Now, as a best-selling author, nationally syndicated columnist, reporter and commentator, he is unconstrained in his opinion of the military and has become the Pentagon’s harshest critic.

    Col. (ret.) David Hackworth (’64) is a regular guest on national TV and radio shows.

     Throughout Spring and Summer 1999, as NATO bombed Yugoslavia, Hackworth was in high demand as a guest on national radio and TV. Five million people read his King Features column, "Defending America," which appears in 100 newspapers and magazines. His autobiography, "About Face," a 1989 international best seller, is in its 28th printing with more than one million copies sold. He also has written "Vietnam Primer," "Brave Men" and a recent best seller, "Hazardous Duty." His first fiction novel, "The Price of Honor," due out in September, is getting a major push from the publisher, Doubleday. His Web site (www.hackworth.com) has a weekly newsletter.

     "When there’s a war, I’m terrribly busy," Hackworth says during a telephone interview in early May from his home in Greenwich, Conn.

     He comes across as a folksy, down-home, friendly man—he moves easily from subject to subject, talking about raising a family, about tracing his family tree back to County Durham, England, his days at Fort Campbell, Ky., Austin Peay and Clarksville. He listens to each question carefully, his answers are thoughtful, and he can disarm by laughing at himself.

     Knowing him via the media, people may draw different conclusions: On TV, his comments often enrage viewers due to his strong belief in the American soldier and concepts such as loyalty, honor and honesty, and his distaste for politicians who pad military budgets for pork barrel projects in their districts.

     Interviews on such cable shows as MSNBC’s "Hardball with Chris Matthews" showcase the depth and breadth of his knowledge, not only about the military and military history, but also about history in general. By reading his syndicated column, which has exposed military waste and fraud, and his frank, outspoken opinions, some think he’s a "loose cannon." He is a firebrand and proud of it.

     But it’s all motivated by his personal mission, which, according to his Web site, is to "ensure that American troops are never put in harm’s way without the right training, the right equipment, the right leadership and the right mission."

     "Some days I’m on 30 radio shows a day. I probably was on 14 to 15 today," Hackworth says. "You get regulars...Every day I am providing updates on the war to several stations—they want to have the latest on what’s going on in Serbia."

     Despite this demand on his time, he spends nearly 90 minutes on this phone interview.

     "As a writer, I’m doing all the media, especially radio," Hackworth says. "It helps you get your thoughts together. For radio, you have to have a sharp, decisive way of talking. You are confined to explaining complicated subjects in a short time—you have to make it as simple as possible. You have to use metaphors.

     "For example, to explain the air war, I might say ‘NATO is like a 12-foot giant with a hammer killing ants, and the ants can’t keep the sledgehammer from coming down.’ That tells you what awesome power NATO has."

     The use of the metaphor to reach the reader or viewer is something he learned covering Desert Storm, the war against Iraq, for "Newsweek."

     "I’d be out in the field for five days gathering information. On the sixth day, ‘Newsweek’ would line up all these radio and TV programs for me to appear on, maybe 20 a day, and then I’d have to write my column the next day for ‘Newsweek.’

     "I learned to squeeze those soundbites and polish those metaphors. It’s a result of all that good education at Austin Peay," he says.

     That "good education" came before Hackworth sounded off in Vietnam. He was stationed at Fort Campbell and continued his college education at APSC through the Bootstrap Program.

     "I went to Austin Peay with my Airborne haircut, and by the end of that year, I was looking like the other students with hair down my back," he says laughing. "I didn’t want to look like I didn’t belong. There was not a lot of love lost then as the Airborne troopers would come downtown and raise hell in Clarksville."

     By the time he arrived at Austin Peay, Hackworth had been in the service nearly 20 years and had been going to college part time for 11 of those years. "Every time I got close, I got transferred. I was close to graduating at the University of California and got transferred. I was close at the University of Maryland and got transferred. I had given up, but my boss at Fort Campbell, Col. Jim Apts, ordered me to go to Austin Peay.

     "And that made all the difference," he says. "I got the degree and was able to become a regular Army officer. That opened the doors to all the Army schools and let me move upward. Austin Peay had a profound influence on my life because it put me in the fast lane."

     In the fast lane—after receiving his history degree, Hackworth vaulted up the promotion lists. Five years later, in Vietnam, in 1971, he was the youngest colonel in the Army and its most decorated officer with 105 medals—with more than 27 for valor.

     "They had me on the fast track, I’m told, for two or three stars (as general)," he says. "But I was so opposed to the way we were fighting the war—I was tired of seeing American soldiers, 19 years old, being stuck in body bags and nobody cared."

     He was approached by a TV reporter, and his answer sent him down a new career path.

     "I stood up...in uniform and said, ‘This is a bad war..we can’t win it, the American people have been lied to, and we should get out now.’ That did not endear me to President Nixon or General Westmoreland. It caused both of them a bit of heartburn. They were after me with a chainsaw and wanted to run it across my neck," he says, now able to laugh about it after all these years.

     According to Hackworth, the day after he sounded off, his helicopter "accidently" crashed into Viet Cong territory. A couple of days later, headed from the Mekong Delta to Saigon, his jeep was booby-trapped. Back in this country, he found his car brake linings cut. He documents this and other details in his best-selling autobiography, "About Face."

     He shrugs it off in a way only a veteran soldier can: "Somebody—I don’t know who it was—was seriously trying to rain on my parade." He now can joke about it, because, like most successful people, he worked past such obstacles.

     "I was 40 and had to find a job in a hurry and I became a military journalist. I can look in my mirror and say, ‘I did the right thing.’ I take great pride in that...You get accountable to yourself when you get to your senior years. I can say that (speaking out) was one of the best things I ever did in my life."

     Up to that fateful June day in 1971, Hackworth had been more than simply a good soldier—he had been an outstanding soldier since first donning a uniform at the astounding age of 14 at the tail end of World War II.

     Although he was born in Venice, Calif., and reared in nearby Santa Monica, the family roots ran deep through Tennessee and the South. Those roots and beliefs were a factor in his joining the service at an age unthinkable today.

     "Being from an old, Southern patriotic family, we’ve had family in every war," he says with a genealogist’s zeal. "There were Hackworths fighting in the Indian wars in the 1750s. In every war since, Hackworths have served."

     He said that feeling of patriotism made it impossible for him to wait until he was older to join the service.

     "You had to be 17, but the Merchant Marines were not too discerning—neither was the Army—and many people did not have birth certificates then. I paid a wino two dollars to say he was my father, and he signed me up."

     A year later, 1946, Hackworth was in the U.S. Army, and, although he really was 15, Uncle Sam thought he was older.

     There were tours of duty in Korea, Vietnam and at Cold War bases around the globe. During one stint, his oldest son David, now 34, was born at Fort Campbell about the time Hackworth was getting his degree from Austin Peay. There were two years spent at the Pentagon and a year at a training batallion at Fort Lewis, Washington. He spent five years in Vietnam, and it was at the end of his fifth year when he spoke out. Around this time, he and his wife divorced. In 1977, he remarried, and in 1978 his son Ben was born.

     Despite his love for the military, he encouraged his sons to try other fields. "I did not want them to get killed, plus their last name would have been a lightning rod. I would have loved the kids to have had the challenge, training and discipline of military life. But another part of me said I don’t want my sons to die."

     Most recently, Hackworth finished his first fiction novel, "The Price of Honor."

     "It’s printed by Doubleday and is their main book for 1999. They’re putting a lot of marketing and promotion into it.

     "It’s difficult writing fiction because you are living in an alternate universe. In chapter one, I give you red hair, and I forget, and in chapter 20 I give you brown hair. In nonfiction you don’t have that problem."