This story of my father

This story of my father’s experience in Vietnam helped me understand how soldiers interact with the world and I thought it would be nice to share it. Maybe it would help people have some compassion for the difficult decisions and sacrifices soldiers must make everyday on our behalf. It is an excerpt from Willam A. Cohen’s “The Stuff of Heroes- The Eight Universal Laws of Leadership” from an interview with my father Brig. Gen (R ) Michael L. Ferguson.

The Stuff of Heroes: The Eight Universal Laws of Leadership

Today, Michael L. Ferguson is an attorney with McDonald, Fleming, Moorhead and Ferguson in his hometown of Pensacola, Florida. While he primarily practices business law, he is also an NFL players' agent and sports attorney, handling such sports greats as world-class Emmitt Smith. "I believe that Emmitt knows in his heart that I'm going to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong for him, and take care of him and his family regardless of the consequences to me," he says."

A few years ago, Mike Ferguson was an army general, and a few years before that, a young major who was an advisor to a regiment of the Army of Vietnam in the ancient city of Hue in Vietnam. During the religious holiday of Tet in 1968, the North Vietnamese and other Communist forces launched a surprise attack throughout Vietnam. Hue was especially hard hit.

"We were attacked with devastating surprise and overwhelming number," Ferguson remembers. "All of our units were cut off from one another. The weather was miserable. There was no visibility whatsoever. We were low on ammunition, low on food, and without significant fire support. Most devastating, our intelligence was the pits and very few, if any of us, had any real idea of what was going on...In spite of our high casualties, due to the almost continuous mortar, rocket, and periodic small arms-attacks, we held out in our area and, along with out RF/PF units, protected all the roads from the north leading into Hue."

After about a week, the civilians and the friendly militia forces in Hue began to run out of food. American and Vietnamese army officers got together and decided that the priority effort would be directed to moving rice and other food stuff into the area even before additional ammunition and other supplies they needed to fight the enemy. They were responsible for these civilians and militia. They justified this decision by saying that starving civilians might have forced them to surrender. But still it was mission and people before self."

"The American and Vietnamese leaders involved deserved considerable credit for recognizing that sometimes the small things mean the difference between victory and defeat on the battlefield," says Ferguson. "In this case, getting the food to the civilians was a correct decision that saved the day for them and for us. All of the leaders involved had been confronted with something totally unexpected in warfare and reacted in the middle of a violent combat situation with a sense of humanity and integrity that left me indelibly imprinted with a story of selfless multinational civilian and military leadership that has probably never been told before."

Duty before self and choosing the hard right rather than the easier wrong was a key factor in the battle for Hue.