Army Training Center at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He would spend most of the rest of his career in airborne and light infantry units. In January 1969 he returned to Vietnam as an intelligence officer with the 173d Airborne Brigade, subsequently becoming a company commander and later acting battalion operations officer. From March 1970 through July 1972 he was back at Fort Benning at the Army Infantry School, initially as a student in the Infantry Officer Advanced Course and then as an instructor and later an operations officer in the Florida Phase, Ranger Department. In June 1973 Shelton graduated from the Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, and received a master's

degree in political science from Auburn University. From Alabama, he went to the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, where he held several staff positions, including executive officer of the 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry, 2d Brigade, and was promoted to major in February 1974. Major Shelton's next assignment was with the Army Military Personnel Center, Alexandria, Virginia, where he served from June 1977 until April 1979, handling the career management and assignments of other majors.

Promoted to lieutenant colonel in November 1978, Shelton assumed command of the 3d Battalion, 60th Infantry, 2d Brigade, 9th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, Washington,

with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Brigadier General Shelton led the division's forces in a deep helicopter assault into Iraq. The division was poised to block Iraqi units fleeing to Baghdad when the war ended.

Over the next five years, Shelton held two of the Army's most prestigious commands. In May 1991 he returned to Fort Bragg as Commanding General of the 82d Airborne Division; he was promoted to major general that October. He assumed command of XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg upon promotion to lieutenant general in June 1993. As

corps commander, Lieutenant General Shelton gained national prominence leading the multinational operation which in 1994 restored an environment safe for the return of Haiti's democratically elected government. Shelton received his fourth star on 1 March 1996 after becoming Commander in Chief of the US Special Operations Command (USCINCSOC) at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, on 29 February. Leading the command during a period of greatly increased demand for special operations forces worldwide, General Shelton defined the characteristics necessary for these forces to function

effectively well into the twenty-first century. During his tenure the largest operational commitment of special operations forces was to the peacekeeping mission in the Balkans.

General Shelton became the fourteenth Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 1 October 1997. He was the first Chairman with a special operations background. This experience, together with his long career in airborne and light infantry units, gave him extensive knowledge of the type of military operations that predominated in the postCold War world and expertise that meshed with Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen's interest in unconventional warfare.

The end of the Cold War had brought major reductions in the size of the US military and in the number of forces permanently stationed overseas. Increasingly, US forces were deployed in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations as well as in more traditional deterrent missions. When General Shelton became Chairman, the major overseas involvement of US forces was in Bosnia, where they had been employed in peace operations since 1993. His tenure saw an unprecedented pace of military operations, with additional US forces engaged in Kosovo and in enforcing United Nations sanctions against Iraq as well as participating in counterdrug operations, hurricane relief in Latin America, and numerous other contingency deployments.

Repeatedly declaring that he did not believe in "fair fights," Shelton endorsed the use of overwhelming force once the decision was made to commit US forces to combat. But he thought that, in the uncertain strategic environment, the US military must also be prepared to undertake flexible missions with limited objectives. Force readiness, therefore, was a top priority. To address problems in recruitment and retention that adversely affected readiness, General Shelton led the Joint Chiefs of Staff in winning administration and congressional support for major reforms to improve military pay and retirement.

Shelton believed that key to implementing the administration's strategic vision for the twenty-first century was a robust joint experimentation program, while executing more frequent deployments with a reduced force structure necessitated greater attention to force integration and interoperability. When members of Congress proposed establishing a joint experimentation command, he recommended replacing the Atlantic Command with a new command focused on oversight of joint doctrine and experimentation and the preparation of US-based forces for deployment overseas. Under General Shelton's guidance, the Joint Forces Command came into existence on 1 October 1999, the same day that he began his second term as Chairman.