Halls interspersed four children among high-ranking military careers

CYGNET LAKE – Neither Mike Hall nor his wife Robin planned on 20-year military careers when they commissioned into the Army. But that was before they met each other.

Graduating from Belgrade, Montana, Mike applied for an ROTC scholarship. That got him to Montana State University and resulted in a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering and a four-year commitment to serve in the United States Army. His plan was to leave at the end of those four years and get a job in industry.

Mike was commissioned in 1981 into the Ordnance Corps completing his Officer Basic Course at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. He then served as a platoon leader and later as the company executive officer at Ft. Hood, Texas. There he supervised a 54-man platoon of mechanics and technicians responsible for repair and maintenance of all manner of military machinery.

When his four years were up, the Army enticed Mike to stay in longer by offering to send him to Korea. Traveling to a foreign country appealed to him, so he extended his service. In 1985 in the Republic of Korea, Mike was promoted to Captain. A year later he returned to Aberdeen where he took advanced training in preparation for a three-year assignment in Germany.

Meanwhile Robin, a University of Connecticut School of Law graduate, was working in an immigration law firm. She was ready to make a change and eager to see more of the world.

"I just wanted an adventure. I really did," she said. "I kind of saw myself living and dying in Connecticut and never doing anything amazing."

In October 1984, she interviewed for the Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG). She said her plan was to have the Army send her to Germany where she would represent defendants, save the Constitution, fight the military machine and get out when her three years were up. The interviewers said there would be no openings available in Germany until March. They wanted to send her to Washington, D.C. instead.

Robin related, "I was such a snotty little kid. I said, 'Fine, I'll come back next March.'"

She entered Basic Training in March 1985, followed by a course in Military Law. By July she was stationed in Schweinfurt, Germany as defense counsel. She continued representing defendants when she transferred to Aschaffenburg in 1987. In 1988 she met Mike Hall, a company commander in Aschaffenburg. In 1989 they married in the chapel of a storybook castle in Germany with full saber-arch ceremony.

Robin also recommissioned. She was sent as chief prosecutor to Wuerzburg, Division Headquarters for the Third Infantry Division. It was about an hour commute from where Mike was stationed. As chief prosecutor she supervised a dozen trial counselors and tried a triple murder case.

By 1990 both Halls were back in the states on the campus of the University of Virginia. Mike was working on a master's degree in Nuclear Engineering. Robin was on the staff at the JAG school there and working on a master's degree in Military Law. Their first child Victoria was born during that time.

Robin was then appointed Chief of Defense Appellate Division. She supervised eight male JAG lawyers who presented cases to Court of Appeals and Court of Appeals for the Military Circuit. Two highlights of that period from 1992-1994: second child Matthew was born and she and some of "her guys" ran in the Army Ten-Miler, the second largest ten-mile race in the United States.  They placed fourth in the mixed division. "That was kind of fun," she said.

During that time, Mike was assigned to a three-year stint with the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA). His job was to monitor and assist with international nuclear operations, which involved a lot of travel to the former Soviet Union countries. He described the job as "cooperative threat reduction."

"It was basically during the dissolution of the Soviet Union," Mike explained. "We were trying to get the nuclear weapons into Russia from Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan" [to be dismantled]and then also keep the brain drain from leaving Russia and going to places like Iran and North Korea. So I was part of that program."

During Mike's final year with DNA, Robin had what she called "a great assignment." She was legal advisor in the Department of the Army Inspector General. The Inspector General's role is to investigate violations of Army rules and regulations, to probe possible instances of fraud, waste or abuse and to look into allegations of misconduct by senior officers. As an added bonus, completion of that assignment qualified Robin to enroll early in Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Since Mike had deferred his entry into CGSC for a year, they were both able to matriculate through the college at the same time.

In 1996 they were both stationed in Germany again with the First Infantry Division. Robin was in Wuerzburg as Chief of Justice, responsible for all the courts-martial in the division. Mike was in Kitzingen, about a half-hour away. He served as Material Officer for the Division Support Command. Their third child Katya was born that August. There would be a fourth child named Jack before their assignments in Germany ended.

"Four kids while on active duty, that's crazy!" Robin said.

This was also the period of the Bosnian War and its aftermath. In 1997 the First Infantry Division was sent there on a peacekeeping mission. While Mike did not deploy, he did spend time in Bosnia as part of his role as Support Operations Officer for the 701st Support Battalion. Robin was Deputy Staff Judge Advocate at the time and when the Staff Judge Advocate deployed to Bosnia with the Commander, Robin was left in charge of rear operations for the legal department.

"At the time," Robin explained, "we had about 150 personnel (soldiers and civilians), including branch offices in six communities, about 45 of whom deployed."

By 1998, the Hall family was back in the states. Mike worked at the Pentagon doing resources assessments to advise the Chairman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later the Army General Staff in war planning.

Mike explained, "There were a number of things going on in the world at the time, so we were figuring out the when and where [troops] were going to go to various places. We were scheduling all of that and deciding the various resources needed."

Meanwhile, Robin took on a two-year role as Chief of the Judge Advocate General's recruiting office. She said there was a certain circular justice to the assignment. She was now the interviewer for those young new lawyers who were as strong-minded as she herself had been at her own interview, or as she put it, "all those snot-nosed little kids insisting they knew where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do."

In a more serious vein, she said the task was an important one because, "the whole JAG Corps relies on kids coming out of law school and ROTC students coming out of law school. They only send about six soldiers per year to law school with the Army paying for it. So in order to keep the Corps going, it's very important to figure out who can be both a lawyer and a soldier, because not everybody can."

During that period she brought 300 new attorneys into the JAG Corps.

Mike and Robin Hall's story continues in the next issue of the Pathfinder.