DATE: Thursday, September 18, 1997          TAG: 9709180346

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:  168 lines

LOOKING BACK ON A FOUR-STAR CAREER "I AM HAPPY WITH WHO I AM." MARINE COPS GEN. JOHN SHEEHAN HAS NO REGRETS ABOUT HIS OUTSPOKEN STYLE, EVEN THOUGH IT MIGHT HAVE COST HIM THE CHANCE TO LEAD THE JOINT CHIEFS. MORE IMPORTANT, HE SAYS, WERE "THE LIVES OF YOUNG KIDS."

Ask Marine Corps Gen. John J. Sheehan if he should have taken a different tack with the Senate and senior military leadership, or if he regrets the rough-edged, no-nonsense style for which he is known, and he says, flatly, no.

``I am happy with who I am,'' says the 6-foot-5, trim Marine with the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals from Vietnam.

There is a reason for Sheehan's outspoken reputation, a reputation some say may have cost him a term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The reason dates to that conflict in Southeast Asia, to a point early in his 35-year career, to a day when Sheehan was a young captain on his second combat tour.

This is a story the 57-year-old four-star general hasn't told often, but he remembered it during a recent interview, among the last he would give in uniform before his retirement ceremony at 3 p.m. today aboard the carrier John C. Stennis at Norfolk Naval Station.

He was military adviser to a company of Vietnamese troops pinned down by Viet Cong in a particularly bloody battle. He called repeatedly for a helicopter. None came.

``I had 12 kids bleed to death because I couldn't get a helicopter medevac,'' Sheehan said. ``There was an investigation, and they identified the individuals who were responsible.

``The hierarchy did nothing,'' he said, his expression creating an almost shivering coldness in his office at NATO headquarters near Terminal Boulevard.

That and similar experiences forever changed the lives of Sheehan and his colleagues, among them, Army Gens. Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf. They vowed never to repeat the kinds of mistakes they'd seen.

``We grew a generation of officers out of Vietnam that said if we are ever in a position of leadership, we will not lose focus of what is important,'' Sheehan said.

``At the end of the day, I am responsible for the lives of young kids. I think that is far more important than my career.''

As head of the U.S. Atlantic Command and NATO's Allied Command Atlantic, Sheehan has outranked every military man and woman in Hampton Roads.

It was not surprising, then, that he would be considered for the nation's senior military position, to relieve retiring Army Gen. John M. Shalikashvili as head of the Joint Chiefs.

``He would have loved the job,'' said one officer familiar with Sheehan's private desire for the post.

``He would have been a very activist chairman during this very historic time, where we have the opportunity to make substantial change: to redesign, to reinvent a military that is more flexible, more affordable, to move us into the 21st century.''

But Sheehan also knew there was little support for his beliefs at the Pentagon or the White House: ``He would have been dead on arrival and a totally frustrated man,'' said the officer.

Indeed, Sheehan has shaken the Pentagon's ``E-Ring'' more than once with remarks that called attention to fat headquarters staffs, a need to find new direction for the defense industry and the fact that time is running out for the leadership to make decisions.

He has rankled his own service by calling for a cut in the Corps' senior ranks just as Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Charles Krulak was asking Congress for more. Krulak won.

Sheehan has tried the patience of Air Force and Navy aviators, suggesting that with no military rival today, the Defense Department should consider skipping construction of the next generation of warplanes to save billions of tax dollars.

And he quickly rebuffed Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., who suggested in November 1994 that President Clinton would not be safe on a U.S. military base.

``I take that as a personal insult,'' Sheehan said at the time.

On the other hand, Sheehan's bold thinking was considered an asset by those who believed the military had to break old habits to get the maximum bang out of the limited bucks that will be available in the future.

``He asks questions so aggressively that knowledgeable people are driven to probe new ideas,'' said Adm. J. Paul Reason, commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet and a close friend of Sheehan. ``He likes new ideas and he will test them. He shares credit for innovation with all participants.''

The Joint Chiefs job will go instead to Army Gen. Henry ``Hugh'' Shelton, 55, commander of the U.S. Special Operations. Shelton commanded U.S. forces in Operation Restore Democracy, in Haiti. Sheehan was his operations director at the Joint Chiefs at the same time, and later that year moved to Norfolk to take his present command. Haiti has been part of his daily agenda since.

Sheehan will turn over his current, and final, military post to the vice chief of naval operations, Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., previously Sheehan's deputy at the Atlantic Command.

Gehman's ascension depends on Senate confirmation; hence, Sheehan's departure today is couched as a retirement ceremony, rather than a change of command.

He sticks by the stands he has taken. He still feels a need to reduce the presence of aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, barring a clear reason to keep a carrier there.

``You have to,'' he said. ``It isn't a question about whether carriers are, or are not, important. That is not the issue. The issue becomes the rationalization of why we use military forces. Everyone argues about the numbers of times we used naval and Marine forces during a crisis.

``There's an interesting argument that also says that even when forces were there the crisis occurred.''

America's constant presence in the Med ``did absolutely nothing to prevent the dissolution of what happened in Bosnia,'' he said, ``nothing to do with what occurred in Albania, nothing to do with ability, or inability, to keep the Greeks and Turks from developing an adversarial relationship. It did nothing to the PLO and Israelis.''

``So the rationalization of why you have forces has to be very different in today's world, today's context.''

Sheehan was critical of the Navy's much-ballyhooed position papers on the service in the 21st century - titled ``. . . From the Sea'' and ``Forward . . questions in a September 1996 speech before the Naval Institute Symposium in Virginia Beach.

``It was critical,'' he acknowledged. ``There is a difference between putting out a publication and investing in the hardware to make it happen.''

``I am a firm believer in truth in lending. The military is made up of predominantly average people who do a very, very good job,'' he said. ``Unless you train those people to the standards you want and give them the equipment that you want, you don't get what you expect.''

Most satisfying in his current job have been the strides made by his staffs in the Atlantic Command, which is the nation's foremost interservice - or ``joint force'' - trainer, and NATO's Allied Command, which is breaking ground by forging better military cooperation among the 16-member nations.

``I think the most rewarding part is what we did with ACOM and SACLANT,'' he said. ``I mean `we' because the energy level of both staffs. . . really has made an impact in trying to move the concept and the law of Goldwater and Nichols to fruition.''

Goldwater-Nichols refers to a decade-old law that reorganized the Defense Department by forcing the separate services to work more closely in joint operations.

``We really tried to put pressure on the system to recognize (that) we do live in a different world,'' Sheehan said of his past three years. ``The Russians aren't coming to the ball. . . . It is a new world order. That has been the most fun.''

This father of four, who married his sweetheart from Boston and has been working since he was 14, said he is ready for retirement from the military, but not from working.

``I like working,'' he said. ``But you don't realize how tired you are after 35 years.''

Not too tired, however, to participate in a major parachute jump three days before his retirement.

Sheehan was the first of 540 U.S. paratroopers to jump Monday into Shymkent, Kazakhstan, in the former Soviet republic of Central Asia in an exercise displaying long-distance airborne deployment skills. Soldiers from five other nations also participated.

He recently took refresher parachute training at Fort Bragg, N.C., then made the non-stop, 20 1/2-hour flight to Kazakhstan, sitting knee-to-knee with other paratroopers in web seats inside a C-17 cargo plane.

The jump went well. Sheehan stood up afterward with nary a limp - and a broad smile for his accomplishment, said a relieved aide.

Sheehan has taken just 21 days of vacation in the past five years and owes his wife some time at the beach and owes his golfing partners the benefit of a few lessons, noting: ``I'm tired of embarrassing myself.''

But he's not apologetic about his bluntness, nor the criticism he's leveled over the years.

``I can honestly say we put 70,000 people through Haiti, from September 1994 until recently. We gave up only one soldier. That is better than the training-accident rate here in the United States.

``Did I do things that peeved Washington, D.C.? Absolutely.

``Did I do things that were unorthodox? Absolutely.

``But I only lost one soldier.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo by Huy Nguyen

John Sheehan... KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW PROFILE U.S. MARINE CORPS. RETIREMENT

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