My Share of the Task(244)
“The last two years wore”: Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs (Penguin, 1999), 19.
834 other members of my class: “The Class of 1976 graduated 835 cadets on 2 June” (United States Military Academy, “1976 Report of the Superintendent,” p. 2), while others graduated later in the summer, bringing the total for the class of 1976 to 855 members (United States Military Academy, “2008 Register of Graduates and Former Cadets,” Biographies 3–459).
CHAPTER 3: THE ARMY IN WHICH I SHOULD LIKE TO FIGHT
historical and fresh political animosities: Bernard K. Gordon, “The Third Indochina Conflict,” Foreign Affairs, (Fall 1986), 66–68.
“There was no fighting”: “Transcript of President Carter’s Statement on the Hostage Situation,” New York Times, April 26, 1980. Carter delivered the address at 7:00 A.M. from the Oval Office on Apirl 25, 1980. Hours earlier, at 1:00 A.M., the White House had released a short statement about the operation. Mark Bowden, Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam (Grove, 2006), 468.
seized sixty-six Americans: Of the sixty-six hostages they initially seized, the Iranians held fifty-two captive for the next fourteen months. “The Hostages and the Casualties,” Jimmy Carter Library and Museum website, July 5, 2005.
Many Iranians believed: Ray Takeyh, Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs (Oxford University Press, 2009), 39.
the hostages’ release: Bernard Gwertzman, “Reagan Takes Oath as 40th President; Promises an ‘Era of National Renewal’—Minutes Later, 52 U.S. Hostages in Iran Fly to Freedom After 444-Day Ordeal,” New York Times, January 21, 1981.
first out of their planes’ doors: James M. Gavin, On to Berlin: Battles of an Airborne Commander, 1943–1946 (Viking, 1978), 105.
two discs in his back: Stephen E. Ambrose, The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys: The Men of World War II (Simon & Schuster, 1998), 239.
carried a rifle: Gavin, On to Berlin, 103.
high-profile weapons: David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (Ballantine, 1992), 22. Ironically, the staffer who suggested Kennedy “adopt” the Green Berets was Daniel Ellsberg; he later said the excesses of the Green Berets were a final motivation for leaking the Pentagon Papers (United Press International, “Ellsberg: Beret Case Caused Disclosure Move,” Modesto Bee, July 15, 1971).
“mark of distinction”: Alfred H. Paddock, Jr., U.S. Army Special Warfare: Its Origins, rev. ed. (University of Kansas Press, 2002), 156.
“unrest and ethnic conflicts”: John F. Kennedy, “Remarks at West Point to the Graduating Class of the U.S. Military Academy” (West Point, NY, June 6, 1962), The American Presidency Project website.
“enveloped in the sinister”: “Mystery of the Green Berets,” Time, August 15, 1969.
hostage at two locations: Charles Cogan, “Desert One and Its Disorders,” Journal of Military History (January 2003), 208.
more than four million people: Cogan writes there were four million (“Desert One and Its Disorders,” 206), while Bowden estimates “more than 5 million” (Guests of the Ayatollah, 435).
outskirts of Tehran: The site was fifty miles outside Tehran (Cogan, “Desert One and Its Disorders,” 210).
forty-four aircraft: Ibid., 211.
columns of suspended dust: James L. Holloway, “The Holloway Report,” Joint Chiefs of Staff, August 23, 1980, 9.