I just quit.
It took everything I had to keep it together.
I still have the notes from that day, because I remember thinking, “Holy cow. When I go to my boss with these notes and the documentation from this meeting, he's going to say, ‘Okay, you've done everything you need to do as a leader. She needs to be fired.’”
That's what I was thinking.
“I don't understand why it is we can't seem to connect,” I said, struggling to stay calm. “For a while, it was going well, and then everything stopped and we're back to square one. I can't have that in the battalion.”
“I don't know what it is,” she said. “You just rub me the wrong way.”
Note: this is a captain. This is a captain talking to a lieutenant colonel.
You've all seen enough movies to know that this is not how one speaks to someone who outranks her. If this single conversation doesn't give you some perspective on the mind-set of that battalion, I don't know what else would.
During our meeting, as I was writing this down, I was thinking, “You just blew my mind.” If I ever said anything like that to a colonel, I would be fired.
I told her I would bring her back into my office to resume the conversation after I had decided what the next step should be.
After she left my office, I told my sergeant major about this conversation because she and I were close, and I trusted her advice, but also because she needed to sort out how the CO's behavior affected her NCOs in November Company.
I was also worried for the CO. I thought she was a horrible company commander; but I didn't think she was a bad human. And, as a good battalion commander, it was my job to make her successful. If I didn't care, I wouldn't have spent so much time with her one-on-one, observing her and mentoring her and giving her resources to improve her leadership and herself. I did those things because that's what I thought leaders do.
Before we started with our mentoring meetings, I had laid it out for her. I counseled her. I wrote her a non-punitive letter of caution. It said: You need to do better, and for the next thirty days, we're going to work together to get you there. But if you don't improve at the end of thirty days, I'm going to relieve you of your command.
By mid-December, we had been doing the one-on-one mentoring meetings every day for thirty days. The day I counseled the CO about the Marine with the DUI, Colonel Haas came to my battalion area for an end-of-cycle meeting—the only time he came to visit my battalion.
“Sir, I just want you to know I need to relieve [the CO],” I said. I explained to him why, and I said, “Look, I've got counseling statements three inches thick. I can provide all of that to you, but it's to the point now where she's belligerent with me. I'm worried about her health. She cries every time she speaks publicly. She's crying in front of her Marines.”
For the record, all along, I had notified Colonel Haas about my concerns with this CO. I had previously told him that she had tried to quit twice, and her first sergeant had also quit.
“I can't have this,” I said. “It's affecting my other Marines.”
It was terrible, and I needed him to understand why.
“Well, what are you going to do with her?” he asked.
Because I was short female officers and didn't have a spare captain lying around to replace her, I told him I could make her a platoon commander again. That is a demotion, but it would take her out of the company commander position. That way, I could promote a better-qualified person from platoon commander to the company commander position. That's all that I could do. He knew that I didn't have any XOs at the company level, and we were in desperate need of more officers.
“Let me see what I can do,” he said.
That's exactly what he said.
So I was thinking, “Sweet. I've got his support.” I was left with the impression that he would go back to support command to try to find a female officer who could backfill the platoon-commander position so I could fleet up the best qualified officer to be the new CO. That way, rather than demoting the old CO to be a platoon commander again, she could go somewhere else on the recruit depot, and I would get a better commander.
I didn't hear, “Don't fire her.” I heard, “I'll work with you to figure out a replacement.”
I would later find out that his interpretation of “Let me see what I can do” was entirely different.
After he left, the CO was standing outside my office, waiting for me to fire her. He saw her there. He and I had just had this conversation. Typically, you don't wait for a replacement to fire someone who needs to not be in command anymore. Just as the Marine Corps left my job vacant for four months after I was fired, you make do with what you have until you get the replacement.
Forty minutes later, I came back to my office from a training event, and I had an email from Colonel Haas: “Just in case I wasn't clear: I'm expressly forbidding you to fire [the CO].”
My stomach felt heavy.
I immediately picked up the phone and called Colonel Haas.
“I'm really sorry, sir,” I said. “I don't understand. I didn't hear that from you at all. I've already fired her.”
He refused to talk to me on the phone.
I asked if I could set up a meeting with him for the next day. Right after graduation, I was supposed make the eight-hour drive to spend Christmas with Joe, so I wanted to do it before I left. Colonel Haas refused.
Instead, the next day, Fourth Battalion
