My War - Chapter Seventeen

Rule Number One when hosting a dinner for a General in time of war: don’t make a soufflé. Generals move on a timetable that is known only to them - like whistles only dogs hear.

This factoid was not known by the general population back home, but Desert Shield/Desert Storm was orchestrated in theater by a cast of Generals who, at one time or another, rotated through Fort Lewis, Washington. You could start with the famous Norman Schwarzkopf and work your way down the list. My husband Mike’s last assignment at Fort Lewis introduced him to many of these officers. Because of that past association, he and I wanted to host a dinner for whomever we could round up from those days. They were all working around the clock, not to mention, they were also all under a political microscope. An evening at home was the best thing we thought we could do for the war effort at this point in time.

The second in command to Schwarzkopf was a three star General named Calvin Waller. On 14 January 1991 I cooked a meal of beef stroganoff for General Waller and his immediate staff. I’d hoped to pull this event off during the holidays, but I never could arrange a time that fit into their schedules. That should not have surprised me, since they were working twenty-four hours, seven days a week like everybody else. The two-star General who first told Mike about OPM-SANG back at Lewis was in-Kingdom too. He and his aide, a former neighbor of ours at Fort Lewis, had been guests in our home earlier in the fall, so we included them for a return visit.

I worked very hard at keeping the meal simple. I wanted them all to relax, to be in a home setting, and generally to have a rare night off. Make that a rare two hours off. I used my everyday dishes. The children ate with us. (My second born, nine-year-old son sat right next to General Waller.) There were no fancy appetizers or frozen drinks with little umbrellas. I wanted these folks just to enjoy a family meal, as much like an evening in their own home as possible.

We tried to keep the dinner low profile in the neighborhood too. We didn’t say anything to our friends or Mike’s bosses. Name-dropping is an art form in the military. That was the last thing we wanted to be accused of, especially in this fishbowl community. And for Mike, it was not career enhancing to brag to your one-star boss that you were having a three-star to your house for dinner. Oh, yeah. And you, the one-star, are not invited. Yeah. Not smart, especially when you are only a lowly major.

The evening went well. As anticipated, the troupe was a little late. Apparently General Schwarzkopf kept them all in a meeting ranting (Stormin’ Norman-ing) about the fact that we still had soldiers billeted in hotels with underground parking garages. He was not about to be the commanding general of another disaster like the one that befell the Marines in Beirut in the 1980s.

I would have been the last person to take issue with General Swartzkoff or anybody else doing every thing humanly possible to protect our soldiers. Which is why I knew enough to honor Rule Number One for hosting a dinner for a General in time of war. No soufflés.

So, keeping the stroganoff on the warmer and not making the noodles until everyone was in the villa and holding a drink was standard operating procedure. I thought at the time, and still do, that everyone had a pretty good time. The only moment of tension came when General Waller was talking about being the hottest news item on the planet for a couple of days recently. He’d given a radio interview during which he expressed his opinion that the allied forces were not yet ready to go to war by the approaching deadline, which, at that point, was less than a week away. Being as this opinion from the second in command for the entire operation was in direct opposition to the official line coming from the first in command, the commander in chief, and several powerful cabinet secretaries, General Waller found himself on something of a hot seat.

You have to remember this was 1991, in the very first days of the twenty-four hour news cycle. A radio interview wasn’t expected to go viral. In fact, the term “going viral” was unknown at the time. General Waller was probably one of the first human beings ever to have the experience that would become commonplace in the next decade. But what he had was the very same the reaction that also became commonplace: This is not fun, and if only I'd known then what I know now, I would never have put myself in a position for this to happen.

During the course of General Waller relating to the rest of us the details of his experience and expressing not just a little bit of regret and resentment for that experience, he mentioned how nice it was to be out of the media spotlight for an evening. My husband grinned at me. With all the mental telepathy I could muster, I sent him the direct message not to mention my journalism background, which in all honesty, at that point in my life was absolutely miniscule. But no. Mike refused to be waved off this one.

“Well, sir, to be perfectly honest, I have to disclose to you that my wife does have a degree in journalism,” Mike said.

The General inhaled abruptly and held it. He shot his aide a look that said, "What in Hell have you gotten me into, and more importantly, how are YOU getting ME out of it?!"

This might have been the biggest mistake of my yet to be launched professional career, but with all sincerity I replied, “Don’t worry, sir. This entire evening is off the record.”

The General let out his held breath and my would-be “gotcha moment” went by the wayside. CNN and FOX and the rest of the media universe would say I blew it. I wouldn’t. That night I was first and foremost an Army wife – not a journalist.

But what an interview I let go by. It was hard to imagine that I had the second in command of the largest military operation since World War II sitting at my dining room table asking me for seconds of “the best broccoli I’ve ever had” and making jokes about a talk radio show in the States that had been taking a telephone pool on whether or not he should be fired.

It’s been twenty-two years at this writing. General Waller retired from the Army in November of that very same year, and tragically died of a heart attack at the age of 58 only five years later. I feel safe sharing some of his quotes from that night all these years later.

He said Colin Powell might be offered the Vice President slot for George H. Bush’s re-election (which he lost to Bill Clinton.) He said Bush was likely to drop Dan Quayle anyway, or let him self-destruct, which he was likely to do at any time. In his opinion Quayle was vain and surrounded by people who didn’t do their homework. (Twelve years later I would be interviewed by one of those staffers for the position of press secretary for a Congressman from Georgia. I didn’t get the job even though I was bright enough not to mention these comments.) Waller did describe Quayle as “personable” though he laughed when I asked him if Quayle was charming. The General was not about to call another man “charming.”

Mike helped me serve dessert and coffee. The kids said good night and went off to bed. The General and his staff stayed and told war stories from past days and predicted what war stories might come about in the coming days. Finally, General Waller signaled it was time to leave.

Mike and I escorted him to the front door of our villa and onto the front porch. And what to our wondering eyes should appear lined up at the curb in front of our quarters? Three white Cadillac limousines with blacked out windows, obviously one lead vehicle, the General’s vehicle, and one chaser vehicle. Something told us the neighbors probably noticed.

And that wasn’t all. Posted at each of the four corners of our house was a uniformed guard standing at attention complete with dark glasses and an MP3 (submachinegun) at the ready. We didn’t have our own private yard. The neighborhood kids played in the common area between the villas. Oh well. Not that night.

I was not doing a good job of looking unimpressed. The General’s aide noticed my reaction and came over to reassure me that all was well. This was all SOP for wherever the General went these days.

“I understand. I’m just sorry I didn’t know they were out here. I would have sent out a plate of food for each of them,” I stuttered.

“OK. That’s OK, Kathleen,” said General Waller. “We like to keep them hungry.”

I laughed – and hoped he was kidding!

The next day the hot question around the compound was, “What Mafia Godfather did the Taylor’s have over for dinner last night?” And to his credit, our own commanding General never said a word about it.