ROBERT GRIFFITH JR. ’63

Author of Long Ago and Far Away

Fifty years after the end of U.S. ground combat in Vietnam, Bob Griffith ’63 takes a fresh look at his experiences as a green armored Cavalry officer at the height of the fighting there in 1968-69. Like others, he endured the shock and horror of battle as well as the privations and boredom. He also learned the absurdities, humor, and ironies of war as they played out on young men thrown together trying to survive under seemingly impossible circumstances.

After the war, Bob gradually came to see the war as a misbegotten tragedy for America and especially for those who fought there. Ultimately, he felt betrayed by the civilian and military leaders who sent him there.

Bob spent twenty years in the Army, initially in armored and armored cavalry units and later in the professional education and training field as an historian. He served on the faculties at West Point, the Army’s Command and General Staff College, and the National Defense University’s Eisenhower School of National Security and Resource Strategy.

As a member of the Army’s Center of Military History, he wrote the history of the transition from the draft to the all-volunteer force. He has also authored a study of the volunteer army between the World Wars and contributed an anthology of manpower procurement and management throughout American history.