cawacko
Well-known member
A true badass and also a USC Trojan. Arguably one of our greatest generals.
From Wiki:
"In Vietnam in March 1970, Schwarzkopf was involved in rescuing men of his battalion from a minefield He had received word that men under his command had encountered a minefield on the notorious Batangan Peninsula,
he rushed to the scene in his helicopter, as was his custom while a
battalion commander, in order to make his helicopter available. He found
several soldiers still trapped in the minefield. Schwarzkopf urged them
to retrace their steps slowly. Still, one man tripped a mine and was
severely wounded but remained conscious. As the wounded man flailed in
agony, the soldiers around him feared that he would set off another
mine. Schwarzkopf, also wounded by the explosion, crawled across the
minefield to the wounded man and held him down (using a "pinning"
technique from his wrestling days at West Point) so another could splint
his shattered leg.
One soldier stepped away to break a branch from a
nearby tree to make the splint. In doing so, he too hit a mine, which
killed him and the two men closest to him, and blew an arm and a leg off
Schwarzkopf's artillery liaison officer. Eventually, Schwarzkopf led
his surviving men to safety, by ordering the division engineers to mark
the locations of the mines with shaving cream. (Some of the mines were
of French manufacture and dated back to the Indochina conflict of the
1950s; others were brought by Japanese forces in World War II). Schwarzkopf says in his autobiograpy It Doesn't Take a Hero that this incident firmly cemented his reputation as an officer who would risk his life for the soldiers under his command."
Schwarzkopf told his men that they might not like some of his strict rules, but it was for their own good. "When you get on that plane to go home, if the last thing you think
about me is 'I hate that son of a bitch', then that is fine because
you're going home alive." - Schwarzkopf
From Wiki:
"In Vietnam in March 1970, Schwarzkopf was involved in rescuing men of his battalion from a minefield He had received word that men under his command had encountered a minefield on the notorious Batangan Peninsula,
he rushed to the scene in his helicopter, as was his custom while a
battalion commander, in order to make his helicopter available. He found
several soldiers still trapped in the minefield. Schwarzkopf urged them
to retrace their steps slowly. Still, one man tripped a mine and was
severely wounded but remained conscious. As the wounded man flailed in
agony, the soldiers around him feared that he would set off another
mine. Schwarzkopf, also wounded by the explosion, crawled across the
minefield to the wounded man and held him down (using a "pinning"
technique from his wrestling days at West Point) so another could splint
his shattered leg.
One soldier stepped away to break a branch from a
nearby tree to make the splint. In doing so, he too hit a mine, which
killed him and the two men closest to him, and blew an arm and a leg off
Schwarzkopf's artillery liaison officer. Eventually, Schwarzkopf led
his surviving men to safety, by ordering the division engineers to mark
the locations of the mines with shaving cream. (Some of the mines were
of French manufacture and dated back to the Indochina conflict of the
1950s; others were brought by Japanese forces in World War II). Schwarzkopf says in his autobiograpy It Doesn't Take a Hero that this incident firmly cemented his reputation as an officer who would risk his life for the soldiers under his command."
Schwarzkopf told his men that they might not like some of his strict rules, but it was for their own good. "When you get on that plane to go home, if the last thing you think
about me is 'I hate that son of a bitch', then that is fine because
you're going home alive." - Schwarzkopf
