‘Soldier’s General’ Heads Operation

Early one morning at Ft. Sill, Okla., Tommy R. Franks sat with a cup of coffee in his hand, his long legs propped on a table. It was 1992 and he had just come in from the desert to take a staff job as assistant commandant. He was confiding to an old friend that, more than anything else in the field, he missed the soldiers.

“I like to watch ‘em, I like to smell ‘em, I like to hear what they’ve got to say,” Franks said. And his friend knew what he meant--the gritty scent of dirt, grime, diesel and sweat that comes off a soldier who’s been working hard.

Now, as commander of the military operation in Afghanistan, Franks is what the Army likes to call “a soldier’s general,” an officer with battlefield experience who would rather be out among his troops than directing the war from behind a desk.

“If he had his preference, Tommy would be out front leading them right now,” said retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Randall L. Rigby, who was in the office with Franks that morning. “We were talking about how much better it was to serve with soldiers than to serve in a staff assignment. He was advising me to cherish the time I had in command.”

Franks, a 56-year-old Army general, commands U.S. military operations in a 25-nation stretch that includes Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Persian Gulf states. He is to the fight in Afghanistan what Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf was to the Persian Gulf War, but with considerably greater challenges, military experts say.

Desert Storm was a high-tech campaign against a defined enemy that America watched play out on television. This time the enemy is not a country but a fanatical regime and a slippery band of stateless terrorists. One two-star general said neither Franks nor any other conventionally trained leader in today’s Army is fully prepared to fight “because they don’t think like terrorists.”

There has been talk in Washington that Franks’ background as an artilleryman is ill suited to an unconventional war that will rely on special forces and airstrikes.

But his supporters say he brings to the job field experience from Vietnam to Korea to the Persian Gulf that trained him in the use of a variety of tactics, from running small special operations units to leading more sweeping ground force battalions.

As onetime head of the Army component of the Central Command he now leads, Franks spent considerable time in the region and knows the Islamic and Central Asian cultures. His gregarious personality enables him to relate to a range of people, from enlisted men to sheiks, and many of the foreign military commanders in the region know him, said retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who recommended Franks to succeed him when he retired.

“I think that’s a bum rap,” Zinni said, dismissing any suggestion that Franks’ beginnings as a young artillery officer mean he lacks the broad experience to fight an unconventional war. “That’s patently ridiculous. It’s like saying Robert E. Lee was an engineer so he couldn’t run an army.”

Franks has described himself as “just a good ol’ boy from Texas” who loves Mexican food, margaritas and a good cigar. He is plain-spoken with a penetrating stare, known for pulling no verbal punches.

“I have personally been on the receiving end of some of that bluntness,” Rigby said. “Sometimes it gets down and dirty, and he can hang in there with the best of them.”

Born in Oklahoma, he was schooled in Midland, Texas, where he picked up a drawl he can thicken at will. The Midland roots he shares with President Bush are purely coincidental. (He was named to head Central Command by President Clinton in June 2000.)

Although Franks was not a memorable student--he dropped out of the University of Texas at Austin--he was a rising star almost as soon as he joined the Army, earning decorations for his tour in Vietnam. His country-boy exterior masks his military savvy, people who know him say.

“Don’t let that good ol’ boy approach fool you,” said a retired three-star general who was a fellow battalion commander with Franks. “He gets you sucked in and then slams the door on you. He’s a damned good soldier and up to any test.”

Franks’ first test in anti-terrorism came shortly after he took over the Central Command, with the attack of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Aden, Yemen, which killed 17 American sailors. He later testified before Congress, perhaps presciently, that the threat of terrorism was “less predictable and potentially much more dangerous than we have seen in the past.”

He has been tracking terrorist activity ever since, preparing U.S. forces for airstrikes that began last Sunday with this challenge: “Today the eyes of the world will be upon you.” He added a vote of confidence that the attackers had “grossly miscalculated” the wrath of a U.S. response.

Lean and rangy, Franks stands in contrast to the bear-like Schwarzkopf, whose televised battlefield lessons fascinated the media and instructed the nation in the art of modern war. Franks, who will oversee operations from a guarded headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., is proving to be more camera averse; indeed, some networks are begging him to open up a little.

“Of all the central commanders I’ve seen, he’s the toughest to get to talk to the press,” said a veteran Army public affairs official. “I’d hate to be his [public affairs officer] right now.”

Some believe a more public military voice could become important if the war escalates. Americans have become accustomed to hearing directly from a field commander, and so far the televised faces of this conflict have primarily been Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

“If this should become prolonged, it would be important to have someone who is a field commander to assure the American people,” said defense analyst Lawrence Korb. “Rumsfeld has done a terrific job so far. As long as there are American planes in action, they need to brief every day.”

But Korb and others agree that the face on television doesn’t have to be Franks, whose outgoing, folksy personality will serve him well whether or not he takes to the small screen.

“Everybody’s got their own style, and I don’t think we should demand [media exposure] of our commanders,” Zinni said. “If they are successful and doing what they have to do and he wants to focus on the mission, we ought to respect that. There are plenty of people willing to stand in front of cameras these days.”

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Special correspondent George C. Wilson contributed to this report.