[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 108 (Thursday, June 29, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9336-S9337]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


    TRIBUTE TO GEN. CARL E. MUNDY, JR., U.S. MARINE CORPS COMMANDANT

  Mr. HEFLIN. Mr. President, as most of my colleagues know, Gen. Carl 
E. Mundy, Jr., Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps since 1991, will 
soon be retiring.
  I have had the personal pleasure of knowing General Mundy as a close 
friend and fellow Marine for several years. He has enjoyed an 
outstanding career and has compiled an impeccable record with the 
Marine Corps.
  I like to think of General Mundy as a native son of Alabama. He was 
born in Atlanta, but moved to the State Capital of Montgomery as a 
young boy. He graduated from Sidney Lanier High School and went on to 
attend Auburn University. Following his graduation from Auburn, he 
received his commission as a second lieutenant and began his 
illustrious military career.
  As I have said on previous occasions, I know my Senate colleagues 
from Georgia disagree with me over the issue of General Mundy's state 
of allegiance. I suppose we can correctly say that he was born in 
Georgia but that Alabama is proud to consider him an adopted son.
  General Mundy is a highly decorated officer and a graduate of the 
Marine Corps Command and Staff College and the Naval War College. He is 
a recipient of the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, 
two Navy commendation medals, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.
  Carl Mundy rose through the ranks from his early service in the 
Second Marine Division, aboard the aircraft carrier Tarawa and the 
cruiser Little Rock, to become a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as 
the Marine Corp's top soldier. In between, he served numerous tours of 
duty in Vietnam, including stints as operations officer and executive 
officer of the Third Battalion, 26th Marines, and Third Marine 
Division. He was also an intelligence officer with the Third Marine 
Amphibious Force Headquarters.
  Prior to being named as a brigadier general in 1982, General Mundy 
served as aide de camp to the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps; 
as commanding officer, Second Battalion, Fourth Marines, Third Marine 
Division; as chief of staff, Sixth Marine Amphibious Brigade; and as 
commanding officer, Second Marines, Second Marine Division and 36th and 
38th Marine Amphibious Units.
  He quickly climbed the Marines' career ladder, advancing to major 
general in April 1986 and lieutenant general in March 1988. He was the 
commanding general of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet Marine Force when he 
became commandant 4 years ago after the retirement of his also-renowned 
predecessor, Gen. Al Gray.
  Among the most endearing qualities of General Mundy--one of which 
most of his colleagues and subordinates are not fully aware--is that of 
his family life. I know he has a loving wife Linda, a wonderful 
daughter, Betsy, and that he has had a great influence on his sons, who 
have followed in his footsteps. Like their father, both Carl III and 
Timothy graduated from Auburn University and now serve as Marine Corps 
officers. They have both adopted his unyielding dedication to the 
Marines. General Mundy lives and breathes the Marine Corps, both in the 
field and at home.
  In living and breathing the Marine Corps for many years, Gen. Carl E. 
Mundy, Jr., has served his country with great distinction, pride, and 
honor. He has been an outstanding commandant who has guided the Marines 
through some difficult times. On behalf of the Senate, we thank him and 
wish him a long, happy, and healthy retirement. At the same time, we 
hope that we have not seen the end of his public service. ``Semper 
Fidelis.''
  I have a copy of an article which appeared in the summer 1994 edition 
of Auburn Magazine entitled ``First Among The Few.'' It gives a 
detailed account of General Mundy's life and career and captures the 
essence of this consummate Marine and military leader. I ask unanimous 
consent that this article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Auburn Magazine, Summer 1994]

                          First Among the Few

                        (By Mary Ellen Hendrix)

       ``Semper Fidelis.'' Always faithful. He wanted to drop out 
     of high school to go fight in Korea. Why stay in school? 
     After all, he'd known he wanted to be a Marine ever since he 
     was five years old and the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He'd 
     grown up absorbing the aura of a nation which hailed its 
     Marines for bravery in a world blanketed by war. Wake Island, 
     Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima. The names echoed in the movies the 
     youth's father carried his only son to see. John Wayne may 
     have glamorized the boy's dreams on the big screen, but the 
     real stories of real Marines became the genesis of the young 
     patriot's tunnel-visioned goal.
       By the time Carl E. Mundy, Jr. reached high school, Korea 
     was the war of the day and the would-be Marine determined he 
     would trade his schooling for defending his country. His 
     mother, who was from a family of 13 children, and his father, 
     who was one of seven, determined otherwise. They had not 
     achieved college degrees; they were adamant that their only 
     child continue his schooling. The two generations struck a 
     deal--one year of college, then the younger Mundy could 
     choose his own path.
       If Mundy couldn't go to Korea, he tried for the next 
     closest thing--military school at The Citadel. Before his 
     senior year in high school, however, his parents had moved 
     from western North Carolina to Montgomery, Alabama.
       ``The Citadel was enormously expensive,'' Mundy said. 
     ``Auburn was land-grant, in-state, 60 miles up the road; I 
     could work for my meals and be a dorm counselor to cut down 
     on college expenses. So, initially, coming to Auburn was an 
     economic move. But it only takes your first 10 days at Auburn 
     to realize there's nowhere else like it, and that's where you 
     really wanted to be in the first place. I quickly became a 
     very happy rat on the plains of Auburn. After one year of 
     college, the war ended and Auburn was a pretty good place, so 
     I stuck around.''
       Mundy left Auburn in 1957 with a degree in business 
     administration and an ROTC commission as a second lieutenant. 
     Thirty-seven Marine years later, Mundy has completed his 
     third year as Commandant of the Marine Corps over a total 
     active force of nearly 174,000. A four-year appointment, the 
     command of the service branch carries with it a seat on the 
     Joint Chiefs of Staff.
       Mundy's office in the Navy Annex less than a mile down the 
     road from the Pentagon is elegant--stately, as one would 
     expect. The grown-up boy with a dream of being a Marine 
     climbed single-mindedly to the pinnacle of the Corps, and the 
     weighty charge fits him well. Sabers and silver and family 
     portraits mingle with the fine furnishings and flags--and an 
     Auburn football presented to Mundy from Coach Bowden last 
     year.
       ``I had a lot of fun while I was at Auburn,'' reminisced 
     Mundy with a smile, ``and managed also to graduate. It was a 
     formative time an education in values and an education in 
     friendships, many of which persist today. There was a spirit 
     at Auburn that said much to me about loyalty to an 
     institution, which is very much a part of being a Marine.
       ``The Southern values I had grown up with, patriotism if 
     you choose to call it that, loyalty to friendships, honesty, 
     all those things were well manifested at Auburn. Those four 
     years helped me form and reinforce my own views of the 
     future.''
       Mundy's four years on the plains were filled with 
     activities he loved squeezed amongst his classes--the Marine 
     Corps reserve, ROTC, commanding the Auburn Rifles, Chewacla, 
     Phi Kappa Tau (which he called his second fraternity because 
     ROTC was his first), drilling on the parade field. ``I have 
     always been fascinated by and bound toward military life,'' 
     he said. ``That was reflected in my readings, studies, 
     associations, and role models. Vince Dooley was one of those 
     role models and still is a good friend. He was a senior when 
     I was a freshman and, of course, was a campus hero. He went 
     into the Marine Corps for his two years, came back as a 
     lieutenant, and was my reserve platoon commander at Auburn my 
     senior year.''
       Thus, Mundy crafted a Marine life of his own at Auburn--and 
     away from Auburn during the summers when he attended training 
     sessions. Once he graduated, he said, ``the Marine Corps was 
     nothing but excitement and absolute joy and fulfillment.'' 
     (He also 

[[Page S 9337]]
     married in 1957 the former Linda Sloan of Waynesville, North Carolina, 
     whom he had known since fourth grade.) Talking about his 
     career now, more than 35 years later, Mundy still carries 
     that same purity of admiration for his Marine Corps, even 
     under the potentially disillusioning clouds of post-Cold War 
     military downsizing and D.C. politics.
       This consummate Marine, naturally a team player, downplays 
     his individual accomplishments. But even a glance at his 
     resume impresses. After early assignments with the 2nd Marine 
     Division, he pulled duty abroad the aircraft carrier Tarawa 
     and the cruiser Little Rock, then served as an instructor at 
     Marine Basic School and as Officer Selection Officer.
       Vietnam was ``his'' war, and he served there 1966-67 as 
     operations officer and executive officer of the 3rd 
     Battalion, 26th Marines, 3rd Marine Division, and as an 
     intelligence officer in the Headquarters, III Marine 
     Amphibious Force. in the mid-seventies he was among the 
     troops evacuating Saigon. Most of Mundy's decorations 
     resulted from his time in Vietnam--two of them, a Bronze Star 
     and Purple Heart, from an engagement at Conthien. He was 
     wounded in the leg when a mortar shell hit his base near Khe 
     Sanh; after an aid-station patch-up and a little limping, he 
     was on his way.
       ``I was a battalion operations officer in those days,'' he 
     said. ``I remember some nights nearly being overrun up around 
     Conthien. There were a few tight moments there, but that 
     comes to all of us who experience combat. Wehn someone is 
     shooting at you, or incoming artillery rounds are hitting 
     around you * * * there are many, many brave men who performed 
     very well who still wished their mama was right there with 
     them from time to time.
       ``Combat has been characterized as days and hours of sheer 
     boredom broken by moments of sheer terror. And that's 
     probably right. Vietnam was an infantry war, a jungle war, at 
     close range. You usually saw the people you were shooting at, 
     and they saw you, and sometimes you would physically engage 
     them.
       ``Close combat is an adrenaline endeavor. It's win or lose, 
     kill or be killed.''
       Mundy doesn't shy away from the grim realities. ``We train 
     people how to kill because that is our business. As 
     unappealing as that may be to those who say it's revolting to 
     think of killing another human being--and, indeed, it is--
     that is why you have us. We train people, if you will, in the 
     art of killing. That means we train gun crews, machine 
     gunners, riflemen; we train you how to fight with a bayonet, 
     in hand-to-hand combat, all those things. But there is no way 
     of conditioning somebody to kill somebody else. At that 
     point, it becomes an instinctive, kill-or-be-killed 
     situation.
       After Vietnam, Munday's climb through the ranks paralleled 
     his breadth of assignments, including: Commanding Officer, 
     2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division; Chief of 
     Staff, Sixth Marine Amphibious Brigade; and Commanding 
     Officer, 2nd Marines, 2nd Marine Division, and 36th and 38th 
     Marine Amphibious Units.
       After promotion to brigadier general in 1982, he served as 
     personnel procurement director; Commanding General, Landing 
     Force Training Command, U.S. Atlantic Fleet; and as 
     Commanding General, 4th Marine Amphibious Brigade. After 
     promotion to major general in 1986, he was Director of 
     Operations at Marine Headquarters before being named 
     lieutenant general in 1988.
       Following were assignments as Deputy Chief of Staff for 
     Plans, Policies and Operations at Headquarters and Operations 
     Deputy to the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Commanding General of 
     the Fleet Marine Force Atlantic, the II Marine Expeditionary 
     Force, the Allied Command Atlantic Marine Striking Force, and 
     designation to command Fleet Marine Forces which might be 
     employed in Europe; and promotions to general and present 
     duties in 1991.
       By the time of Desert Storm, Mundy was providing forces 
     instead of fighting with them. Among the troops sent to the 
     desert was one of Mundy's three children, Tim, ``to the 
     chagrin of the older brother and the father who sat back and 
     watched the baby of the family go off to war.''
       Mundy's other children are Betsy and Carl, III (Sam). Sam 
     and Tim are both captains in the Marine Corps, with Sam 
     selected for promotion to major in the next year. Also like 
     their father, they're both Auburn graduates; Sam is the Class 
     of 1983 and Tim 1987.
       One of the wars Mundy fights these days is a war of 
     numbers. ``I think the biggest challenge I have or will face 
     is being able to maintain a viable Marine Corps in the face 
     of the drawdowns that we have experienced in the U.S. 
     forces,'' the Commandant said. ``The amount the American 
     taxpayer is spending on defense right now is the lowest it 
     has been in 45 years; percentage-wise, defense expenditures 
     are pre-World War II.''
       Mundy arrived to the Commandancy on the heels of the 
     Pentagon's Base Force proposal, which he called ``a rather 
     unanalytical decision to take about 25 percent off the top of 
     all the services.'' He immediately went about proving the 
     analysts wrong, overseeing a bottom-up review of his sacred 
     Corps which asked the key question, ``What do we have to do?
       They had to do a lot as it turned out. They had to train, 
     they had to guard the 140 embassies and consulates around the 
     world, etc. ``We built ourselves from the bottom up,'' said 
     Mundy. ``Then I went to see General Powell, the Secretary of 
     Defense, and took it to the Congress and said, `You're 
     cutting the Marine Corps too dramatically.' That worked.''
       Mundy's review concluded that the Corps needed about 
     177,000 Marines to continue its duties. They now stand at 
     approximately 174,000, a cut of about 22,000 since Mundy took 
     over in 1991. While that number is much better than the 
     original target of 159,000, he still feels the strain on his 
     budget and his people. ``Out of every dollar, 77 cents is 
     spent to pay or take care of people. When you're trying to 
     operate on 23 cents out of every dollar, it's very difficult 
     to maintain equipment, training, and facilities and to take 
     care of Marines and their families to the degree that you'd 
     want.''
       The full seriousness of Mundy's statement comes through 
     especially in light of events in recent years. Last year 
     Mundy ordered a flight suspension for 48 hours to review 
     safety and training procedures after a series of fatal 
     mishaps with six Marine helicopters and a fighter jet that 
     resulted in the deaths of 12 servicemen.
       In addition to taking care of equipment and training, Mundy 
     has attempted to deal with supporting Marine families--which 
     was his intent with last year's media-labeled ``singles 
     only'' order. The directive's focus, he said, was to counsel 
     new recruits on the stress of deployment, which averages 12 
     months of the first four years of active duty, and to help 
     the young Marines assess their readiness for marriage. The 
     order, which was reversed, initially would have capped 
     married incoming Marine recruits to about five percent.
       But the Commandancy is no stranger to politics, and Mundy 
     recognizes and deals with that part of his job. Even the 
     political hornet's nest of gay rights in the military is met 
     with a philosophy of historical perspective. ``The military 
     services are a microcosm of society,'' he said. ``The nation, 
     at the present time, is focused on a number of issues that 
     pervade the military as well. We've faced societal changes, 
     integration, for example, in the military that have worked 
     out fine. In fact, the Armed Forces are way ahead of society 
     in general in terms of cultural diversity.
       Whatever the politics of the day, Mundy's motive of 
     management has always been the good of the Corps. He cares 
     fiercely for his people and defends their mission. ``The 
     Marine Corps consumes in total about five percent of the 
     Department of Defense budget. You don't save anything by 
     taking down the number of Marines and you lose a lot. We are 
     the force of economy in all of our arsenal.
       ``The Marine Corps has long been a crisis response force. 
     It can fight in major land operations but, by and large, we 
     send smaller organizations of Marines around the world to 
     take care of the brush fires, if you will.''
       With the many ``hot spots'' in the world--Haiti, Somalia, 
     Bosnia, North Korea, etc.--the Marines don't seem slowed down 
     by the lack of a Cold War. When asked whether intervention 
     for humanitarian reasons really makes a long-term difference, 
     Mundy said, ``In some cases I would answer `yes,' in some `we 
     hope so,' and in one or two `probably no.' After a typhoon 
     swept through Bangladesh in 1992, we swung some Marines who 
     were on their way back from the Gulf War through there and 
     did some nation building. We helped them re-establish their 
     nation. Yes, that is a very worthwhile involvement of 
     military forces.
       ``That generally was a focused, specific goal. Panama has 
     returned to a relatively stable situation, and, in five 
     years, we'll be passing over the Panama Canal to that 
     government. In Somalia, if you get outside Mogadishu, which 
     is the center of the clan conflict, you'll find crops are 
     growing and people aren't starving where before they were. So 
     the intervention there will have to be measured in a longer 
     period of time as we watch what occurs with the various 
     factions in Mogadishu.
       ``You can only help so much and then the leadership has to 
     be seized by the nation itself. So, there are some true 
     success stories and some that were not as successful.''
       Although Mundy's term runs out in July 1995, he said his 
     plans are only to ``make it until July of '95. This is a 
     consuming job, and I owe it to you and everybody else who 
     pays my salary to focus on this job until the finish line.'' 
     In a job in which one would expect every day to be a new 
     crisis, he said there is a routine of sorts. ``I wear two 
     hats. I wear the hat of a service chief, as the Marine 
     Commandant, and my responsibilities are to recruit, train, 
     organize, and equip the Marine Corps. I also wear a hat as 
     the Marine member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is a 
     national security position as an advisor to the Secretary of 
     Defense and the President.''
       The Joint Chiefs meet two to four times a week and take 
     priority over other duties. Any crises, Mundy said, result 
     from national security situations such as the Haitis, Koreas, 
     Bosnias, or Somalias. ``In my day-to-day job as a service 
     chief, the crises tend to be much fewer.''
       Having entered his final year as a Marine, Mundy still 
     shuns talking about any personal glories when asked to 
     reflect on his career. ``I have never really focused upon an 
     image, a legacy. If I could be remembered well by the people 
     with whom I've served and as a good Commandant, that would be 
     good enough for me. I'd just like to be remembered as a good 
     Marine.''
     

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