John T. Reed’s blog about military matters
John T. Reed’s review of A Question of Loyalty by Douglas Waller
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Copyright by John T. Reed The 2004 book A Question of Loyalty by Douglas Waller is a biography of Army Air Corps General Billy Mitchell. The book focuses on the 1925 “Court Martial of the Century” which found Mitchell guilty and indirectly forced him out of the Army. This is not a traditional book review. Rather, it is discussed as it relates to the other military articles here at my Web site. Mitchell is a hero of mine Mitchell is a hero of mine. I often refer to him in Web articles on moral courage, or the lack thereof, in...
Good intentions and tiny bits of progress are not enough
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Copyright 2011 by John T. Reed Here is an email I got from an Army sergeant and my response. What he says is typical of the way people who work for the government think about their careers. It is wrong or at least incomplete. And it is bringing down our government. Sir, I have read, with no small amount of inner laughter, many of the articles pertaining to military matters at your website. The Ranger School article was of particular note, as I too look back to that experience almost twenty years ago without enthusiasm. However, having served in the...
Leadership lessons for the military from the Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch TV series
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Copyright by John T. Reed Deadliest Catch, not to be confused with Ocean’s Deadliest, the series that was filming when Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray, is a weekly TV reality series about Alaskan opilio crab fishermen now in its third season. It began as a single documentary about what they described as the most dangerous job in America. It is about eight crabbing boats and their crews fishing for opilio crab in the freezing waters and harsh weather north of the Aleutian Islands near the Bering Strait. What the military claims to be The Deadliest Catch crews are...
Comments on Scott Snook’s ‘Be, Know, Do’ article by John T. Reed
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Copyright John T. Reed Be, know, do Scott Snook is a West Point graduate (’80), husband of a West Point graduate and father of one West Point graduate and two more children who are still West Point cadets. (Jeez, that’s a lot of West Point in one family! May be a record.) He also was a leadership professor there and is now an associate professor at Harvard Business School. He retired after 22 years in the Army as a colonel. He is the author of West Point’s Cadet Leadership Development System training manual. I am a West Point graduate (’68)...
John T. Reed’s military background
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I am a West Point graduate Class of 1968. I also graduated from Army Ranger and paratrooper schools. The Ranger School recommended that I be brought back as an instructor (to my astonishment and dread—I hated the ordeal of Ranger School). I was a platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne Division. I was in several units in Vietnam. I volunteered for all of those as well as a number of things I did not get like a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol unit in Vietnam (one of my West Point classmates with an identical resume arrived in Vietnam the day before...