Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (104 page)

Out for a stroll in eastern Afghanistan with commander of the storied 101st Airborne Division, Major General J. F. Campbell, on my right. I had great respect for him as a soldier and a leader.

Landing at a forward operating base in eastern Afghanistan. Not much grows there except bad guys.

Watching flight operations on board the aircraft carrier
Abraham Lincoln
.

A cozy, casual meeting with China’s new leader-to-be, Vice President Xi Jinping. We are on the far right; the others are U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, fourth from the right, and my staff.

The new world: the former director of the CIA and U.S. secretary of defense gives a press conference atop the Great Wall of China. I am being coached by my press spokesman, Geoff Morrell.

Locked and loaded with vodka, properly armed for a congressional hearing. Kevin Brown, with me, was my security officer and provisioner.

Mike Mullen and I, in a routine meeting with the president in the Oval Office. I never ate a single apple.

Jim “Hoss” Cartwright explains something complicated using a laptop. The light of understanding is not apparent on the faces of his audience—me, Vice President Joe Biden, and President Obama.

The American secretary of defense fires the noon cannon at Peter and Paul Fortress, St. Petersburg, Russia. The cannon blast has been a tradition since the time of Peter the Great. Stalin must have been spinning in his grave.

At the hospital at Camp Leatherneck in southern Afghanistan, where significant increases in medevac capabilities helped the doctors save lives.

With Marine Staff Sergeant Timothy Brown at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Over time, these visits got harder for me, knowing I had sent all the wounded in harm’s way.

General Lloyd Austin, here with me in Baghdad on my last visit there, in 2011, was the last American commander in Iraq.

Mullen and I share the platform one last time at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day 2011. He was a terrific partner.