This is my first blog as Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Commander of U.S. European Command. I am the first Admiral to assume these two jobs, and the fifteenth officer in a line stretching back to General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
It is humbling to walk in the steps of my distinguished predecessors, and I am excited to join two superb teams – one in Mons, Belgium (SHAPE) and the other in Stuttgart, Germany (EUCOM). I spent some wonderful years in Europe and am glad to be back. I lived in Greece as a child in the 1960s while my father, a U.S. Marine Corps Officer, served as Assistant Naval Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Greece. My wife, Laura, also lived in Greece during that time, and returned to Europe in the 1970s as a high school student at the U.S. Department of Defense Dependents School in Brussels while her father, a U.S. Naval Aviator, served on the U.S. Mission to NATO. Both Laura and I enjoyed our prior time in Europe, and we are looking forward to more.
You will have noticed that I have titled this blog “From the Bridge.” I’ve done so not because of the naval reference (the bridge is the area on a ship from which it is commanded) but because of the function that both SHAPE and EUCOM serve as important links between the United States and our friends in Europe, effectively “bridging” the Atlantic.
