Real Leadership

Just how bad were things in the 1970s? Private Ralph Peters remembers:

IN 1976, I joined the U.S. Army as a private. Our military was broken. My first unit, in Germany, had trucks built in the 1940s, inadequate winter clothing, inept medical care and an atmosphere of pessimism. We were not “combat ready.”

Crippled by Vietnam, the non-commissioned officer corps had hit bottom