Exclusive Interview: Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman
by Tom Philpott
On March 1, Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, 56, was relieved of command of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command, which includes Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The decision came in the wake of an article in the Washington Post that detailed neglectful conditions and bureaucratic frustrations faced by some war-wounded soldiers housed as outpatients in Walter Reed's Building 18 just off the main hospital campus.
Weightman had assumed command Aug. 25, 2006. Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey, who subsequently was forced to retire, said in a statement March 1 that he had lost trust and confidence in Weightman's "leadership abilities to address needed solutions for soldier-outpatient care."
This exclusive interview with Weightman was conducted March 6 by Tom Philpott for his syndicated news column Military Update. He granted Military.com permission to publish here the full transcript of his interview.
PHILPOTT: Do you think your being relieved of command was appropriate?
WEIGHTMAN: Let me give you a long answer. I've been in uniform now for 38 years [including four as a West Point cadet] and I've been proud to serve. I've never been prouder of the Army than the one we've got today. I've met and worked for some fantastic people. Having been associated with America's sons and daughters and their families for a lot of years now, I feel very good about where the Army has come.
For 29 years I've been with the Army Medical Department. That's been magnificent. You know a lot about that, Tom, from your previous reporting. We've got better care, better physicians. We have more compassion and confidence than we've ever had before. We've got a lot of things to really brag about: our increased survivability [rate among battle wounded]; burn and amputee care, and rehabilitation are really the best in the world. First hand I've witnesses the magic that happens when patients come to Walter Reed and to Brooke [Army Medical Center] and to Bethesda Naval Medical Center of shattered lives and families being put back together. I couldn't be prouder of that dedicated bunch of professionals who are the best in the world at what they do.
And during the last 38 years I'm confident that I personally worked honorably and diligently to take care of soldiers and their families. I feel that in my six months at Walter Reed we identified many of the issues that were discussed in the [Washington] Post articles, and we were in process of improving them daily. Quite frankly, if relieving me allows the Army and the nation to move forward at a faster pace to improve the care of these soldiers and their families, then I think it will serve a purpose. My only regret is that I won't be part of the continuing fix, continuing solution.
I know that's kind of a long-winded response but I have thought about that a lot and wanted to kind of lay it out there.
PHILPOTT: You took responsibility for the conditions found in Building 18 during your testimony yesterday [March 5 before the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee on National Security]. You said that you had not inspected Building 18 before the articles appeared. Had you inspected any outpatient housing at Walter Reed since becoming commander in late August?
WEIGHTMAN: Yeah. We keep patients at Walter Reed in four primary buildings right on the campus, and then Building 18 across the street. I'd been in the Mologne House, the biggest one, multiple times. We've got almost 400 patients there. Building 11, right across the street from the Mologne House, I've probably been in two or three times. Building 17, also just across the street from the Mologne House, I've been there a couple of times. And Building 14 where we have a few patients and all of our permanent party soldiers, on the same street, I have been to a few times.
I had not been in [Building] 18. It wasn't because I was avoiding it. I just hadn't gotten around to it. In my command, I've got 15 different hospitals and clinics spread from Canada down to North Carolina and Kentucky. I've visited all of those [facilities] since I'd taken command but I haven't visited every barracks at all those commands either.
That's no excuse. It's just the logistics of it.
PHILPOTT: Was there ever a point in the last six months that someone said to you, 'Building 18 is really a rundown facility. You should take a look at it.' Did that ever happen and perhaps you filed it in the back of your mind but never got around to it?
WEIGHTMAN: It never happened that I can remember. I've been searching my memory bank since this all came up and said, 'Hey, did I miss something? Did I minimize it? Did I forget it?' I haven't been able to come up with a time [it was mentioned.] Now, will a soldier come up and say, 'Yeah, I told Weightman three months ago'? If so, I won't say he's wrong. I just can't remember.
PHILPOTT: But both you and Lieutenant General [Kevin C.] Kiley, [the Army surgeon general], testified to seeing a report from the Walter Reed garrison commander on the impact of civilianizing the staff. Didn't that report refer to treatment of outpatients?
WEIGHTMAN: Yes, from Colonel [Peter] Garibaldi. If I'm the mayor of Walter Reed, the garrison commander is the city manager. He runs the post day to day. He had sent a memo through me at the end of September or early October saying that as a result of privatization, the staffing he had to help maintain the post was approaching dangerous levels. That was basically a request up to our higher headquarters for the authority to hire more people. I remember that quite well. I signed off on it and sent it on up to Medical Command, which General Kiley is in charge of. Headquarters said, 'Yeah, we got it. You have the authority to hire more people, an additional 80 people.'
Unfortunately, even though we had the authority, we were only able to hire 10 people out of the 80 needed. That's because of the impending conversion of garrison operations from government control to a contractor. Everybody knew that that was coming up. That put a big damper on our ability to hire new people knowing that their job could go away in two, three, four months. So we'd asked for more people; we were granted [authority] to get more people; but we weren't able to hire them because of the impending conversion. The conversion actually happened 4 February.
PHILPOTT: So you were hiring more staff in the weeks before the Washington Post articles appeared Feb. 22?
WEIGHTMAN: Yeah. When the contractor, IAP, came on board they were short a few people, less than 10. So they came on and we were a whole lot healthier, strength-wise, than the organizations they replaced. In some places they had to learn their jobs but I can tell you it was a breath of fresh air when they came on. We had a motivated work force willing to learn and pick up a lot of balls that probably had been dropped in the transition.
PHILPOTT: Three witnesses testified yesterday [Army Specialist Jeremy Duncan, Annette McLeod, wife of Cpl. Wendell "Dell" McLeod, and Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon] and detailed problems that they said they had been reporting to staff. One had mold in his room and so forth. Their complaints would have gone up in the chain of command, right?
WEIGHTMAN: Normally when a soldier moves into Building 18, he's given an inventory [form] to fill out about the condition of his room and the furniture. He's responsible for turning that into the building manager and the building manager is responsible for giving that list to the garrison to fix, whether it's mold on the wall or peeling paint or a leaky faucet. In most cases that was done, given to garrison. But then I don't think we did a good job of following up and making sure that garrison went back and fixed those problems. The other thing is, of course, if problems arise after check-in then the soldier is responsible for letting that building manager know those problems exist.
The other redundant measure we have is the platoon sergeants for all of these patients are supposed to be checking the rooms periodically for health and welfare to make sure they are being kept up and in good shape. They also are supposed to report if there are issues with the room that need to be fixed. They're supposed to turn them, also, over to garrison to be fixed.
We are doing an investigation to see where the breakdowns were and who didn't report what to whom and who didn't take action on those reports. So I don't want to get into a lot more detail [and] screw up the potential objectivity of that investigation. But there was a breakdown somewhere. The platoon sergeants are like the building managers. They are supposed to call up and see if things get fixed and if they're not getting fixed they report it up their chain of command.
PHILPOTT: You testified that two rooms in Building 18 had mold on the walls and five had mold in the bathrooms. What were the conditions of the other rooms? There was mention in the Post articles of cockroaches and mice.
WEIGHTMAN: The residents let us know that there was a rodent problem in September. There were rats and mice and cockroaches. So we sent a preventive medicine team over there at the end of September and they said, 'Yep. They are here. And the main reason they are here is we've got unsanitary conditions in the rooms. Guys are leaving pizza out, not taking care of the food in their rooms like they should.'
So we policed that all up and got everybody to do good sanitation in their rooms. We put out rodent traps and cockroach traps and since then have been monitoring that. Since we took those actions in October, we have not received any more complaints from the residents about the rodents.
Quite frankly in that part of Washington D.C., rodents are a continuing thing you have to manage. You're not going to get rid of them. I mean I have rat traps around my house. I live literally 100 feet from Building 18. It's an older building. It was not built in 1939 as the Post reported. It was built in 1969. But you constantly have to be aware of that issue. I thought we addressed that issue when we became aware of it.
As far as the condition of the whole Building 18, it's a continuing process to keep up with the rooms. The building had undergone a minor renovation in 2001, another in 2003 and then a larger renovation of about a million dollars in the summer of 2005. They replaced all the carpet, all the tile, repainted the walls. That was a major facelift.
What we found out was that the bigger issue with the building is the roof leaks and so there's contusive moisture coming in through the walls and ceiling. Also the plumbing is 38 years old and, in some places, that leaks. So what we found was that we really need to replace the roof and probably redo a lot of the plumbing to keep the mold situation from recurring.
When we went through all the rooms, after the Post articles appeared, we found that of 54 rooms, 26 needed repairs. Of those 26, seven had mold - two on the walls and five in the showers and bathrooms. There was peeling paint. There were leaking faucets in a couple. There were holes in the walls where moisture had dripped down and eaten away the drywall.
So about half the rooms needed some repair. Those were all completed within the next four or five days, except for the one room that had the hole in the ceiling up, up on the top floor. We got a couple rains and it continued to eat away.
PHILPOTT: What did you think when you took that inspection tour? Did you blame yourself that 26 rooms needed repairs?
WEIGHTMAN: Yeah, I felt responsible. I'm responsible for everything that the patients and staff there have to deal with. I felt that as a command we shouldn't have allowed this to happen.
Actually, most patients who lived in Building 18 kind of liked it over there. It's a little bit farther away. They kind of liked being autonomous and there's free television there. Most of the patients there are only there for three or four months and they are getting ready to leave the whole system.
I think what happened is that many of them had come from nicer accommodations on post -- the Mologne House or the Walter Reed Guest House -- and that was perceived as a step down because those other rooms are like hotel rooms. These were more like Army barracks. They are mostly two-man rooms in Building 18 whereas before they wouldn't have had to share a room. But yeah, I felt disappointed that we hadn't taken better care of these rooms.
Quite honestly, Tom, in my career in the Army I've been in a lot worse barracks on numerous posts. Quite frankly, [on] the great tour-of-everybody through Building 18, most people were pretty under-whelmed. Now, granted, we'd worked on taking the mildew off, fixing the peeling paint and replacing the holes in the walls for four or five days before that. But it has never been a condemned building and it is not infested with rodents.
PHILPOTT: Housing for the outpatients wasn't the only issue. There also was the bureaucracy of patients not being monitored to keep their appointments and their care. Also there's the impression they were left on their own and kept for longer periods than is appropriate.
WEIGHTMAN: Yeah, that's the bigger issue, quite frankly. I think there was a much higher level of frustration among the patients [over those issues.] Everybody was pretty pleased with their care, but getting access to that care, getting follow up, the paperwork in navigating the [disability] evaluation system. That was something we need to do a lot better on.
Before the war started we had from 100 to 120 patients in medical hold at Walter Reed. Then when the war started [that number] peaked out at 874 or so in the summer of 2005. So you can see a gigantic increase. As those patients came, we expanded where we put them. And we realized, 'Hey, we have too big a span of control for our platoon sergeants and company.' At that point each platoon sergeant had about 125 soldiers they were supervising.
PHILPOTT: How many platoon sergeants?
WEIGHTMAN: There were about nine. So my predecessor [Lt. Gen. Kenneth L. Farmer Jr, Walter Reed commander from 2004 to 2006] said, 'We've got to do better than this.' In January of '06 he created a second company and we divvied up those patients so the reserve component [outpatients] went into [a separate] medical holdover company. There are about 200 of them. We staffed that organization primarily with reservists who have been mobilized. So that decreased our ratio of patients to platoon sergeants [for reservists] to 25 or 30-to- one.
The medical hold company for the active duty patients going through outpatient status remained. That ended up, when I was here, having about 450 patients. That reduced the ratio to 55-to-one, about half of what it had been before. I think we kind of lulled ourselves into feeling good about it because it was so much better than it was.
In retrospect, I think we weren't attentive enough to say, 'Hey, we're still not where we need to be.' We need to have better supervision not only from the platoon sergeants but from the case managers. By in large we have the same number of case managers as platoon sergeants. The case manager's role is to help patients get the appointments and navigate through this system. That's what I think has happened.
We were never authorized those extra platoon sergeants for that extra company so we actually had to take those out of hide from the hospital. That probably didn't help matters. In retrospect, and as part of the solution, we realized we needed a third company to split that one big [active duty] company down into two, so we'll end up with three companies to provide better ratios. We probably really need to be about 20 or 25 in patients for both the case managers and the platoon sergeants.
PHILPOTT: Are you still involved in trying to get the problems corrected?
WEIGHTMAN: No. I was relieved. These are all actions that we started in the last two or three weeks. I've had a couple updates since then. The new commander [Maj. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker], he's the one who is involved.
PHILPOTT: What were your goals when you took over Walter Reed?
WEIGHTMAN: I had several. One of the biggest challenges is BRAC and to get Walter Reed moving in the direction of integrating with Bethesda [Naval Medical Center], to be one hospital by 2011. That probably took 40 percent of my time, working that issue. There had been a lot of planning by my predecessor and we were into the execution phase where we're integrating departments and starting to work on specifics [like] where people would go and offices would be and what new buildings would look like.
So a major goal was to move BRAC forward. It was almost like being a funeral director in that there was fair amount of resistance at Walter Reed to want to join with another institution. They are very proud of their heritage in both clinical care and in education and research. There was a lot of trepidation that they would lose some of that glimmer. So I worked very, very hard at making that happen.
Another goal was to put Walter Reed and the North Atlantic Region on a better business footing. I did a lot of training of the staff about justifying what they were doing, making sure they had the resources but also making sure we were accounting for the work we do. I put a lot of effort into making us a more efficient business. I don't mean this in a negative way but I don't think they have been held accountable financially as much as they could have in the past.
Also, I'm the kind of leader who likes to walk around and say 'Hi' to everybody. The people at Walter Reed, both staff and patients, needed to see their commander out and about and taking an interest. That was one of my goals too, to talk to everybody, thank them for the great job they're doing and get feedback on how the place was running.
PHILPOTT: Did you ever get any negative feedback that you didn't act on?
WEIGHTMAN: I don't think so. I'd talked to the people waiting in the pharmacy line. I'd go over to the special events at the Mologne House that we would have for the wounded warriors and their families. My wife goes with me or she goes to a lot of meetings I don't go to. We thought we had a pretty good feel for the level of satisfaction from both the staff and the patients. There's been a bunch of surveys done and they routinely show a very high level of satisfaction with care. That's why a lot of this is very disconcerting to me.
PHILPOTT: You've suggested that growth in the number of outpatients left you playing catch-up with the size of the staff. But was there ever a point where you felt you just did not have the needed dollars?
WEIGHTMAN: No, I don't think it was a dollar issue. [Army Medical Command] had money if we needed more.
PHILPOTT: Was it ever a question of not spending the dollars because Walter Reed is slated to close?
WEIGHTMAN: The BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure plan] doesn't affect infrastructure much but it does the clinical care and some of the bureaucracy. One of my biggest challenges was to try to stabilize our civilian workforce because they make up two thirds of the workforce at Walter Reed, clinical and administrative. A couple different things impacted on them.
The BRAC decision said Walter Reed basically is going to go away in 2011 so [staff] don't know if their job is going to go away or if it's going to move to Bethesda or to Fort Belvoir [Va.]. So there was a lot of unrest and unease and we'd already noticed a migration. Hemorrhage is too strong a word but already many members of our staff had taken employment elsewhere. We found we were having trouble attracting replacements of high quality because of that, because you want to know you're going to have a job. That affected us and continues to affect us on the clinical side.
And that translates to the patients. They might have more trouble getting an appointment because we're not fully staffed or, on the administrative side, maybe we didn't have as good a quality of person as we wanted on the front desk or making appointments.
PHILPOTT: Would BRAC also have affected a decision to replace the roof on Building 18?
WEIGHTMAN: That's a good question and I don't have an answer. Right now we have a plan to completely renovate Building 18. It's about $6 million to replace the roof and do a lot of things inside and outside. I never went forward and asked for $6 million so I can't say whether it would have been denied or not.
PHILPOTT: Is there another spot for you in the Army or do you retire?
WEIGHTMAN: I've been assigned to the office of the surgeon general here in Falls Church, [Va.]. Although I've gotten an awful lot of support from people inside the Army and outside, from old friends and family, I just feel it would be best for me to put in my retirement. I'm still kind of working through what those options are.
I wasn't kicked out of the Army. There are numerous investigations that are starting. The Army won't let me retire until those investigations are complete, I'm pretty sure, to make sure that I'm not going to be brought up on charges or whatever. So I'm kind of in a holding pattern now and will help out the surgeon general in any way he directs.
PHILPOTT: When you read the articles in the Post, when you heard the two soldiers and the wife of a wounded soldier testify yesterday, what affected you most, or hurt you most, if something did?
WEIGHTMAN: I'll tell you what affected me the most. It's the frustration I heard from these patients and their families with our system. And I'm responsible for all that. We didn't deliver what they needed and we didn't hear their cries for help. We let them down. That's what bothered me. I'm not here to let down patients. I'm here to take care of them.
Though I think there's a whole bunch of soldiers and their families that have really liked our system and benefited from our system and don't have anything [negative] to say about it, there is still a significant proportion that are unnecessarily being jerked through a knothole with getting things done whether it's care or navigating through the system.
So we need to do a better job, as a command, in taking care of that. Sometimes I think we focused a little bit too much on the critical care aspect of taking care of patients as opposed to helping them with all these other things as they're trying to navigate a very complex system that we have.
PHILPOTT: Your last assignment before Walter Reed was medical training.
WEIGHTMAN: Yeah, it was the Army Medical Department Center and School [At Fort Sam Houston, Texas]. I was in charge of the school that trains all the medics, all the enlisted medical specialties. We also do some officer training.
PHILPOTT: What were you able to accomplish in training with the medics?
WEIGHTMAN: That was a great assignment because we really were in touch with what was going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were able to change the curriculum for the medics and devised a lot of courses from lessons learned so that our medical personnel were much better equipped to treat the wounded. I think we had a direct influence on the outcome of survival of patients on the battlefield. We changed our policies and doctrine, and changed the structure of our future combat support hospitals to better reflect what's going on. I'm real excited about all the changes we made and I think they will have real impact for generations to come.
PHILPOTT: Did you learn there, or in earlier tours, about the kinds of frustrations patients and families might be encountering with Army medicine -- from quarters not being up to standard to frustrations in dealing with disability retirement?
WEIGHTMAN: Brooke Army Medical Center is co-located there [at Fort Sam Houston] and was dealing with a fair number of casualties. Of course, they have the burn center so a lot of burn patients and some amputees. I visited them a lot and, by and large, most of [the patients and families] I talked to were just thrilled with the care. They've got a newer post and much newer housing for outpatients. I did not hear them express frustrations with their living arrangements and, quite frankly, I didn't hear from them frustrations with the disability system.
I was in a hospital community down at Fort Eustis in the mid-'90s. Even then we had many patients in medical hold going through the disability system. It's a long and laborious process. The problems that exist with that system have existed for a long time. Now they are just kind of magnified because of the volume of patients.
I will tell you a couple of other observations I've had.
This is the first time we've fought this long of a war with all-volunteer army since, probably, the revolution. So the vast majority of our patients want to stay in. Whereas in the past [everyone] probably looked at the system as just doing acute care and move the soldier out or to the VA for long-term care or rehabilitation, now we're holding on to patients a lot longer to try to give them every chance to get enough function back to stay on active duty. That's been a phased-change and that has resulted in us not speeding people through the system.
There are certainly bureaucratic roadblocks and frustrations in there. We could be more efficient or at least more receptive to the patients. That [is a task] we need to take on. But I have a patient at Med Hold at Walter Reed who has been there since 2003, and he says we're pushing him along too fast. So you have to take each story on its own merits.
The other thing I want to touch on is that, certainly in the last six months, I have seen a big change in how the families view the war. I mean, six months ago I think people were a lot more tolerant of the war and maybe accepting of the injuries that their son or husband or daughter incurred and the frustration that went along with those, because it was for the noble cause, the greater good. I've really noticed a big change -- after the [November] elections and the [House] resolution [opposing the troop surge into Baghdad] that was passed recently. Families are angry and that lowers their threshold about 'the system' as they navigate through both the direct care and the rehabilitation and disability evaluation.
PHILPOTT: Are you saying the challenges' patients and families have faced in recent months at Walter Reed, and for which you accept responsibility, are no worse than they were a year or two years ago but families are more ready now to express their frustrations?
WEIGHTMAN: I'm not criticizing the administration or the war. I'm just sharing my feeling about
the families as they come here to help with care and be with their wounded love ones. I do feel
there is more anger about what has happened to their loved ones than maybe there was before. I'm
not seeing that in the soldiers who are patients but I'm seeing that in the family members. That's
not universal. Don't quote me as saying everybody is that way. But there's been a perceptible
increase.
If you're very concerned and emotionally wrought because your loved one is very seriously
injured, and you add a level of dissatisfaction [with the war] on top of it, I think it lowers your
threshold to put up with some of the other day-to-day aggravations, whether you're making it
through the bureaucratic process of getting paid or getting orders or getting through the
disability system.
PHILPOTT: How are you able to judge that? Just from your experience of talking to families since the war began?
WEIGHTMAN: Yeah. Of course, I was in the war for the first year [as Commanding General, 3rd Medical Command (Forward) and the Coalition Forces Land Component Command Surgeon for Operation Iraqi Freedom]. I went from there to Fort Bragg for a year [as Commanding General, 44th Medical Command/Corps Surgeon, XVIII Airborne Corps] and, although I wasn't at the hospital, I went over to the hospital to talk to families [of the wounded] and families who had soldiers deployed. Then I was in San Antonio the last two years and used to go over to Brooke on a periodic basis to visit the burn patients and their family members. And, of course, the last six months here.
PHILPOTT: How did families view the bureaucratic hurdles earlier?
WEIGHTMAN: They were just so proud of their wounded warriors, if you will. They were just focused on them getting better and they sort of shrugged their shoulders at some the bureaucracy and the inefficiencies that we had with their care. Now that focus has changed a little bit.
PHILPOTT: Are you worried as you leave the Army that folks will have an impression of you as someone not very concerned with soldiers' welfare, and how this last tour might taint your reputation?
WEIGHTMAN: That's a very good question, Tom. There are two different populations here. People who have known me - I just got off the phone, with my high school geometry teacher calling to [express] support -- I've gotten a thousand phone calls and e-mail in the last two weeks saying 'Hang in there. You're a great guy. We know you're always doing the right thing.'
But there's the other side, people who don't know me. This is a tremendous embarrassment and black eye for the Army and the Army Medical Department. Quite frankly, however unpopular this war has become, the medical treatment of soldiers is always one of the bright shining spots of the war. So yeah, it really is embarrassing to me personally that people will get the impression we don't take good care of our soldiers and their families, because of this incident. That will be my biggest regret. It's not so much for my reputation but the reputation of the Army and the Army Medical Department. That's been tarnished. That's the biggest regret that I have.
PHILPOTT: Do you think that if you had just visited Building 18 all of this wouldn't have happened?
WEIGHTMAN: That's a loaded question because, quite frankly, there were two rooms that had mold on the wall, out of 54 rooms. If I had seen that I would have said, 'That's not acceptable. We've got to get [workmen] over here right now and fix that. We've got to move the patient out of the room.' Yeah, if I had known that I feel confident it would have gotten fix. But there were a whole bunch of rooms over there that I could have easily walked in. They were fine and the soldiers were fine [staying] in there.
PHILPOTT: Did you ever think, looking back, that some members of your staff didn't want you to go to Building 18?
WEIGHTMAN: No. The investigation is looking into that... We'll see what the investigation shows.
PHILPOTT: Did any of your subordinates who had responsibility for Building 18, or for supervising those who had responsibility for Building 18, tell you that they let you down and were sorry?
WEIGHTMAN: I had many of my subordinate commanders express regret that they had let me down. My reaction was that this is water under the bridge and they must now direct their full energy into making the system better and more responsive to our patients and their families. Got to keep moving forward and not spend a lot of time wringing our hands about what could or should have been done in the past.
PHILPOTT: Did you personally fire anyone after the Post articles appeared?
WEIGHTMAN: Yeah. We had a sit down and discussed the initial actions there with the brigade commander. And we decided that of the two companies - Med Hold and Med Holdover - one company commander and two first sergeants and three platoon sergeants and a training sergeant needed to go. Not just for what happened in Building 18 but other areas that they probably should have been paying closer attention to. I was involved with that with the brigade commander fairly soon after the article came out.
PHILPOTT: Looking back, do you see some point in your career where you say to yourself, 'Boy I wish I had gotten off at that exit'?
WEIGHTMAN: Oh, no! Absolutely not! I don't have a regret about one thing I did. Nope.
PHILPOTT: What are you most proud of about your career?
WEIGHTMAN: I'm just proud to have been in the Army all these years and all the great people I've been associated with. The soldiers -- you can't put a price on how these soldiers are and their sacrifices for their country. Just being around people who are motivated by those values has just been fantastic.
PHILPOTT: If the next phone call you get is from a good friend who says it isn't fair that at the pinnacle of your career you get relieved of command this way, what would you tell them?
WEIGHTMAN: I've been getting a lot like that. I thank them for their support. I say, 'Hey, the Army and Army Medicine will get through all this and I believe will be stronger for it, and patients and families will get better care.' I tell them as long as I'm wearing the uniform I will continue to do my best to take care of soldiers, and I tell them I've been overwhelmed with words of support.
It certainly has got the Army's attention and the nation's attention right now. The bottom line is it's about our soldiers and their families getting better care.
PHILPOTT: What will you do in your second career?
WEIGHTMAN: I haven't thought about that. My wife would like us to buy an RV and travel around the country for six months. We'll see.
