Joseph DeFrancisco – Battery Commander – Part Six
A Dream Fulfilled
Again the Army was good to its word in sending me to graduate school right out of Vietnam. I went to Rice University in Houston, a very good small school noted for engineering, but I went there for military history. Rice was one of the schools West Point used to train history instructors, all based on the presence of Dr. Frank Vandiver, one of the nation’s top military historians of the day and then Provost of the University. So I went there to study under him. I just had a marvelous time.
It was a two year masters program and I met lifelong friends in the program. There were five of us Army guys, all just out of Vietnam and all with two tours. There were two infantryman, two armor officers and me, a field artilleryman – we were all studying various phases of military history.
Dr. Vandiver was in the process of writing a biography of General John J. Pershing (commanded American forces during WWI). We each wrote a thesis on some aspect of Pershing’s career. My grades at West Point were not all that good except for history, but I won a prize for my masters thesis, which was a great source of pride for me.
From Rice I went to Ft. Leavenworth for the Army Command and General Staff College for a year.
The United States Army Command and General Staff College develops leaders for full spectrum joint, interagency and multinational operations. It serves as the first of the leadership programs leading to senior command.
From there I went directly to West Point to teach military history in 1974. I taught a seventy-five minute course twice a day, six days a week to seniors … and it was a blast. I taught a lot on the Civil War, the two World Wars, some on Korea, a big block on Napoleon, and what we called the “Great Captains” before Napoleon: Alexander the Great, Caesar and Hannibal.
When I said I had to go prepare for class, my wife Lynne would say, “No, you’re just going to read that stuff you love. You’re not working, you’re having fun.”
It was very fulfilling and very rewarding. I taught at West Point for three years and then spent a year in the Office of the Dean. After four years at West Point I was ready to move on.
Rapid Fire Promotions
One of the beauties of the Army is you get to do a lot of different things.
I had been promoted to major the year I went to West Point. In order to progress you had to have “troop duty as a major,” and I was running out of time. I was fortunate that on my next assignment in Germany I had three echelons of command in a three year period. First I was on an artillery brigade staff, and then I went to a battalion as XO (executive officer second in command), and then I served on the VII Corps Artillery staff. (The entire VII Corps deactivated after Desert Storm). As a result, out of Germany I went to Ft. Lewis, Washington where I commanded an artillery battalion, which was another intermediate goal of mine and another great assignment.
From there I went to the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania, which is another one of those important steps you have to take in order to progress.
From there I went to the Pentagon as Chief of Army War Plans, then to another job in the area of strategy and policy, whose title had a string of letters too complicated to describe. These were wonderful jobs and a great two years at the Pentagon. During this time I got promoted to full colonel.
From Teaching History To Making It
Joseph DeFrancisco now becomes a high level participant in the major military events of his time.
Panama
I left the Pentagon in 1988 and went to Ft. Ord, California to take command of the 7th Infantry Division Artillery. At the time the 7th Infantry Division was the Army’s only light infantry division. My division artillery had three direct support battalions, and one general support battalion.
It was during that time that Operation Just Cause occurred just before Christmas of 1989. The U.S. essentially invaded Panama to capture the strongman dictator Noriega and put him in jail.
Noriega did not have a real Army, he had a bunch of thugs. These were not pitched battles. Still the US suffered 23 killed and 325 wounded. As I recall we lost the better part of a Navy Seal unit that was killed trying to capture Noriega. They just landed at the wrong place at the wrong time. As far as artillery is concerned, we used artillery more for intimidation than for indirect fire. We fired on checkpoints; we fired illumination; we also direct-fired into a couple buildings to entice the occupants to surrender, which they did.
It was a wonderful operation that took only a couple of months. Operation Just Cause was the first time in my experience that the U.S. military did a lot of things right: a multi-service, multi-unit operation that included airborne, mechanized and light infantry, Air Force and Army helicopters all brought together from different places in the U.S. to converge on Panama at the same time.
The real value of artillery during that operation was fire support coordination, which was more of an asset than actual firepower. As usual our artillery guys – our forward observers, our recon NCOs and specialists (MOS 13 F) – had a better communications link than the infantry. We called in the vast majority of the Army helicopter air strikes because our artillery guys knew how to do it and had the connectivity. The Panamanians, the bad guys, did have mortars so we had counter mortar radar, upgraded versions of what we had at Sherry and very effective. The outstanding thing was that everything worked when we got in there. We did the job quickly and we got out quickly.
In addition some of my battalion commanders took on non-artillery roles in what we call non-standard missions, such as force protection of installations and running convoys. This was nothing new to artillerymen, who are versatile, smart guys. They did a great job on non-standard missions in addition to the artillery fire support. It was no different in Vietnam, and would be the same in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Return To The Pentagon
Right after Panama I was selected in late 1991 to be XO to the Secretary of the Army, another stepping stone job and highly competitive. As it turns out my commander in the 7th Division had that job when he was a colonel and he recommended me for it. That’s how my name got funneled up. I had to go for an interview, was fortunate to be selected, and subsequently received my first star (promotion to brigadier general).
The Secretary of the Army is the highest ranking person in the Army, the top guy in command, even senior to the Army Chief of Staff (the highest uniformed officer in the Army). He’s a civilian political appointee, who has to be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
The Army Secretary at that time was Michael Stone, a wonderful person, a successful businessman, and a very wealthy guy. He decided he wanted to give something back to the country that had given so much to him. So he went into government service. He became one of our top officials in Egypt as the representative for the Agency for International Development, a job he held for a number of years. Then he came to the Army where he held a number of Assistant to the Secretary of the Army positions. He was ASA for financial management; then Under Secretary of the Army, and finally became the Secretary under President George H. Busch.
Mr. Stone was Army Secretary for the whole First Bush administration, meaning he was there for Desert Shield and Desert Storm. In fact I went to work for him the day before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. So I did not participate on the ground, but I participated seven days a week out of the Pentagon. I spent two years as his XO, another wonderful job that was supposed to be for a year, but Secretary Stone asked me to stay another year. I say, “He asked me.” But when the Secretary of the Army asks you to stay another year there is really on one answer.
Half The Battle Is Knowing What You Want
The Other Half Is Sticking To It
After two years as his XO Secretary Stone asked me what I wanted to do next. He said, “I’ll give you wherever job you want.”
I said, “I want to be an assistant division commander.” (This would be an infantry unit command with multiple support units from other branches.)
As an artilleryman I figured that I was best suited for that job because I had a lot of experience in maneuver units. I had been with and around the infantry since Vietnam. My first tour with the 1st Cav put me in combat with the infantry during fighting around Hue, the relief of Khe Sanh and the A Shau Valley Incursion. Then my battalion was with the 9th Infantry Division at Ft Lewis, Washington – so I was with infantry guys again. I did not command them, but lived with them and worked closely with them. Then I commanded the 7th Infantry Division Artillery at Ft Ord, California for the Panama operation, again in close proximity to the infantry. I had been at every level with the infantry, so it was a natural progression to be an assistant commander to an infantry division.
Instead I was offered the Corps artillery assignment at Ft. Sill, but I did not want to do that. I thought it would be too narrow a job, still all artillery and I wanted a broader job. So I said again I wanted to be an assistant infantry division commander.
Fortunately the Army listened. I became one of the two assistant division commanders of the 24th Infantry Division at Ft. Stewart, Georgia. This was the first time I was in the direct chain of command of infantry troops. This was something I wanted to do, because ultimately I wanted to be a Division Commander, and I knew this job would better my chances. I held that job for a year.
South Korea
Then in 1993 I was promoted to two star (major general) and went to Korea as Operations Officer for all forces in South Korea.
The organization was a collection of joint commands, so involved that its new Operations Officer needed an hour and a half briefing just to explain its structure. General DeFrancisco’s comments are here presented in outline form for purposes of clarity.
It was a complex set of four different organizations:
A United Nations Command (UNC) composed mainly of U.S. and Korean forces but included also small contingents from other nations
A Combined Forces Command (CFC) of Korean and U.S. forces
S. Forces Korea (USFK) was a joint command of U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine forces
And the Eighth Army composed solely of U.S. Army forces
UNC, CFC, and USFK were all commanded by the same Army four star while the Eighth Army was commanded by an Army three star.
I was operations officers for all four of those organization, each of which had a deputy commander reporting to me. I had:
A two-star Korean general as my deputy for the UNC and CFC
A Marine colonel for USFK
And an Army colonel for the Eighth Army.
This was another really interesting job. Kim Il-Sung was still in charge in North Korea. We had nuclear crises; we had border incursions; we had the North shelling the disputed islands. We had emergency after emergency. All a lot of excitement, and all due to the great people I worked with.
A Call To Return
While I am in Korea I get a call to return to Ft. Stewart to become the commanding general of the 24th Infantry Division, where I had been an assistant commander. My hope to put myself in line for a division commander position seemed to have worked; I never guessed it would be back with the 24th and that it would happen so quickly. I had been gone less than a year, so there were still a lot of people I knew and had worked with.
Major General De Francisco
Commander, 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized)
Interviewed at Hunter Army Airfield
During my command of the 24th we executed a number of overlapping deployments. I sent troops to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for about five months, and deployed a battalion plus for the Haitian Incursion.
The Haiti operation was sanctioned by the United Nations to restore the deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. As the invading force was in route the Haitian leadership capitulated. Commanding general Hugh Shelton’s mission changed in an instant from military invader to diplomat, whose task was now to work out a peaceful transition of power.
I sent troops to Guantanamo Bay, which at the time was not the prison it is now. It was primarily a holding area for Cubans and Haitians fleeing their countries for the U.S. I sent mess personnel and Military Police, in another of those non-combat roles we so often were called on to perform.
At one point I had people in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Haiti and Guantanamo Bay, in addition to the deployments in the U.S. It was a very exciting and very enjoyable assignment.
Enough Fun
I’m getting ready to leave the division, then I got selected for a third star (lieutenant general) and assigned as the Deputy Commander in Chief of Pacific Command in Honolulu, Hawaii. This was 1996. The CINC (commander in chief) at the time was a four-star Navy Admiral and I was his deputy. It was a huge command with Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine forces deployed from the west coast of the United States, including Alaska, all the way through Hawaii, Korea, Japan and Thailand. It all came under the command and control of CINCPAC – Commander in Chief, Pacific Command.
Following this assignment it was time to leave active duty. There were only about thirty-five three-star generals in the Army and maybe ten or eleven four-stars. Things either worked out or they don’t at that level. There were no opportunities at the time enticing enough for me to stay, and I had thirty-four years worth of active duty. Lynne and I essentially had had enough fun in uniform. It was time to retire.
