General Impressions -- `Stormin' Norman' Could Have Just As Easily Gone Fishing

I first met "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf when he was a nobody.

Well, not exactly a nobody. As a three-star general in command of I Corps at Fort Lewis, Schwarzkopf oversaw more than 160,000 active and reserve troops from Hawaii to Alaska in 1986 and 1987.

But I wasn't prescient enough to foresee that this affable, no-nonsense general would go on to the Persian Gulf and command one of the swiftest and most lopsided victories in military history.

At the time, he remarked he was unhappy at having to leave Fort Lewis after less than a year (he'd also served there as a brigade commander from 1976 to 1978) and return to the Pentagon.

"If the Army had let me serve out my three years at I Corps and then said it had nothing more for me to do," Schwarzkopf writes in his new autobiography, "I'm sure I'd have retired happily. I'd probably be living in Oregon or Washington state to this day, catching a hell of a lot of salmon."

But instead the general who had served as deputy commander of the invasion of Grenada was eventually put in charge of military planning for the Middle East. Schwarzkopf had just revised contingency plans from worrying about a Soviet invasion of Iran to worrying about an Iraqi attack on its neighbors when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

So does he believe in destiny? "I certainly don't discount it," the retired 58-year-old general said in Seattle yesterday, in town to sign his "It Doesn't Take a Hero" (Bantam, $25) at Kirkland's Costco. "Too many things have happened in my life to dismiss it."

At age 12, H. Norman (the "H" doesn't stand for anything; his father passed on his name but dropped the "Herbert" he had detested) found himself in Cairo, Saudi Arabia and Iran. His father, also a general, was working to block Soviet influence in the region after World War II.

In Vietnam, Schwarzkopf dreamed of being wounded the night before being hit.

Now he is a celebrity, greeted by fellow diners at restaurants and besieged by big crowds when signing books: more than 2,000 in his hometown of Tampa, 1,600 in San Diego, 1,200 in New York.

In Kirkland, the line of book buyers wound around the store and out into the parking lot. The session was marred only by a 43-year-old Vietnam veteran from Seattle who squirted Schwarzkopf with strawberry syrup and shouted that the profits from the book came from spilled American blood. He was arrested by Kirkland police on suspicion of assault.

Schwarzkopf, who was unfazed, reportedly told the crowd everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. He was applauded.

"There is no such thing as a private life anymore for me and my family," he said. "I've explained to them that it's not Norman Schwarzkopf. I just remind Americans about how good they felt about the country and the unity the country felt" after the war.

But there is more to it than that. Schwarzkopf is likable, despite his reputation for an explosive temper and shrewd ambition. He was likable at Fort Lewis and the only change now is that he seems more relaxed after victory, a hero's welcome, military retirement, and a book advance reported to be $5 million.

Other than buying his college-age daughters new cars to replace their beaters, Schwarzkopf said, "My lifestyle has not changed one bit."

He is a legitimate combat hero, with two silver and three bronze stars from Vietnam. But Schwarzkopf took his title from his remark once that "It doesn't take a hero" to order troops into battle, but rather to be in battle.

That kind of perspective, and his ability to convey both his confident competence and a grounded, common-man sensibility, proved almost charismatic in the Gulf War. It was an overdue antidote to the cartoonish "Patton" stereotype many Americans have of the top brass. In reality, officers of Schwarzkopf's rank usually have to be very smart, politically astute and personable to have beaten the intense competition.

A bird watcher as a boy and an avid hunter, fisherman and hiker today, Schwarzkopf turned away hundreds of job offers after the Gulf War to accept only one to date: a membership on the board of The Nature Conservancy, an environmental group that raises money to purchase and preserve critical lands.

"I am a conservationist," he said. Duty in West Germany impressed him how a nation the size of Oregon but with 33 million people preserved so much of its environment. "It shows you it can be done."

So how does he reconcile his love of nature with the image of the hardened professional warrior, who in his book graphically recounts washing his hands and arm frantically to get the stench of putrefying bodies off his hands after loading them onto a helicopter?

"I did not enter the Army to kill people," Schwarzkopf said. "I did not enter the military to go to war. Most people in the military are more anti-war than the most strident protesters because we have been there and know how terrible it is. I entered to serve my country."

He said the greatest victory for the U.S. Army was not the Gulf War, but the bloodless 45-year standoff along the Iron Curtain in Europe that prevented war. And he advises that we pick our shooting wars carefully.

"The war in the Gulf was straightforward," he said. "We had the support of the entire world. We had 40 nations involved." Intervening in a place such as Yugoslavia, he warned, would be far different. "We'd better be sure we understand what military solution would be possible," he cautioned.

Schwarzkopf's book, co-written with Fortune magazine's Peter Petre, is entertaining and interesting to those curious about military affairs. Reminiscent in its style of the biography "Iacocca," it will also draw those interested in management or career success.

But the book is surprising. Only 21 of its 571 pages are devoted to the 100-hour ground war against Iraq. Those pages contain almost no combat detail because, the general explained, he didn't experience any: He was back at headquarters. "I was the theater commander. It isn't my place to write about the details of the ground war," he said. "The voice we use throughout the book is that of Schwarzkopf's view at that time."

It is not a hindsight book, and offers few opinions outside Schwarzkopf's level of expertise. The wisdom of intervening in Vietnam, Grenada or Panama, the Reagan arms buildup, and Washington's pre-war dealings with Iraq get little or no assessment.

Instead the book recounts Schwarzkopf's entire life and, with it, a line officer view of the decline and resurgence of the U.S. Army in the post World War II-era. It helps explain how an Army so miserably defeated in Vietnam performed so well in the Gulf.

Schwarzkopf puts particular praise on the pay reforms that led to all-volunteer military of smart recruits beginning in the late 1970s and the painful overhaul of Army strategy and training at the same time.

In contrast, the book only obliquely mentions the hardware buildup of the Reagan administration. While Schwarzkopf defends the performance of U.S. equipment, and especially its assurance of complete air superiority, he ranks machines lower than people and training. "One of my division commanders said that if we'd had the Iraqi equipment and they had had ours, we still would have won," he said.

While the book recounts the general's impatience at the pace of some civilian decision-making and some minor squabbles about the timing of the attack, the overall impression is flattering to the Bush administration: Schwarzkopf ultimately got what he asked for in the gulf and the civilians stayed out of his way.

But critics who dismiss the allied victory as a walk-over are also wrong, he said. Saddam's standing army was bigger than that of the United States. The campaign netted 80,000 prisoners, destroyed 85 percent of the deployed tanks, 90 percent of artillery, and 50 percent of other armored vehicles.

Schwarzkopf said he still doesn't know how many Iraqis were killed, many of them entombed in bombed bunkers, and didn't try to find out. The book is critical of the obsession with body counts in Vietnam.

While agreeing the military can shrink with the demise of the Soviet Union, he warns against heedless cuts. "It's very easy to trim the military and very hard to build it up," he said. "Be sure we aren't going to need it."

What next?

Schwarzkopf said he is looking for a second home in the Pacific Northwest, but would like to see his son, a sophomore, finish high school at their home in Tampa.

But he's not certain he's ready to fade away. He has had hundreds of offers from businesses and colleges, and while he has not endorsed any presidential candidate, he said he would not rule out political appointment to a post such as secretary of defense.

"I might just like to take some time off," he said. But "I'd serve my country."

Science reporter Bill Dietrich formerly covered the military for The Times.