1985-2015: U.S. Army Colonel’s Experience

Interview with former Colonel Paul Driscoll, Hist 150 Spring 2024, Conducted by Consie Driscoll, March 17, 2024. Photo taken by Amy Driscoll, 2010.

Overview to Social Change Interview:

Colonel Paul Driscoll, had a very long career in the United States Army. He served both active duty and in the reserves. He served 30 years, from 1985-2015, when the interests of the US military were shifting drastically. Dol. Driscoll started in 1985, military interests were still focused on the USSR, but towards the end of the Cold War and into the 1990’s focus shifted away and towards counter-terrorism in the Middle East, when Saddam Huessein was coming into power. In 1985, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were at the highest point they would reach, resulting from several conservative foreign policies that were put into effect at the time. Additionally, these were met with several civilian retaliations, such as the examples from the 1980 and 1984 Olympics (in Moscow and Los Angeles respectively), which only escalated the tensions.

This interview discusses his ime in the service coincided with political and military changes, and how the army handled those shifting interests. When my dad began his service, the United States was focused on a conventional war and revolution going on in Eastern Europe with the USSR, Crimea, Ukraine, etc. In the 1990’s-2000’s, the focus was yet again shifted towards restabilizing the Middle East and counter-terrorism efforts. Into the 2010’s, the interests shifted yet again to meet the developing interests in competing with Russia and China. My dad discusses some of what his life was like after he retired and after he finished his tour of active duty, mainly discussing how his family helped him recover and readjust to living back in the States.

Biography:

The subject of my interview will be my father, Paul Driscoll, who is an Irish Catholic lawyer and served in the United States Army for 30 years. I intend on focusing the interview on his experience in the military and the role of family in the military. Before my dad’s time in the Army, he studied at Washington and Lee University in 1981, double-majoring in Economics and History. In 1985, my dad was commissioned by the United States Army, where he was stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia, for his infantry officer training. Once my dad had finished his infantry officer training, his first operational assignment was in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. After his first assignment, he continued with three years of active duty in the army. Then he would go on to complete law school and serve two separate judicial clerkships in the bankruptcy courts in Raleigh, North Carolina. Those clerkships were his first jobs after active duty. A judicial clerk’s job is to sort through case files, cite-check cases, proofreading, as well as drafting court opinions and legal research, and in my dad’s case, it was all in regards to bankruptcy courts. My dad was working his second clerkship with US District Court Judge Malcolm Howard, when the judge had convinced him to join the Army Reserves. He volunteered to be deployed to Iraq in January-December of 2007, since there were not enough active duty soldiers for the missions. He trained in Kuwait and Al-Taji, Iraq, for two weeks before spending the rest of his deployment in FOB Rustamiyah in Baghdad. My dad was in the U.S. Army War College from 2008-2010, when he graduated with a masters in strategic studies. The U.S. Army War College is an educational institution whose main goal is to educate students and allow them to develop abilities to solve complex problems regarding the global use of landpower and military conflicts. He retired in 2015 as a Colonel in the United States Army.

Research:

During the 1980’s there was a significant focus of military operations on Europe, and especially the eastern side of the continent because of tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States. Most of these tensions arose because of the implementation of extremely conservative foreign policies being put into effect. In 1979, there was a Soviet invasion into Afghanistan that led to the U.S. boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and the Soviet Union returning the gesture at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. These policies attempted to isolate the Soviet Union and prevent them from gaining any more power or influence over Western culture. For example, in 1983, there was a military expedition that field tested new developments in their tactical and operational strategy-intelligence research in Grenada. The mission was centred around toppling the communist government while also rescuing some American medical students. However, the Soviet Union had helped the diplomats in Grenada establish a communist government there and the resulting annihilation of the government further strained the U.S.-Soviet relations. The tensions resulted in both countries displaying missile launches and several missile launches and military exercises intended on displaying power and imposing fear onto the other.

In the 1990’s and into the 2000’s, focus drastically shifted to the Middle East, where Saddam Hussein was seizing power in Kuwait. While eyes were still on Eastern Europe, the fall of the U.S.S.R. in 1989-91 and the relative threat of communism had subsided a significant amount that allowed focus to shift. This drastic shift also led to the D.I.A. (Defense Intelligence Agency) becoming a more important program since their focus was on developing communication technology in order to protect the U.S. and its interests. Operations like Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom aimed to protect the U.S.’s involvement in the East as well as eradicate oppressive regimes. Additionally, the military operations also focused efforts on counterterrorism and preventing further terrorism, highlighted in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The operation’s focus was on removing Saddam Hussein from power because of his constant pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. The operation was a part of President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism, which aimed to resolve and control ongoing conflicts and instability in the Middle East, Iraq and Iran, as well as in North Korea. The previous government in Iraq, the Baathist government, fell in April of 2003 when Saddam Hussein went into hiding. Multiple rebel coalitions unsuccessfully attempted to regain control of the government until O.I.F. ‘s completion in 2010, when the United States was no longer needed to reinforce the Iraqi government. The efforts of counterterrorism can also be seen through Operation Enduring Freedom, which centred around disabling the Taliban’s regime in Afghanistan, which continued on much later into the decade.

Transcript:

Consie Driscoll 0:01

Hello, my name is Consie Driscoll and I will be interviewing my father Paul Driscoll who served in the US Army-

Paul Driscoll 0:07 from 1985 to 2015.

Consie Driscoll 0:10

Yes. Okay, so what made you want to join the Army?

Paul Driscoll

0:15 I was a college student in Washington and Lee in 1982. And I knew that my career plans were to eventually go to law school, but I wanted to do something different between college and law school. So the Army ROTC program at Washington and Lee was, you know, option we had on campus, I enrolled in military science, and then in ROTC, it seemed like a pretty good deal. So I signed up at the start of my junior year.

Consie Driscoll 0:48

Okay, what events changed your rank in the armed services?

Paul Driscoll 0:53 Well, rank as commissioned officers tends to go it’s automatic at 18 months from Second Lieutenant to First Lieutenant. And then at about a four to five year mark from Lieutenant captain. After that, promotion becomes much more dependent on the extent of your, in the progress of your professional military education. And the assignments that you have done and your performance in this assignments.

Consie Driscoll 1:23

Okay. Thank you, what was the state of the world like before and after your service, and what changed, like significantly during it?

Paul Driscoll 1:36

Well, the geopolitical situation when I was commissioned 1985 That was the height of the Cold War, and the conflicts that were expecting in the army at the time, were focused on the the threat of the Warsaw Pact led by the Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe, and what we had expected would be a conventional armored attack through the Fulda gap in Germany invading Central and Western Europe. And then through the Soviet Union, collapsed, when I was in law school in 1990. And for a few years after that, the thought was that we had reached, as one historian put it, the end of history, where Western civilization Western institutions and ideals would, would provide the norms for international conduct. And of course, we wind up happening is that the end of the Cold War, the Soviet the in the collapse of the Soviet Union, it just took the lid off, ancient concerns, rivalries, grievances, whatever you call it. And the war went the enemies, the United States turned out to be not so much nation states at the time, but transnational movements, such as militant Islam, which eventually became the…had taken advantage of this of the ungoverned spaces in Afghanistan. And it was from there that Al Qaeda wants the 911 attacks. So from there, the situation changed. And we were focused and focused on dealing with transnational threats. So the focus of the art of the the armed services turned from fighting a peer near peer competitor to fighting transnational movements. So we went up involved in the first knee invasion of Iraq, and then in the counterinsurgency there, as well as in Afghanistan, and the counterinsurgency operations at that part of the world. And then from beyond that point, by the time I retired in 2015, the war in Iraq was was over. And the war in Afghanistan was slowly winding down. And by that point, geopolitical political future had changed as well, because it result we were then seeing the rise of China as a potential near competitor in the Far East, as well as resurgent Russia.

Consie Driscoll 4:26

How would, if the circumstances had been different, like they’re what you focus wasn’t on, like, militant Islam, like what would you have focused on? Like, as opposed to Afghanistan and Iraq and al Qaeda?

Paul Driscoll 4:40

Well, the traditional the traditional adversaries for any country, especially the United States, are geopolitical. And that means that it’s nation states. The United States, in the foreign policy sense is a hegemon, which means that as the dominant power It’s it sets the rules and enforces the norms, and does its best to suppress the rise of a peer competitor. So, in after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States which the United States and its NATO Allies won, almost without firing shot. We were… we had the largest military, we had the largest Navy, and we were dominant across the world in terms of military, diplomatic and economic avenues, or spheres. So we would have had the Al Qaeda and the transnational threat produced by militant Islam not arisen, we would have still found ourselves facing peer near, peer competitors. Even in the 1990s. Our strategists in the Defense Department were concerned about the rise of, of a resurgent Russia, China had, but in the 90s had been, people were hoping that it would mellow as its economic engagement with the West continued, but unfortunately, what we have learned is that it has only fueled the power and the consolidation of power by the Chinese Communist Party.

Consie Driscoll 6:19

Why- I should have asked this earlier, why is it? Why did you? Why did you say like militant Islam, as opposed to-

Paul Driscoll 6:28

Militant Islam as in imposing its world view by force, rather than by persuasion, by means other than force. So militant Islam as a if you look at the history of it, it has a number of very violent streaks, the Islam from the seventh centuries and the time of the Prophet Muhammad, on has been a religion of conquest. And it’s started on the Arabian Peninsula. And it’s spread through the Middle East, into what was then called the Levant, and then across northern Africa, and the- as you kind of trace the, the progress of Islam it has, it has been driven by a or characterized by a, you know, one attempt to conquer after another, the most notable examples of which were the, the attempt to conquer the jewel of Central Europe, that would be Vienna, which the Holy League was able to pull back, as well as the the crushing of the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto. So when I say that, when I say militant Islam, it has a very long and rich history. And I’ve watched this is this is the current manifestations we’re seeing in an Al Qaeda, as well as in groups that are funded by Shia, Iran, are very much militant, and by militant, I mean, violent in a military sort of way. We’re seeing that now in Israel, with the conflict in Gaza, as well as supply in Judea and Samaria, which people call inaccurately the West Bank.

Consie Driscoll 8:28

Okay, thank you. Why did you want to continue your service in the military?

Paul Driscoll 8:33

Well, it’s been it’s proud probably starts with the example that my family has set over several generations in military service. My father’s father served of the American Expeditionary Force in World War One. My father was commissioned into the Navy as an ensign in 1952 and ’53. And he went on to, you know, make it a career. And it’s been that example of service, it’s probably had a lot to do with how I wound up serving.

Consie Driscoll 9:08

How did you see the United States Army as an institution change over time?

Paul Driscoll 9:15

The … it’s, it has changed. I think of one author who said that the date I think it was, I’m trying to remember who it was. David Finkel, I think he wrote that the army is, is is constantly reinventing itself, which is probably a pretty accurate description of it. The night in when I was commissioned in 1985, the army its focus was a conventional war in Europe. It evolved to meet the threat that we faced in the in the Middle East in 2001. And thereafter, and it is now reinventing itself yet again, to face a peer competitor, meaning China and Russia. So it is the ultimate instrument of foreign policy. At the end of the day, it’s determined by the foreign policy goals of our political leaders. So as their changes their goals and objectives change, so does the mission of the Army, or more accurately how the mission will– Or how the army will meet its objectives of winning our land wars.

Consie Driscoll 10:25

Can you describe what it was like? What your personal experience was like to serve in the armed forces?

Paul Driscoll 10:31

I think other than being a husband and a father, it’s the most profound thing I’ve ever done as a man.

Consie Driscoll 10:41

Can you elaborate on that?

Paul Driscoll 10:43

Yeah, it’s, you certainly see, especially in war, you see soldiering in its finest. And it’s most heartbreaking. And you see what, how ordinary men can rise to the challenge, and commit themselves wholly to a purpose larger than themselves. And the rest they will take and the sacrifices they will make for the men on their left and right. And it is humbling to serve among such men. And it is heartbreaking when you see them fall.

Consie Driscoll 11:29

Could you describe any effects, If there are any, of serving in the armed forces that might have that they might have on someone?

Paul Driscoll 11:40

Well, it certainly adds a a perspective to one’s approach and how you feel how you see things in civilian life, you have a profound appreciation for the normal things around in 21st century America. Yeah, like we think that our lives are tough, we overlook the fact that probably half the world has yet to make his first telephone call. We overlook that our governments are by and large, generally efficient, generally not corrupt. We have basic municipal services that are provided without us given a single thought; sewer, water, education, transportation, electricity, we have our electrical services and natural gas and internet and phone, are on 24/7 unless you don’t pay the bill, or there’s some major weather event. It’s not subject to the whims of some local warlord, or anything like that. And we now we actually have the luxury of spending our time concerned with relatively trivial matters. As far as the rest of the world is concerned. We have houses, we have houses that are separated from their neighbors, if at all by either grass or a relatively low fence, not a nine foot wall top with barbed wire. We don’t have raw sewage running in the streets. And we can drink the water most people can say that.

Consie Driscoll 13:22

did a serving in the armed forces and being like, seeing like a firsthand perspective on like the many of like the political debates going on at the time. Did your did having that perspective changed your views on them? Or did they largely stay the same?

Paul Driscoll 13:42

My perceptions of our political leadership? Yes. All right. The military is first and foremost, a apolitical institution, it has to be and when you have military leaders, or once especially at the flag officer or general officer ranks, who weigh in on political matters. It’s a very bad idea. Because at the end of the day, we serve as we serve to meet the or to accomplish the the objectives that are set by our political masters. Not the our political masters do not serve or do not exist to serve the military. That’s why we have in this country a very strong and and storied history of civilian control the military. What it does concern me, is it as as the generations come and go, we have fewer and fewer people that serve in political office that have firsthand military experience.

Consie Driscoll 14:50

Why do you think that’s important?

Paul Driscoll 14:52

Well, because it provides the most important things that confront our country are usually foreign policy- deal with foreign policy, because one professor in college put it, it can kill you. And when you don’t, when you have political leaders that do not have that firsthand experience, then they don’t appreciate, or it is less likely that they will appreciate the fect of the decisions they make with respect to what our foreign policy objectives are, and as well as effective how we man and resource the armed forces.

Consie Driscoll 15:32

Okay, thank you. How did your time and service including like your postings affect your relationship with your family? Like meeting like mom, and then?

Paul Driscoll 15:45

Well, it? Certainly, I met mom, while… Through our mutual friends in college and law school, respectively, but it, it has certainly made it tougher in terms of wear and tear on on our family. And that goes certainly for folks in active duty, but because of deployments, but for folks who served as reserve components, it’s not your services, not just one weekend, a month and two weeks a year, the higher up you go. And the longer you stay winds up being two to three weekends a month and probably 30 days a year. And you know, a reserve component, service member within the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, Marine Corps, are all there. They are juggling civilian jobs, plus family commitments, plus military commitments. And that’s a lot to juggle.

Consie Driscoll 16:51

How did- Why did you choose to go into the reserves instead of staying in active duty?

Paul Driscoll 16:56

Well, that’s good question. Each officer who’s commissioned has an initial service commitment of eight years. And it’s divided the mix of active duty and inactive reserve requirements varies upon the type of the circumstances that are commissioned as a non ROTC scholarship, contract commissionee I had an obligation to three years of active duty would fall by five fears of inactive reserves service, and I was coasting along in the inactive Reserve had gone to law school and served my first clerkship in the US bankruptcy court in Raleigh, and was serving a second one for where the US District Court Judge Malcolm Howard, who turned out to be a Army veteran himself. He was a 1962, graduate of West Point, had served two tours in Vietnam. He was highly decorated, Silver Star, Purple Heart, I mean, and one of the most humble and professional men I’ve ever met in my life. And one day he suggested to me “Now, Paul, you want to do the Army Reserve”. And he didn’t say much about that. And it was his pitch for the Army Reserve probably lasted less than 60 seconds. And I thought, Aha, I’m going to try that out. So I wound up. Joining Reserve Command and the 108th started out as a company commander and stayed in and wound up retiring as a colonel and served in a variety of command and staff positions from ranging from company commander to battalion commander to brigade commander to as well as battalion… battalion, executive officer, Operations Officer. And just a in several positions in in a one way train command headquarters. And they went to being a tremendous experience, and it’s probably the best professional advice I’ve ever received.

Consie Driscoll 19:02

Since you were in the army for so long, how did family play a role and like what kind of influence the family have on you while you were actively serving in in the reserves?

Paul Driscoll 19:14

Every my family my immediate family growing up was probably the inspiration for why I served in the Army, although I’m sure my mother was disappointed that I was not in the Navy. But for anyone who stays in beyond their initial commitment, whether they remain on active duty or serve in a reserve component capacity, your family is critical. Without their support, you really can’t do it. You just can’t. And what employers need to keep in mind and what the military, active duty leadership and political leadership need to understand is the participation of any Reserve Component service member requires the support of their family, as well as their civilian employer, because without their active support, it really becomes very difficult for that service member to remain in uniform. They just can’t do it. So, so they get that you guys, you’ve got families and employers that have a vote and that service members staying in uniform.

Consie Driscoll 20:22

Are there any specific examples you can think of?

Paul Driscoll 20:27

My, when I was moved back to Virginia Beach, I was practicing law with a medium sized law firm, my boss’s support was critical for me staying in tip for hat and taking, being able to take the time off to to advance my military education. My my civilian boss was incredible in terms of his support for my army services. And when I was mobilized, the the courts, especially the US District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia was very instrumental in, in helping me transition my case, this show before I deployed, my family, of course, is critical, because without them, you really can’t do it by that point. As you know, we were married and I had two very small children. And with that, without your mother’s support, I would not have been able to do it.

Consie Driscoll 21:24

Thank you, what kind of rehabilitation Did you receive after your service and why?

Paul Driscoll 21:34

I didn’t receive any formal rehabilitation, although I will say that in terms of just getting my grip on my service experiences, going to my monthly reserve drills for critical because I-the, we all had deployed together and although we’re not in on the same transition teams, we’d all had similar experiences. So it was the same cast of characters where we went out to the same restaurants, ordered the same things, set the same tables, and told the same stories. And that, certainly, for me, helped me get my arms around some of the more exotic occurrences that we had on the deployments.

Consie Driscoll 22:24

Were there any lasting physical effects of service?

Paul Driscoll 22:29

My back I think aches more than it should and my hearing is shot.

Consie Driscoll 22:34

Okay. Thank you so much for your time, Dad.

Paul Driscoll 22:36

Thank you. You’re welcome, sweetheart.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Interview Process:

The week of February 26, I called my dad and asked him if I could do the oral history project on him. I told him that the project was about social and cultural changes within a specific domain and that I had picked military service and military family as my topic. Additionally, I asked if my dad would prefer an alias since the interview would be public domain, and he said that he would prefer to use his given name. I had sent him a list of the questions I planned on asking prior to the interview. This interview was conducted March 17, 2024 during an in-person interview that was recorded with my voice notes. During the interview, I discovered a lot of insight into how my dad shaped his worldview and how his three decades in the Army affected him personally and physically. I also discovered a lot about how much a person relies on relationships and family while they are in both active and reserve duty. This interview helped me understand what my father did for his country and I feel very lucky to have him as my dad.

Transcription Process:

Otter.ai was the transcription service I used to provide a script for the audio. Before I transcribed, I used the Audacity application in order to improve audio levels, specifically raise my volume level during the interview, and edit out most of my dog’s interruptions. I also edited some prolonged periods of silence or stuttering out of the interview for the sake of clarity and brevity. After the initial transcription, I manually proof-read and corrected some mistakes while listening to the audio. There were also a few times where some of my sentences got moved to my dad’s trasncript and vise versa, but that was easy to correct.

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