corridors and five rings.  It is generally agreed that the first thing you do is go to the center most ring (A Ring) and circle around until you find the numbered corridor you want.  The corridors are like spokes on a bicycle wheel.  They connect the A Ring with the B, C, D, and E Ring.  The outer most E Ring actually has windows that look out on the world.

Being a JAG officer, I was assigned to the Office of The Judge Advocate General of the Army (Administrative Law Division).  The Admin Law Division acts as legal adviser to the Army Staff.  My first week on the job, my boss came into my office.  He handed me a single sheet of paper which I was certain was one of our Ad Law interpretations.  He directed me to read it.  This is one of my worst scenarios.  I read ever so slowly and if I hurry, I read poorly.  Having someone wait for me to finish reading puts me in a panic mode!  I read quickly, but didn’t understand.  I had to say something.  So, I said, “This is really something.”  He smiled and said, “We do this kind of exciting work every day.”  After he left my office, I read the interpretation two or three more times.  It still didn’t make any sense to me.

My office had a door.  My room was carved out of a much larger bullpen and was smaller than the cell space required for Federal inmates.  The problem with partitioning  off rooms like mine was that it had no ventilation and the light switch was in another room.  I could be working away and all of a sudden the room would go pitch black.  When, after three years, I turned over my little office to my successor, I presented him with my flashlight.

I was a major for my first year and a half.  The problem with that is that the typical worker bee in the Pentagon is a lieutenant colonel.  So, every day I would be dealing with senior officers who were directing me to review their request next.  Every requester claimed to be handling the most important issue in the Army.  They would tell me, “This has to be on the Chief of Staff’s desk this morning,”  or “They are voting this matter in the Tank this afternoon.”  I didn’t even know where the Tank was.  To be completely honest, I didn’t know we had a Tank.  One Lt. Col. told me that his issue had general officer interest (I assumed that every matter in the Pentagon had general officer interest).

The good news was that I had great support from my bosses.  I would tell the demanding Lt. Col. (very courteously) that if his matter really had to be handled next, he should go back to his office and have his Executive Officer call the JAG Executive Officer about the importance of the matter.  By the time our Exec had notified my boss, we would be grinding away on the project.  In my four years, Colonel Bob Clarke, our Exec, never got a call.

As the Chief of the (Admin Law) General Law Branch, my office was the repository for all the crazy letters that came to the Army.  The Chief of Staff’s Office would send all crazy letters to the JAG.  The JAG would send them to Admin Law.  Admin Law had three branches, Legislation Branch, Personnel Law Branch and General Law Branch.  So, I got them.  Some of these people were getting messages from other planets through the tin foil on their TV rabbit ears.  Sounded like an Air Force issue to me.  We didn’t answer many of these letters.  We had one major general who became unhappy with the Army leadership.  So, he resigned (it would have been less crazy to retire at full pension, but he resigned).  We would hear from him every time his name appeared in print stating that he was a retired major general.  He was convinced that stating that he was retired was part of an Army conspiracy and it would make him crazy (that’s just a figure of speech, he was already crazy).

During my fourth year in the building, I became the Chief of the Administrative Law Division.  I actually had a window looking out at Arlington Cemetery and the heliport.  Many years after I left the Pentagon, this office was destroyed on 9/11. 

The Judge Advocate General was Major General Wilton Persons.  Also, he was the only other officer who had been the Chief of the Admin Law Division as a Lieutenant Colonel (it’s a full colonel’s slot).  He gave me some great advice.  He said, “Jack, 95% of the stuff that comes across your desk is not important.  But, we have to be right on that other 5%.  So, don’t sign anything you don’t understand.”  And, I didn’t.  If I was confused, I had a number of smart attorneys to help me out.

For the first 13 years of my military career, whenever the Army came up with a really dumb policy, I blamed it on the Department of the Army.  After working at the Department of the Army, I came to realize that the really dumb stuff came from DOD.