Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Gen. Gorman’s papers: Interesting, and a model for how to present documents

The papers of retired Gen. Paul Gorman have been placed online. Recently I spent close to half a day looking through them. Gorman is an interesting figure, in the middle of things in Korea, in Vietnam and in the post-Vietnam rebuilding of the Army. I’d never before seen his speech proposing a kind of National ...

By , a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy.
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons

The papers of retired Gen. Paul Gorman have been placed online. Recently I spent close to half a day looking through them. Gorman is an interesting figure, in the middle of things in Korea, in Vietnam and in the post-Vietnam rebuilding of the Army. I'd never before seen his speech proposing a kind of National Training Center.

The papers of retired Gen. Paul Gorman have been placed online. Recently I spent close to half a day looking through them. Gorman is an interesting figure, in the middle of things in Korea, in Vietnam and in the post-Vietnam rebuilding of the Army. I’d never before seen his speech proposing a kind of National Training Center.

I found the papers intrinsically interesting, and his oral history, covering his time in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, as well as his role in the post-Vietnam rebuilding of the Army, is one of the best I’ve read. I’d recommend it especially to anyone interesting in learning about how to train soldiers.

But I also think this sort of presentation is a model for presenting the papers of significant figures. It was like a visit to the Army’s Military History Institute — without having to drive to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and eat lunch down the road at Sheetz’s gas station.

Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1

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