Who was "Gus" Pagonis?

Part of CENTCOM's area of responsibility

If the name "Gus" Pagonis doesn't ring a bell, you weren't paying attention during the Persian Gulf War.  Pagonis re-wrote the book on U.S. Army logistics during that conflict.

Just how important was logistics during the war? “In the year between August 1990 and August 1991—that is, before, during, and in the wake of the Gulf War—the logisticians of the U.S. Armed Forces in Southwest Asia, in an effort headed by the 22nd Support Command and the 1st and 2nd COSCOMs, planned, moved, and served 122 million meals.”[1] On the basis of just that fact alone, all soldiers would argue that logistics is very important. 

During that same year, while providing all those meals, those same logisticians “pumped more than 1.3 billion gallons of fuel” and drove in support of supply missions “almost 52 million miles” supplying everything from “tanks, planes, and ammunition” to sunscreen.[2] Soldiers, commanders, and everyone else involved in a war effort would surely stipulate that logistics is of the utmost importance in a campaign. 

CENTCOM devoted almost three full pages in its official executive summary of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm to logistics. The report covered such gigantic undertakings as— 

• Theater construction ... "$600M is critical construction projects were accomplished." 

• U.S. vs Host Nation contracting ... "food, fuel, water, transportation, facilities and accomodations" 

• Combat systems materiel readiness ... "operation readiness rates met or exceeded Service standards ... attributed to the Desert Express air line of communications, supply and support agreements with USEUCOM components, equipment reliability, and an exceptional level of effort from maintenance units." 

• Strategic airlift ... "augmentation of USTRANSCOM's organic lift capability by Civil Reserve Air Fleet ... our deployment air flow missions." 

• Army field feeding ... the plan for which is "based on two T-Ration hot meals and one MRE meal daily."[3]

All these things were accomplished by logisticians. 

Pagonis

Lieutenant William G. “Gus” Pagonis, as a two-star general, was the leader of those logisticians, some 40,000 of them, and the "head of the United States Army's 22nd Support Command."[4] General Schwarzkopf called him “the chief of logistics for the ground forces of Desert Shield.”[5] Pagonis was Lt. Gen. John J. Yeosock’s [the ARCENT/3rd Army commander] G-4 logistics officer. “Not only was he responsible for the logistics plan for Desert Storm,” according to Army Sustainment Magazine, “General Schwarzkopf also put him in charge of executing that plan on the ground.”[6] A significant contributing factor to his skill in managing such a huge logistical challenge like supplying the Gulf War was General Pagonis’ experience over previous years planning and executing logistics support of annual REFORGER exercises. 

Why did Pagonis become so famous? Aside from the fact that General Schwarzkopf described his work as “performing miracles,”[7] Pagonis’s fame was due in part, no doubt, because of his genuine approachableness. Affable, of Greek descent, “General Pagonis held daily press briefings during operations and conducted about 2,000 interviews.”[8] He seemingly was everywhere and he talked to everyone. Seldom was he seen without his red, loose-leaf binder. Said Pagonis— 

"During the Gulf War, I directed my planning team to compile a binder, known within the command as the Red Book, which was a complete and constantly updated collection of data outlining the developments of the conflict. Some four inches thick with charts and tables, it contained virtually all of the information I needed to keep abreast of our situation. While I was in transit from one theater location to another, that book was practically joined to me at the hip. General Schwarzkopf (or another general in the field or stateside) would frequently call me on the road or in the air with requests for specific information: how many tanks here, how much fuel there, how quickly can equipment be moved somewhere, and so on. I know that both my subordinates and superiors were regularly impressed with my almost magical grasp of the numbers. No magic was involved-I just studied the information in that binder every chance I could."[9]

His name became a household word as the Gulf War logistics story unfolded on nightly news broadcasts all around the world. 

General Pagonis has written that “the immediate military goal” of the Desert Shield buildup in the Saudi desert was “to discourage the Iraqi Army—which … included more than 100,000 troops in occupied Kuwait—from spilling over the border into Saudi Arabia.”[10] Therefore, the question must be asked, would the buildup have been dramatically different if Saddam had occupied Saudi Arabia? Such hypothetical “what if” questions have always been a part of military history, mainly because in and of themselves they can be quite interesting. One must be careful with hypotheticals, however, because conclusions drawn from them can skew the actual historical account and the solid lessons learned from that factual history. In the unlikely event that Saddam had invaded and occupied a portion of Saudi Arabia—say, the rich Eastern Province with its oil fields, industrial infrastructure, port facilities, and access to the Persian Gulf, the Desert Storm build up would obviously have been different. How different is difficult to say, because a number of possible courses of action present themselves. For example, the U.S. might have driven the Iraqis back over the border with air power. Force projection into the area might have had to utilize ports further away from the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations, Jedda on the Red Sea, or perhaps Bahrain or Qatar. An amphibious assault somewhere between the Kuwait-Saudi border might have interdicted Iraqi lines of communication and isolated Iraqi forces in and around Dammam, Dhahran, Khobar, and that general area—assuming that those locations would have been the aim of an Iraqi thrust into Kuwait. Whatever the situation, at the end of the day, a massive buildup of forces and capabilities would have to have occurred. Having to push Saddam out of Saudi, in addition to kicking him out of Kuwait, would have made the job more difficult, but certainly not impossible. 

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[1] William G. Pagonis, Moving Mountains: Lessons in Leadership and Logistics from the Gulf War (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1992), 1. 

[2] Ibid., 2. 

[3] United States Central Command. “Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm: Executive Summary.” 11 July 1991, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB39/document6.pdf (accessed 20 September 2012). 

[4] William G. Pagonis, "Leadership in a Combat Zone" Harvard Business Review 79, no. 11 (December 2001): 107-117. Business Source Elite, EBSCOhost (accessed September 21, 2012). 

[5] H. Norman Schwarzkopf, with Peter Petre, It Doesn’t Take a Hero: The Autobiography (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), 341. 

[6] “Gulf War Logistics Records Donated to the Sustainment Community,” Army Sustainment, PB 700-10-05 Volume 42, Issue 5, September-October 2010, http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/SepOct10/

pagonis_logrecords.html (accessed 22 September 2012). 

[7] Schwarzkopf, 483. 

[8] Ibid. 

[9] Pagonis, “Leadership in a Combat Zone.” 

[10] Pagonis, Moving Mountains, 5