The United States Army invaded Europe in 1944 and has never left. America’s forward projection of its military was instrumental in the stabilization of Europe and the establishment of the world order that has existed since the end of World War II.
A critical piece of American power is US Army Europe-Africa; a command responsible for over 37,000 soldiers, 104 countries, 10 units and 9 garrisons. Over 70,000 US military personnel operate across Europe and Africa in either permanent positions or deployed in support of national security objectives.
To explain why US Army Europe-Africa is so important, Fran Racioppi sat down with Command Sergeant Major Jeremiah Inman, the command’s senior enlisted advisor.
Sergeant Major Inman breaks down the command’s mission to deter aggression and provide stability in some of the world’s most complicated and dynamic regions. He explains the magnitude of the command’s responsibilities; and also shares his biggest leadership lessons learned from his time in Ranger Regiment and how they prepared him to lead no matter the challenge.
Join our conversation from the bunkers of Pointe Du Hoc in Normandy, France. Follow us on social media, read the full episode on our website, then head over to our YouTube channel or your favorite podcast platform for all our D-Day Coverage including our first documentary Unknown Heroes: Behind Enemy Lines at D-Day, the story of Operation Jedburgh.
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Sergeant Major, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. I’m glad to be here.
We’re in a gun bunker at Pointe du Hoc. We made you walk through the field, but I told you it was going to be worth it because over our heads is the cliff, the cliff that these rangers, many years ago, scaled on the morning of June 6th, 1944.
Walking through the field made me feel like a real soldier, so I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to not sit behind a desk.
I was reminding you of the other days, but one of the most amazing parts about walking through this is the craters are still there from all the bombardment that we had and then the heroism of those guys as they scaled those 90-foot cliffs and then took this area. It was so impactful.
Go on to protect people who can’t help themselves. It’s a great honor to do that.
One of the biggest parts of our Military lineage, past and present, was something that started many years ago with D-Day, the continued advance into Europe, and then the culmination of World War II. That’s America’s forward-deployed US Army presence. You’re the Command Sergeant Major for US Army Europe and Africa, 2 very different geographical combatant commands and 2 very different geographical areas where I had the fortunate opportunity to serve. There’s also a tremendous amount of responsibility in there. Can you talk for a minute about the mission of the US Army Europe and Africa and why the forward-positioning of our Army forces has been a staple of the strategic US national security policy?
Sure. They are quite different environments. Our mission sets for the continent of Africa and the continent of Europe are different. Eisenhower had the foresight to leave forces in Europe in the event something would happen again. That’s what’s going on. The primary mission is to deter, but if necessary, defeat enemies.
When we look at the force structure that’s still in Europe specific to the Army, we’ve got Belgium and Germany. I was doing the math. The website shows 42 different installations of some sort, whether that be a base or a housing installation, across Germany. That’s massive. In Italy, Poland, the Black Sea, and the Balkans, there are 41,000 soldiers. That’s an incredible presence that we’ve maintained. When you look across that force structure, what’s your guidance, and what’s your vision for them every day?
Our vision is to get up, show up, be ready to assist our partners and continue to train and maintain that combat readiness in the event we do have to get into something.
One of the most important activities that the US Army Europe and Africa is a part of is the exercises. We think about AfricanLion and the NATO joint force exercises that occur. Can you talk about the importance of those exercises and what the objective of them is?
We are a learning organization, and we’ve learned over the years that we’re not going to fight alone. If we can continue to train and work with our allies and partners, when we do have to fight, we’ll already have those sets and reps and be a much more lethal force.
Talk about the differences between Europe and Africa.
Africa’s great. There are 54 countries. We cover 53 of them.
Unless there’s a coup on a certain day.
We have had a couple of those over the last few years but they weren’t our fault. I want to make sure that’s clear. You did talk about AfricanLion. 5 different countries in Africa and 27 partner nations are involved with this exercise. Some things I can’t mention. We’ve never done them before but we were able to. This time, we included NATO. Humans drew the boundaries but there are no boundaries in terrorism or evil. That was probably the best AfricanLion we’ve had since we began the process.
You said it there. When we think about Africa and we think about the enemy in Africa, we do think a lot about terrorism. Yet, when we talk about Europe, we never thought until a couple of years ago that we may see another land war in Europe. Here we are with the Russian incursion into Ukraine. Several years later, that’s still going on.
Front and center is the US Army Europe and Africa, as part of that fight and the enablement of getting and preparing the Ukrainians to be able to defend themselves. That’s a very different enemy. That takes a lot of different training, a lot of different skillset, and often weaponry to be able to do that. How is the US Army Europe and Africa preparing the forces and having that conversation about, “We’ve got two very different enemies but we have to prepare the same forces.”
If we go back a few years, Russia went into Georgia uninvited. In 2014, they went into the Ukraine uninvited and annexed Crimea. This war isn’t two years old. This has been going on for years. We developed a partnership with the Ukrainians back in 2014 to start training them in Lviv, Ukraine. When the war kicked out, we brought them over to Grafenwoehr to continue the training. If you look at their forces, the majority of the folks leading platoons are sergeants. That’s their fighting force. We’ve been able to develop this relationship over years of partnership to assist them with what they’re dealing with.
Let’s talk about the sergeants and the NCO Corps. We know as an American Military structure in any of the components that our NCO Corps is what separates us from every other nation in the world. When we talk about the development of the next generation of NCOs, the post-GWOT generation of NCOs, what are you looking for?
They’re crushing it. Like every generation before, they’ve stood up and accepted the fight. The young NCOs are so much smarter than I will ever be. Innovation, thinking outside the box to do certain things, and setting up their own 3D printers to make stuff. They are phenomenal leaders. Our NCO development has gotten a lot better over the years. Our courses have improved with stuff. We’re bringing our partners in to attend a lot of our courses as well. I went to the Sergeant Majors Academy and ran into a Malawian female. I met her in 2017. She’s going through our academy and going back to Malawi to be a Sergeant Major Academy instructor in her country.
We talk about the enablement and passing of those skills. I’m an SF guy. Our whole idea is, “How do we train others to solve their own problems in the future?”
The big part of it too is we’re only empowered if our officers empower us. If they’re going to hold us back and not let us assist, then we can’t assist. We’re seeing that in some places but it’s getting so much better. I held a conference of European armies and NCOs in Albania. A fully stood up, ran, led, educated conference. I met with the CHOD, I met with the Land Forces Commander, and they let the Sergeant Major run everything. It was really good to see.
That’s the advancement. When we talk about advancing our partners, that’s one of the critical components. There are four lines of effort in the US Army Europe and Africa and I want to ask you about them and define them a little bit. The first one is Set the Theater. What do we mean by Set the Theater?
Go into a place and get it set up for follow-on troops if we have to do something. If you remember a few years back in Liberia, they had an Ebola breakout. CTAF, which is one of our subordinate commands, went down to Liberia. General Williams was the commander. He set up the theater to bring in medical assistance training. That’s what Set the Theater means.
The second one is Combat Credible Forces for Two GCCs.
It’s really more than that. We’re supporting PACOM and SYNCCOM as well at this time. It’s continuing to train. We’re bringing the rotational forces over for nine months. They train extremely hard. They have time to do expert training. They have time to go to JMRC and run through our CTC to do simulated combat operations. A few things we’ve done too is a 4-2 Striker Squadron from 4-2. We drove from Grafenwoehr to Poland to conduct a multinational live-heart exercise.
That’s a long drive.
It was awesome. We’ve also had our fire folks drive from Grafenwoehr to Estonia to do the first shore at live fire.
A lot of road clearances involved in that one, huh?
Yes. We’ve learned a lot over the past few years.
Number three is Interoperability with Allies and Partners.
Getting to know the people you’re going to fight with later. We’re never ever going to fight by ourselves again. In the last couple of commands that I’ve been in, a lot of our planners are Australian, Austrian, or Turkish. It’s a team effort to fight combat.
The United States must get to know the people she has to fight with. She will never fight with herself again.
How important are those relationships? One of the force multipliers that we have in the Special Forces community is the fact that we build these relationships all over the world with indigenous forces. As our NCOs and our officers progress in their careers, so do their counterparts. When you’re a lieutenant and you’re working in a foreign country with another lieutenant or a sergeant, and then one day, you’re a general, they’re a general, or they’re a sergeant major, how important is that trust that’s built?
If you look at my boss, General Williams, he did the G3 job here. He did CTAF in Africa for two years. He went to NATO Land Forces and was the Land Forces Commander. He’s back and he still knows a lot of these people, so those relationships are super important.
It’s trust. It builds that trust. The last line of effort is Modernize the Force. That’s something we’ve been talking with all the commanders and sergeant majors across different regions of the Army and different departments even. We talked a lot about it with the sergeant major of the Army as well. How do we modernize rapidly, and what are we modernizing to?
Modernizing to the future fight is where we’re trying to get after. I talked earlier about the young NCOs and soldiers with their 3D printers being very innovative and coming up with solutions to fix problems. We bought a lot of off-the-shelf stuff. If you get to spend any time with 2CR, they’ve got some pretty good products that they’ve been developing and using, a lot of electric-type activities. That’s how we’re going to get after, modernizing the force.
How do you define the next fight?
We got to be ready for anything because you don’t know what the next fight is. I didn’t see myself going back to Afghanistan for twenty months. I thought I was done with that, but life gets a vote.
You were the Sergeant Major at JRTC. A lot of the component commanders have put a renewed emphasis on the
CTCs or the Combat Training Centers, the importance of them, and how we get our forces of all forces, not just conventional forces. Often, we think about NTC and we’re like, “That’s where 4th ID goes.” I was in 4th ID. I remember going there. It was August and you couldn’t touch the Bradley. Those centers have advanced so tremendously over the years. Talk about the importance of the CTCs and how they’re being leveraged across the Army to prepare for that next fight.
We also use the Center for Army Lessons Learned, capturing all the stuff that’s going on with us in our theater of operations. We started bringing in drones. We started purchasing off-the-shelf drones and giving them to Geronimo to go attack the conventional forces to see how they reacted to it. They started to adapt to it after we crashed about fifteen of those things. The other thing about the CTCs is if a unit’s doing well, we can turn it up a little bit to make it a little more challenging. If they’re not doing as well, we can turn it down a little bit to adjust their learning process.
How quickly are we taking what we’re seeing happen out in theater and then converting that back into the training?
Months. We have a dedicated team here to help wrap that stuff up. They do two CTC conferences a year. Our team’s going over and helping assist with adjusting the fake fight so units can get stronger.
One of the biggest topics that we talk about with leaders across the Army specifically is the relationship between Special Operations and the conventional forces. You’ve served in both. You served in Ranger Regimen and 175, and then you’ve served for the bulk of your career in the conventional forces. Talk about the relationship between the two and how when we look at the next fight or we look at the peer-to-peer fight, it’s different than counter-terrorism. The ability of SOF to work cohesively with the conventional force is more critical now than ever.
You probably dealt with that early off in GWOT. We were pretty separate. We didn’t talk to each other until you needed assistance in a QRF or we found some bad person we couldn’t technically go get. It’s establishing LNOs in the cells and coming together at the 1st meeting, not 10 meetings into a planning process, to make sure everybody’s dialed in tight and they’ve gotten a lot closer.
What are your lessons learned? You’ve started at every level of command. You have a tremendous remit. You said that there’s a younger generation who’s bright, they’re motivated, and they’re ready to get after it, but you’re the guy they’re looking up to. What’s the wisdom that you’re imparting to them after your career?
Colonel Ralph Puckett passed. While I was at the Infantry School of Sergeant Majors, we had a lot of discussions about ranger school and gender integration. The folks were arguing in the room about it and Ralph Puckett was like, “I didn’t go to ranger school to be better than the next guy. I went to ranger school to be better than myself.” I wish I had learned that as a young private. I probably would’ve been a lot better soldier and sergeant major. The other piece of advice is when you show up, show up. Be present and get after it 100% and then some.
Test question, last question. Habits form the foundation of success. When we look at successful people, whether they’re in the Military, they’re in the government, or they built a business, you name it, they always come back to their habits. I always tie this question back to the Jedburghs of World War II.
They had to do three things that you’re very familiar with. They had to be able to shoot, move, and communicate at a proficient level so that when they parachuted starting the night of June 5th, 1944 and then linked up with the French resistance, they didn’t have to think about, “How do I use my rifle? How do I communicate on my radio? How do I move through the night?” They focused their attention on the complex task of disrupting the Germans’ ability to reinforce these beaches. What are the three things that you do every day to set the conditions for success in your world?
If I could go back to 1988 showing up in the Ranger Regiment and we had the Big Four, physical training, marksmanship, battle drills, and medical training. We added developing leaders of character. That’s how I’ve groomed my entire career. It is after those five aspects. You have to be fit enough to get to, through, and beyond the objective.
You have to be a good marksman so you can kill the enemy. You need to understand the battle drills. In the event a leader above you goes down, you need to be able to take that squad or platoon to continue the mission. Then, medical training. You need to be able to fix yourself so your brothers can fight or be able to assist a fallen comrade. Then, leaders of character. That’s what we need to get after.
Remain physically fit, be a good marksman, be able to medically take care of yourself and your buddies, know
your battle drills so you know what you have to do when the time comes, and be a person of character. All leadership starts and ends with character too. I agree with you there.
We had the opportunity to meet the veterans coming off the airplane. You talk about character. You talk about why it’s important for us to come back and do this remembrance every day or every year. I’ve got a great uncle buried in Lorraine American Cemetery. I was able to find him a couple of years ago. I brought my dad over and he was able to go pay respects to his uncle. If we forget this, something terrible can happen again, so it’s very important.
You’re right. This is a sacred place. We have to remember it. I appreciate your time.
Thank you. I appreciate you.
