The nation and the naval profession lost an outstanding Marine, award-winning journalist, and former Proceedings editor-in-chief this past month with the passing of Bob Timberg. Proceedings senior editor Fred Schultz, who served with Bob during his tenure at the Naval Institute, wrote the following tribute for USNI News, published on 8 September:
. . . Bob Timberg was best known, of course, as author of the highly acclaimed 1997 book, The Nightingale’s Song, a compilation of profiles of five U.S. Naval Academy graduates whose lives became intertwined in the post-Vietnam War political landscape.
Around the U.S. Naval Institute, however, Bob also is remembered for the stirring address he delivered to the assembled panelists at a 1997 conference on the Vietnam “Fault Line” at an event cosponsored with the McCormick-Tribune Foundation and held at Cantigny just outside Chicago. He reprised his commentary for the Institute’s Annual Meeting that April and subsequently had it published in the July-August issue of Naval History.
“What is this generational fault line I am talking about?” he wrote. “I define one part as those who served as enlisted men and junior officers during the Vietnam War. The other part is made up of their contemporaries, men of roughly the same age who did not serve. In simple terms, I am talking about those who went and those who didn’t. . . . That was what turned Vietnam into what has been called an indigestible lump. . . . To the other half of our generation, I know you think you were smarter than us, and more sensitive, and lived on a higher moral plane, and you probably thought you had more reason to live. But that is not what you looked like to us.”
A combat veteran in Vietnam, Bob was severely wounded when his transport loaded with fuel hit a land mine in South Vietnam. He was later medically retired from the Marine Corps because of his injuries, undergoing 35 surgeries over the course of several years. In the face of all that, he nonetheless embarked on the writing life after the war.
Bob Timberg was a towering figure in the profession of reporting. He was a true journalist with proverbial ink in his veins, one who toiled in the state house beat in Annapolis, City Hall in Baltimore, as the Baltimore Sun’s White House correspondent, and as editor-in-chief of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings from 2005 to 2008. He also had many stories to tell from all sides of his career and often kept his staff here spellbound. His friends and colleagues will miss him. . .
Fred captures well the spirit and passion that Bob brought to Proceedings and that made him so special. I had the honor of hiring Bob in 2005. Like everyone who knew him, I was sure he would give voice to the naval professionals who contribute to Proceedings and protect the integrity of its open forum.
I also had the privilege of attending the conference Fred described here. Bob’s concluding address at the event—which included as participants former President Gerald R. Ford, then-Army Major (now Lieutenant General) H.R. McMaster, Bui Diem, Louis Sorley, Sybil Stockdale, James Buckley, and Army General William C. Westmoreland—was a defining experience for all in attendance.
At a memorial service in Annapolis, a standing-room-only crowd witnessed an outpouring of the love, respect, praise, and joy Bob stirred in those who were fortunate to have known him.
We continue to see a lot of interest in the strategic relationship with China, with many authors offering thoughts on managing the friction among the United States, our regional allies, and China. Last month’s “Nobody Asked Me, But…”—“Stop ‘Engagement at all Costs’” by retired Navy Captain Jim Fanell—questioned the value of rewarding bad Chinese behavior with high-level visits by naval leaders or invitations to participate in the Rim of the Pacific naval exercise. This month, Commander Joe Gagliano provides a different lens through which to view the strategic rivalry in the South China Sea, and retired Vice Admiral Doug Crowder and Commander David Radi offer a stirring call to action in the cybersecurity realm, in part to address Chinese hacking of U.S. government and defense contractor sites. Managing the relationship with China, our authors contend, will take consistent, patient messages and actions that reward positive behavior from Beijing and blunt poor behavior—such as China’s attempts to “manufacture sovereignty” in the South China Seas.
Other contributions include a call to assign the authority to turn loose distributed lethality; a proposed alterative to the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine replacement program; the prize-winning Naval Intelligence essay on improving forecasting of world events; a call for the Navy to rethink how it manages its flag officer numbers and assignments; and views on high-velocity learning and reducing the mandated percentage of STEM majors at the Naval Academy.
We invite you to enter the Proceedings forum.
Fred H. Rainbow
Editor-in-Chief
Life Member since 1976