Farewell to a Great Soldier

[Joey Liberal]

General Bernard Rogers; former NATO commander ushered in Army reforms
GEN. BERNARD W. ROGERS (Washington post)

By Matt Schudel
Washington Post / November 9, 2008
WASHINGTON - Bernard W. Rogers, 87, a four-star general who introduced major reforms as Army chief of staff in the 1970s and who later was the top military commander of NATO, died Oct. 27 in Virginia after a heart attack.

He lived in McLean, Va.

After bringing changes in recruiting and training to an Army whose morale had been depleted by the Vietnam War, General Rogers became the longest-serving military chief in NATO's six-decade history.

He strengthened the trans-Atlantic military alliance's presence across Europe and, according to a 1985 Business Week article, was "widely viewed as the most effective NATO chief since the first, Dwight D. Eisenhower."

He replaced Alexander Haig as supreme allied commander in Europe in 1979 and was elected to an unprecedented four two-year terms as NATO's military leader.

General Rogers repeatedly warned against relaxing Western military readiness in the face of what he saw as a powerful Soviet threat.

He instituted a doctrine of warfare emphasizing mobile, high-impact strikes that has since become a dominant military strategy.

When the Reagan administration signed a treaty with the Soviet Union requiring each side to withdraw intermediate-range missiles from Europe, General Rogers called the agreement foolish.

He said the Warsaw Pact's superiority in foot soldiers and conventional weapons left NATO forces at risk of being quickly overrun.

His stance drew a pointed rebuke in 1987 from Secretary of State George Shultz, who called the general's comments "way out of line." General Rogers soon retired.

General Rogers, who spent 44 years in uniform, had an unusual combination of talents as a combat commander, intellectual, and statesman. While addressing a NATO conference in 1979, the former Rhodes scholar said, "One cannot help but to be impressed - perhaps 'depressed' is the better word - by the folly, futility, and waste of war as a means of resolving man's problems."

Bernard William Rogers was born in Fairview, Kan., and graduated in 1943 from the US Military Academy at West Point, where he was elected first captain of cadets.

After World War II, he was briefly an aide to General Mark Clark, commander of US forces in Austria.

In 1947, General Rogers received a Rhodes scholarship to England's Oxford University, from which he received bachelor's and master's degrees in economics and philosophy.

He was a decorated infantry commander in the Korean War and held intelligence positions before becoming executive officer to General Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 1962.

As assistant commander of the First Infantry Division in Vietnam in 1966 and 1967, General Rogers was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army's highest award for valor after the Medal of Honor, for leading a successful counterattack against a Viet Cong raid on a South Vietnamese special forces camp. He rallied troops on the ground and personally scouted enemy positions from a low-flying helicopter under heavy fire.

After two years as commandant of the corps of cadets at West Point, General Rogers took command of the Fifth Infantry Regiment in Fort Carson, Colo., in 1969. At a time of falling morale, he made sweeping changes in the daily routine of soldiers by abolishing kitchen duty, reveille, roll call, and Friday night "GI parties," in which soldiers scrubbed the barracks for Saturday inspections.

He established councils for junior officers, enlisted men, and racial minorities to express their concerns and set up a Greenwich Village-style coffeehouse, complete with folk singers. Old-line officers were aghast, but enlistments soared, and General Rogers became known as one of the brightest thinkers in the Army. He continued the reforms as Army chief of staff from 1976 to 1979, improving training programs and developing plans for a modern, quick-strike force. He also took steps to make the Army more friendly toward women and minorities, calling on commanders to "eliminate any discriminatory handling of soldiers."

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

[Arctic Dave]

1. Old soldiers never die....