Lt. Gen James Conway (left) walks with his assistant Maj. Tom Savage through the US Marine's Camp Commando last week. Conway, a St. Louis native, is in charge of the 1st Marine Division, making him the second-highest ranking American officer in Kuwait.
(Andrew Cutraro/P-D)
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CAMP COMMANDO, Kuwait - It is just after 8 a.m., and Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, a tall, angular man, is lost in his thoughts, quietly sifting through reports and other military paperwork.
He is expressionless as he tilts his lean frame toward his computer, working to prepare the tens of thousands of men and women, the hundreds of aircraft and armored vehicles and the millions of bombs, bullets and other munitions under his command - one of the most powerful military forces on Earth.
Beneath a tightly drawn tarp, he maneuvers behind a green, glass-shaded bankers lamp centered on the forward edge of a tan wood veneer desk, which sits in his end of a three-room tent that has been erected in the powdery sand about a 45-minute drive outside of Kuwait City. A conference table around which black leather chairs have been pushed in tightly is off to his right. Underneath his feet, uneven green AstroTurf serves as the floor.
There is no door, just a large opening in the tarp. Directly outside, Maj. Tom Savage, a 6-foot-3-inch Californian with an understated sense of humor, acts as the enforcer, directing traffic and coordinating the day's events.
The Army will eventually have more men here, but the Marines under Conway's command currently are positioned most forward. They are expected to lead the initial ground charge into Iraq, if President George W. Bush orders it.
So Conway, 55, has plenty to do, and his tasks are both big and small.
Today's first order of business is to swear in a Marine who has just passed the California bar exam, a first-time duty for Conway even after more than 30 years in the Corps.
The general, dressed in the Marines' new computer-designed desert camouflage, gives a brief introduction. He is warm and humorous, alluding to lawyer jokes but never actually telling one. He then administers the oath to Maj. David Greenlees with crossed American and Marine Corps flag standards as a backdrop. A camera flashes as the Marine Corps public relations people snap photos. Immediately, there are handshakes and grins all around.
These are men who, given different circumstances, would much prefer to be near things familiar, not training in a desert that is hot by day, bone-chilling by night, waiting for the word to attack. But to serve their country, they have traveled gladly this long distance.
And, of all the men gathered in the tent, it is James Terry Conway - the three-star general in charge of the I Marine Expeditionary Force, the boy who once picked cotton alongside his mother in northeastern Arkansas, the first in his household to graduate high school and to complete college - who may have come the furthest of all.
He is miles and years away from his days as the only white kid in his class at an elementary school near the old Gaslight Square in St. Louis, and from the soda-and-bologna-sandwich summers he and his sister Sandra later shared on California Street near Arsenal while their parents worked to earn enough to keep food on the table in their modest three-bedroom flat.
It seems almost a lifetime away from his years at Roosevelt High School, where he played football, baseball and basketball.
Jim Conway - Marine, former senior aide to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former director of the Marine Officer Basic School, former president of the Marine Corps University, former commander of the legendary 1st Marine Division, veteran of Desert Storm - is a career officer who for his family's sake begged off an important assignment as a military aide to President Ronald Reagan.
"Terry," as his mother still calls him, is the proud son of James Edward and Ruby Conway, simple people from hardscrabble northeastern Arkansas who never made it past the eighth grade but who passed on life lessons not contained in books. They saved what they could so both their children could finish Southeast Missouri State University.
"Education is the main thing," Ruby Conway said firmly as she handed over tea on a freezing Tuesday afternoon in the living room of her tidy south St. Louis County apartment. Behind her, a picture of the general in uniform was mounted proudly just to the left of her 20-inch television. (James E. Conway died in 1996, one year after Conway received his first star as brigadier general.)
"We wanted our children to have things we didn't have," she continued. "Education is the greatest thing you can give them, but they have to be willing to work for it."
Jim Conway has long since worked through the deaths in Vietnam of his favorite cousin, Billy Williams, a Marine Corps helicopter gunner, and his college roommate, Larry Miller, who stood beside Conway when he said "I do" to his college sweetheart, Annette Drury. And then there was the long string of deaths in his wife's family, including her brother, Dan Drury, a Vietnam War-scarred soul who eventually died of lymphatic cancer brought on by Agent Orange.
High stakes
Life's journey has led Conway to this crisp desert morning beneath a cirrus cloud-painted sky, where the general stands at the crest of the biggest venture in his life. Conway's task now is to organize and send into battle thousands of men, women and pieces of machinery.
His mother says this is where he was always meant to be.
"He was always a soldier," she said. "Even as a boy, when they were old enough to stop believing in Santa Claus, we would take them and let them buy their toys. Jim always bought guns, and ammunition, toy soldiers and army stuff."
To raise the stakes even higher, the general's oldest son, Marine Capt. Brandon Conway, and his only daughter's husband, Marine Capt. David Scott, will be among the troops here once they disembark from ships that recently departed San Diego.
If there is a war, it will be the general's job to order the men of I Marine Expeditionary Force into battle, possibly to their deaths. "It's a tough and a critical element of every decision we make," the general says in a deep, crisp tenor noticeably absent of a Midwestern accent. "Marines are taught two things - that in war you accomplish your mission and you take care of your troops. You pray that in the accomplishment of the mission you save lives for what follows, that by doing objective A, you prevent B and C, even though it costs you casualties.
"The other thing that you live with is that every other man out there who is engaging also understands how that works, and he has taken an oath to defend the Constitution. If he's a Marine, he certainly knows what Marines do, and he's prepared to accept the risks associated with that."
Preparing for war
His days are filled with a mountain of preparation, involving sea, air, ground:
Maritime Prepositioning Ships, three squads of ever-ready, oceangoing vessels laden with enough weaponry to send thousands of Marines into conflict at a moment's notice. They must be unloaded, the equipment assembled and checked and then distributed to the various groups.
The 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, led by Maj. Gen. James F. Amos. It is one of the largest air wings in the military and directly under Conway in the I Marine Expeditionary Force. Recently, Conway and Amos surveyed miles of bombs and missiles stacked behind 15-foot-high sand berms constructed to protect them from enemy assault on an airbase that is so secret that it can only be referred to as "somewhere in the region."
The 1st Marine Division, more than 45,000 men and women, a division whose history includes some of the most famous battles Marines have ever fought.
The Force Services Support Group, the arm that Marines like to say handles "everything from beans to bullets to Band-Aids."
With so much on his plate, the general at times has the nagging sense that important details are not at his fingertips. For a man who has lived his life by carefully making lists and checking them off, the sensation is mildly disturbing.
"There's so much involved, that it bothers me that I'm not involved enough in the day-to-day issues," he said over lunch, his assistants at elbow length. "I don't want to micromanage, but I want to be involved enough to know what the problems are and what the solutions are."
His mission is clear: to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. If that requires force, he's ready.
"But if our being here causes Saddam Hussein to leave, then we would have served our purpose and be very happy about it," he said.
Leading from the front
Many of the Marines under his command are at least familiar with him from his last position as commanding general of the 1st Marine Division.
"He's an enlisted Marine's general," said Sgt. Maj. Bill Kinney, who had heard others sing Conway's praise before being assigned to the general recently. "He's able to plan and execute strategy, to work on this high level but will always take the time to talk with enlisted Marines, and he speaks their language. That means a lot to people in my community."
One thing they also like about Conway is that, in Marine parlance, he "leads from the front." For instance, during a recent seven-mile hike in full combat load, flak jackets, helmets and backpacks, it was the general who led the group through the midday sun.
Retired Marine Lt. Col. Steve Piccirilli met Conway in the late 1980s and again during preparations for Desert Storm, when Conway, then a lieutenant colonel, headed a battalion under the 4th Expeditionary Brigade.
"I thought he was an incredible individual," said Piccirilli, 51. "First, when you picture what a Marine would look like, Jim Conway is that guy - broad shouldered, thin at the waist, a big, strapping individual.
"The guy is tremendously gifted, a great officer. Obviously his professional knowledge is without question, but the personal side, how he uses his people, uses his staff, makes a decision, is outstanding."
Retired Marine Gen. Donald Gardner served as Conway's superior officer and later worked for him when Conway headed the Marine Corps University.
"I suspect in two or three years, you may see him as one of the commanders that leads our forces around the world, heading one of the services," Gardner said. "He's got a very bright future."
"Luck"
What people closest to him admire most about Conway is his humility. "This being a three-star general could have gone to his head, but he's just as common as cornbread," his mother said.
His sister Sandra adds: "There's always a humility in his accomplishments."
So much so that at times it has irked his wife. At their son Scott's wedding, all the military personnel were attired in their dress uniforms - everyone except Jim Conway.
"Oh, yeah, I'm still mad about that one," his wife said jokingly. "I wanted him to wear his uniform, because he looks so good in it. If it were up to me, he would wear the uniform every day." But the general felt that if he wore his uniform, complete with all the appropriate rank, ribbons and honors, he might dwarf the accomplishments of the other military people in the room, draw attention to himself and possibly take the spotlight away from others.
So he dressed in a quiet tuxedo that he bought years ago in Korea and had never worn. On it, he pinned a small, inconspicuous set of ribbons signifying his medals.
"He's not one to talk about himself, and that is unique," said Piccirilli.
Said Gardner: "Trust me, if you don't get somebody else to tell you what I told you about him, you're not going to get it out of him."
And true to form, Conway's explanation of how he has come to the rarefied air of three-star general is: "Luck," he says, his pale blue eyes staring straight ahead in earnest.
"People will tell you that luck is preparation meeting opportunity, but luck plays into it to a degree. There are so many great people in the Marine Corps that it only takes you bumping up against one guy who doesn't like your style very much, and records that, and you are suddenly then not in that top tier of competitive officers to go the distance. I've just never bumped into that person."
St. Louis years
Anyone who has ever bumped up against the general immediately dismisses his "aw shucks" explanation and points to things like family, smarts, hard work and values.
And those values start with his parents, James E. and Ruby Conway, who moved back and forth between St. Louis and Walnut Ridge, Ark., before finally settling in St. Louis in 1958.
James E. Conway was wounded three times in Europe during World War II. He worked for 35 years as a machinist at Heitz Machine Shop in St. Louis before retiring in 1983. Ruby, the gregarious member of the pair from whom her son takes his sense of humor, worked as a seamstress at Curlee's Clothing, making suits, jackets and slacks.
They worked, came home, took care of their children.
"They have an incredible sense of right and wrong," Annette Conway said. "This is right. This is wrong. Choose the right."
Her parents weren't religious people, Sandra Conway-Polanco said, "but they were some of the most moral people you've ever met. There was no such thing as stretching the truth. If you stretched it, it wasn't the truth."
So when Conway found himself among the handful of white children at a mostly black elementary school in an era long before integration, it didn't faze him. Instead, the general says, he met a man who may have influenced him as much as any other teacher: Robert E. Lee, a black man with a booming voice and a commanding presence. The former Army drill instructor got wayward students' attention with a benign pop to the head. Instead of physical education, he sometimes taught his young charges close order drill.
"Even growing up in a small town in northeastern Arkansas, there were probably a half a dozen black families," the general said. "Mom would say, 'Don't you look down on those people. They're working just as hard as anybody else to make a living, to take care of their families. They have the same interests in life as you do. They're no different, although you may hear that, that is not right.' That was counterculture at the time. I just think we had some great object lessons growing up."
In Arkansas, Conway's father took him fishing and hunting, tromping through the woods with a couple of dogs in search of birds, deer, rabbits and squirrels.
Both parents taught him about hard work.
He picked cotton alongside his mother in Arkansas as a boy for 3 cents a pound. He loaded trucks in the summer during high school. Right after graduation from college, degree in hand, he worked shoveling and picking on one of the Interstate 55 construction crews. Later, he was a middle school teacher in St. Genevieve, Mo.
Haunting deaths
More than anything, Conway's parents stressed education.
It was an automatic assumption in the Conway household that the children would go to college once they completed high school, an assumption that forced the general into his toughest decision as a young adult.
He and his cousin, Billy Williams, had vowed that when they left high school, they would join the Marines together. Williams was probably the closest thing Conway had to a brother. Only a year apart in age, they hunted and fished and roamed the hills of northeast Arkansas together as boys.
But when it came time to join, Conway backed out. He knew how hard his parents had worked and how much they had sacrificed for him to go to college.
"I said, 'Billy, I can't do this,'" the general recalled. "'My parents are so emphatic that I go to college. I just can't let them down.' Billy understood. He said, 'If I had a chance to go to college like you, I'd do exactly the same thing. You're crazy if you don't take this opportunity.'"
Williams joined the Marine Corps, and Conway headed to Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau. Toward the end of his freshman year, a letter came reporting that Williams had been killed in combat in Vietnam.
"Billy's death is something that stayed with him," said the general's wife, who met her husband on a blind date in their sophomore year at Southeast. "He talked about it in college. He must have really admired Billy."
For a while, Billy's death haunted him.
"You wonder had you joined like you said, would we have stayed together, could I have made a difference and kept Billy alive had I been there," the general said. "That's lived with me. I don't believe in my heart that I could have. I don't believe the Marine Corps would have made us adjacent gunners, which is what it would have taken."
And then a few years later, Larry Miller - Conway's high school baseball teammate, his roommate through four years of college and a member of his wedding party - also died in Vietnam.
"That was hard on both of us," Annette Conway said.
Into the Marines
It was not long afterward that Conway joined the Marine Corps, not because of any sense of guilt, but out of a long-held sense of duty.
"I saw a quote the other day that was written on the back of a C-Ration box by a Marine that said something to the effect, 'Freedom has a special flavor to those who have to fight for it,'" the general said. "I'm not saying that every person has to be prepared to gird their loins for combat, but I think some manner of serving the country is a buy in for the citizenship.
"I tell the Marines frequently, 'From this day forward, if you go into a pub, or a bar, or a restaurant, or a theater or any kind of gathering, you don't have to take a second seat to anybody. You're paying your dues right now by virtue that you have opted to serve your nation."
His career has been distinguished, as evidenced by his rank and the many honors and accolades that have come with it. But in working his way to the top, those close to him say the general did not sacrifice his family for his career.
"My Dad is a great guy, because he always put us first," said his daughter, Samantha Moore, 24, who lives in San Diego.
Marines cannot turn down assignments, but when Conway was told that he was on the short list of officers to become a military assistant to President Reagan, he let the interviewers know that while he would serve with distinction if chosen, he would prefer not.
"I had just spent 13 months on a ship, and the job would require that you be away from home about 60 percent of the time," he said. "It was too much."
Nights at sea
On another occasion, Conway called a family meeting and gave his children the option of staying in their schools with their friends in the Washington area instead of following him down to Prattville, Ala., for an assignment that would last only a year.
"I was a little bit surprised and very proud and pleased that the uniform response was, 'Dad, we're not going to do that. We're going to keep the family together, and whatever comes we'll take it as a unit.'"
Still, the general said, there are times when he feels that he has not been there for his children.
"Not consciously, but in the aggregate effect," he said. "You have some nights at sea that you just look out at the waves and you can get kind of angry almost at yourself or at the scenario because you know that there are things that are happening, that your kids are doing, that you're never going to see, that you're never going to be a part of. That's the time you wonder, are you doing the right things for your kids?"
Right now, the general is concerned about thousands of "kids." The median age of an enlisted Marine is 19.
Conway is certain that they will be prepared physically for battle, but he is concerned about some of the rhetoric that he is hearing from the antiwar effort.
"It doesn't bother me at all that people are free to express their opinions and choose to do so," he said. "We're here to give people the right to say what they think.
"What I would hate to see is that antiwar movement morph into what we saw after Vietnam, where it wasn't the administration or the government that was held at fault, it was the young soldier, sailor and Marine that was held at fault, that was being individually abused, and that would be unfair."
Reporter Ron Harris:
E-mail: rharris@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8214
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Lt. Gen. James T. Conway
Age: 55
Job: Heads I Marine Expeditionary Force
Born: Jonesboro, Ark.
Personal: Married, three children
High School: Roosevelt, 1964
College: Southeast Missouri State University, 1969
1970 - Commissioned as a Marine infantry officer
1983 - Served as liaison officer who shuttled between ships off the coast of Lebanon and Marines in Beirut.
1990-91 - Was lieutenant colonel in charge of an battalion landing team in Desert Storm, a diversionary force that did not enter Iraq.
1993 - Assumed command of the Marine Basic School.
1995 - Promoted to brigadier general.
1998 - Appointed president of Marine Corps University.
2000 - Promoted to major general, took over as commanding general of the First Marine Division.
2002 - Deputy commanding general, Marine Forces Central. Promoted to lieutenant general. Assumed command of the I Marine Expeditionary Force.
