General William E. DePuy: Preparing the Army for Modern War

9. School in London: Command in Schweinfurt

 School in London; Command in Schweinfurt It was the most relaxing year of my life; it was a very nice sabbatical. —DePuy on his Imperial Defence College experience The most striking feature of the test operations from start to finish was the unquestioned ability of Colonel DePuy, the battle group commander. —BG Andrew Goodpaster, Chief Umpire, 1961 Late one night in the early 1970s, Lieutenant Colonel Colin Powell found himself alone with his boss, Lieutenant General DePuy, in a small executive aircraft as they returned to Washington from a field visit. During that late-night flight, DePuy proffered some advice to the promising young officer: “Never become so consumed by your career that nothing is left that belongs only to you and your family . Don’t allow your profession to become the whole of your existence .” At that moment, Powell later wrote, he understood why he and the others on the staff had never seen the inside of DePuy’s home. DePuy’s advice was given just at the time when Powell was sorting out his personal and professional sense of self.1 Bill DePuy practiced what he preached. A year-long sojourn in England permitted him, Marj, and the children to spend a lot of time together, a closeness that each family member recalled with fondness. Bill, Marj, and their children all felt their stay in England in 1960 was special for them as a family and for the lasting friends they made there.2 DePuy’s lifelong love affair with things British, as well as his reticence to discuss his family in a work setting, is captured in his understated response to an interviewer’s invitation in 1979 to “tell us about your experiences” at the Imperial Defence College. 11 General William e. DePuy DePuy replied, “I’ll just say that it was a very pleasant interlude for me and the family. I happen to enjoy the British. The course lasted for a year and was a very high-level type of thing. We were concerned about things like the Commonwealth and the world, and we traveled around a lot, including a trip to the Middle East. Also, I met a lot of people who are still friends. It was the most relaxing year of my life; it was a very nice sabbatical.”3 This crisp response reveals DePuy’s capacity to compartmentalize and his brevity, precision, and understatement in his professional speech and writing. Invited to be expansive on a subject dear to his heart, he nevertheless was brief. DePuy scrupulously separated the professional from the personal, and the question was posed by two military officers in the course of an interview with a retired four-star general for the edification of fellow soldiers and historians. This probably goes a long way toward explaining why DePuy was so brief. Despite his reputation as a brilliant briefer and lecturer, his notoriously intense demeanor in pressing for answers to his own questions, and the fact that intimates knew him to be witty, funny, and a wonderful storyteller, he would have seen this interview as the place for professional commentary, not personal matters. His self-effacement at such moments conforms to two stereotypes: that of the understated English gentleman and that of the laconic American plainsman. Fortunately, his children were more expansive in describing their year in England. Bill DePuy moved his family to London in December 1959. He placed his children in British schools and found a flat in London before beginning his one-year course at the Imperial Defence College . Daphne, born 22 November 1954 in Frankfurt, Germany, was the youngest and might fairly be characterized as “daddy’s little girl” from her birth to her father’s death. One of her earliest recollections of her father was his announcement that they were going to England at the end of 1959. Her first sight of New York City was followed by the grand adventure of crossing the Atlantic by ship and the special treat of watching films and eating in restaurants. “My parents were not moviegoers or restaurant frequenters,” Daphne recalled. “Our life was very much home-centered.” DePuy showed his children around the ship and “played with us the whole time.” He took enormous pleasure from all aspects of family life, then and later. School in London; Command in Schweinfurt 11 Having arrived in England, brother Bill was packed off to boarding school, the first...