American Valor Quarterly Issue 2 - Spring 2008 | Page 31
practices. Part of that training leads to trust. Trust is hard to get,
it’s easy to lose, and once you lose it you don’t get it back. And
execution is what your people do as a result of those first three
elements.
Col. Tony Nadal: I think one of the key components of
leadership is having a will inside of you to want to lead, and the
ability to transmit that to the unit. Hal had that. There’s a quote
from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the famous German general,
and he said, “The battle is not lost until the commander decides
it’s lost.” One of the things that happened at X-Ray was that
none of us ever thought the battle was going to be lost. Hal
Moore never thought of that, I never thought of that, and I
know John didn’t. So we were able to transmit that, somehow,
to our troops. And they certainly didn’t think w