Best Friends Deputy Chief, Medical Service Corps Sept 2011 - October 2011. This was an easy and hard assignment. Easy in that I enjoyed a robust staff and BG Dennis Doyle could not be easier to work for. I made the Colonel assignments and many other strategic decisions, and he always backed me up – even with his buddies. I put together a Strategic Planning Conference and we put together some good strategies for the Corps next three years. Assignment was hard in that I remained frustrated with the politics of the AMEDD and Army. Chief of Staff of the Army and Surgeon General voiced full support for getting me selected to General Officer, but in the end neither did. Some of this may have had to do with an investigation I was forced to do on the commander of Madigan Army Medical Center. It was a General Officer level 15-6, but TSG and Chief of Staff wanted me because they stated I would do the best job and I had no fear of high-ranking officers or reprisals. I was assigned two very sharp LTC Physicians to help me during the investigation but chose to leave their names off the official report in case there was blowback – and there was --- at the Secretary of the Army level. I did a phenomenal job but found out the West Point handshake/influence goes deep in general officers ranks and with Sec Army. No regrets as I was 59 and clearly was not tolerant or supportive of the political winds in the military any longer. The years since have just proved to me that I would not have adjusted to the detrimental political correctness that now defines our government and DOD. Of note, our last set of military living quarters, 14 Staff Post Road Ft Sam Houston, was also the last set of army quartersfor a true American Hero – BG (Ret) Billy Mitchell. He commanded all allied flying forces in WWI and is credited with the creation of the US Air Force. Unfortunately for the military, he was a brilliant man of great integrity who refused to buckle under to intense political pressure from the president of the United States and senior military officers. Though he would later be proven correct in every conviction, he was brought up on Court Marshall charges, busted in rank to Colonel and put out of the Army while living in Staff Post #14. After his death, President FD Roosevelt posthumously promoted him to Major General and awarded him the Congressional Medal of Honor.
