David P. Garner Went From Artillery Batteries in Vietnam to Helping New NATO Members Learn to Supply Their Forces

WOODBRIDGE, Va. Early in 1996, NATO launched the first military operation in its history, sending forces into the Balkans to carry out the Dayton Accords. David P. Garner went to watch how the alliance kept them supplied. He travelled through Bosnia, Croatia and Hungary to see multinational logistics working under real conditions, and what he learned there shaped the next decade of his career.

By then Mr. Garner had already lived one full career. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps and retired as a colonel. He counts two combat tours in Vietnam as the most meaningful part of that service. On the second tour he spent nine months as an artillery forward observer and commanded several artillery batteries, and his actions in Vietnam earned him the Bronze Star for Valor.

Between those tours and his later staff work, the Marine Corps kept investing in him. After returning from Vietnam in 1966 he taught at the Army Field Artillery School. He also served as the Marine Officer Instructor for the Naval ROTC unit at the University of Notre Dame, where he had earned his own Bachelor of Business Administration. A Marine Corps special education program then sent him to Harvard University, where he completed a Master of Business Administration in organization development.

His later assignments moved from the guns to the money and the supply lines. He held financial management posts at the Marine Corps Logistics Base in Albany, Georgia, and at Marine Corps Headquarters, graduated with distinction from the U.S. Naval War College, and finished his uniformed career on the Joint Staff Logistics Directorate. There he often served as the senior logistician in war games played alongside the actual regional combatant commanders, work that brought him the Defense Superior Service Medal.

In 1989 he joined the Logistics Management Institute as a senior fellow and stayed until 2013. During Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm he built unclassified presentations that laid out the logistics problems facing the coalition, giving decision makers a clear picture of what it took to sustain forces so far from home.

After the Balkans trip, the work turned outward. From 1996 to 2006 he and his team supported the U.S. Department of Defense with seminars on operational multinational logistics, delivered to 19 Partnership for Peace nations to strengthen their readiness to join NATO. He also worked to modernize logistics in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, assisted Georgia in its bid for NATO membership, and helped Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic put NATO's defense capabilities initiatives into practice after they joined the alliance.

One study stands out. In 2000 and 2001, Mr. Garner's team examined NATO's strategic lift capabilities, and the work led to NATO leasing six C 17 aircraft to meet its airlift requirements. His contributions at the institute earned several LMI President's Awards, and he also gave presentations at the National Defense University.

From 2013 to 2022 he advised clients independently through Garner Global Consulting, concentrating on logistics modernization and multinational collaboration, much of it within NATO frameworks. In 2013 he became one of the first Americans to receive the Medal of Merit from the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration, a recognition of years of cooperation with allied defense partners.

Away from defense work, his parish has been a constant. He has been a reader for more than 40 years, served as vice president of the first parish council in Lawton, Oklahoma, helped establish the first parish council at his parish in Albany, Georgia, where he was its first president, and has served on the parish council, chaired the finance committee and coordinated the reader ministry at his parish in Woodbridge. He has also led a Saturday men's group.

He plays tennis regularly, and The Washington Post has published several of his letters to the editor on national defense. He credits his success to perseverance and to building trust with people from very different backgrounds, a skill he used in Vietnam and in conference rooms from Washington to Central Asia.

Dynamo Times recognizes David P. Garner for a lifetime of service in uniform and for helping a generation of new allies learn how to keep their forces supplied.