Burn Loeffke

Bernard "Burn" Loeffke (born Bernardo Loeffke Arjona on September 17, 1934, in Barranquilla, Colombia) is a retired major general of the United States Army. He fought and was wounded in the Vietnam War and later served as the commanding general of U.S. Army South. He was awarded four Silver Star Medals, the Distinguished Flying Cross, five Bronze Stars, a Purple Heart and four Air Medals. In the 1980s, he was the first American general to serve in the U.S. embassy in Beijing, as defense attache. He wrote the book China, Our Enemy?, which espouses peaceful relations between the U.S. and China.

Biography Loeffke graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1957. He has a B.S. in engineering, an M.A. in Russian Language and Soviet Area Studies from Middlebury College, and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Miami. He taught Russian at the U.S. Military Academy and U.S. Foreign Policy at Georgetown University.

Loeffke was an Army Ranger and a pilot. He commanded Special Forces, an Infantry battalion, and was a paratroop advisor to Vietnamese units during the Vietnam War.

While serving as a junior officer in Vietnam, Loeffke said he was forever changed by the combat death of one of his soldiers, Sergeant Larry Morford. Morford opposed the war, but explained to Loeffke that even during a time of the draft, when his unit was predominantly draftees, he chose to volunteer to be a soldier because "war is a beastly job and the least beastly of us should be doing it."

Loeffke culminated his military career as the commanding general of U.S. Army South. In 1992, he retired from the military and started his medical career. After finishing his studies as a physician assistant in 1997, he participated in medical missions in war-torn or impoverished areas such as Bosnia, Haiti, Kenya, Iraq, Niger, Darfur and the Amazon jungles. In his view, differing nations perceive and value things differently, and one common language that everyone speaks is health; working to improve the health of a population builds lasting friendships and allies, not enemies.