Fight Like a Girl

me up at night because I worried about the culture in the company. I spent more time with the company commander; then the company commander spent more time with the XO. As indicated in the investigation later on, the XO would then provide Colonel Haas the latest gossip. She alleged that I was mean and that all of my officers hated me.

Let's step back for just a second.

This was Marine Corps boot camp.

Here's the kicker: When I went home for Christmas after firing November Company's CO, the XO had taken the initiative to conduct a survey of my officers and Marines to find out how many of them hated me. She was my second-in-command, and while I was gone, she served as acting commander. She walked around with a notebook and interviewed people about my leadership.⁵

Believe it or not, that really happened. I learned about it from others on staff at the depot, and it was also revealed in the investigative report.

When Sergeant Major called me on leave and told me what the XO had done, I didn't know what to think. When I returned, I tried to talk to the XO about it to figure out what her rationale was and to try to reach consensus on a way ahead. She refused to see how her actions undermined my leadership. The conversation went nowhere, and I knew I wasn't going to change her. So, I restricted the XO to staff-officer duties and told her to stay away from my other officers and Marines. I also told Colonel Haas about her conduct, thinking that surely he would agree that it had been inappropriate for the XO to do her own investigation about my leadership.

This was not the Bounty, and I wasn't going to make her walk the plank, but I certainly wasn't about to let her sow dissonance within my command.

But, as usual, I didn't get anywhere with Colonel Haas. In fact, I later learned that, without me knowing, Colonel Haas wrote a letter of recommendation for her to serve as a vice presidential aide-de-camp—or personal assistant to the vice president—at the White House.

A month after I had informed him of the XO's actions, he asked her—in front of me—if his letter of recommendation had been sufficient.

Wow.

Everyone called Third Battalion “Thumpin’ Third” because they were known for being physical with their recruits. The drill instructors wore the title like a badge of honor—they were tough, manly men, and they believed that being physical with their recruits made for better Marines.

The first training session I did with my Marines—after I gave my command-philosophy brief—was a comparison of the history of the recruit and drill-instructor abuse at Fourth Battalion to what happened at Abu Ghraib with the abuse of detainees. The training was meant to highlight the need for the drill instructors to step up and do the right thing when it came to the treatment and training of the recruits. But Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Kissoon's drill instructors in Thumpin’ Third had a rep for beating up recruits, as was later reported in Esquire magazine.¹

In the Marine Corps, it's absolutely fine to be tough. In some cases, this is encouraged—particularly during training. We aren't training people to work at the Post Office: We're training them to go to war.

However, it is against Marine Corps doctrine to be physical with recruits—or anyone in the Marine Corps, for that matter—and it's against doctrine to mentally abuse them. Tear them down? Yes. Terrorize them? No. There's a difference. When a recruit is led to fear for his or her life, that's abuse. When a drill instructor touches a recruit for any reason other than to correct a position or to keep them from getting hurt, it's against Marine Corps rules.

You might have seen Kissoon's name in the news: By the summer of 2017, he had been relieved of command after a Muslim recruit who, according to witnesses, had been abused by his drill instructors, leaped to his death from a Third Battalion stairwell.² It turned out that Kissoon had allowed a DI who was being investigated for another hazing incident involving a Muslim recruit to continue to train recruits.

But even before the death of the recruit, Kissoon had been investigated by the Marine Corps for whistle-blower retaliation, making a false official statement, failing to obey a lawful order, willful dereliction of duty, and conduct unbecoming of an officer.³

Yet Colonel Haas seemed fixated on my “abrasive” behavior.

When Colonel Haas made his statement for my equal-opportunity investigation, he said that none of my peers liked me and that I thought Kissoon was “the devil,” as he wrote in the investigation.

I did think that. The recruit abuse we all knew was happening was just a piece of my opinion. But Kissoon had also made derogatory statements about my battalion and women recruits, and it infuriated me.

Kissoon had been a company commander at Parris Island, so he knew his way around. He'd been there before. Kissoon was also prior-service, which meant he'd done some time as an enlisted man. The rest of us, as battalion commanders, were brand-new to the duty. This caused Kissoon to act like he was superior to us in every way. Honestly, this could have been great. I'm all about it; there's nothing I love more than a good mentor.

But he wasn't a good mentor. He was the most condescending individual I have ever encountered. After the staff meetings with Colonel Haas every Monday, he would offer his fellow battalion commanders tips about how to be successful. But they weren't particularly novel tips. They were leadership tactics any officer who had been a leader and screened for command would already know. From my interactions with them, it was clear to me that my peers from First and Second Battalions agreed with me that Kissoon was super cheesy and sucking up to Colonel Haas.

The battalion commanders had all arrived at Parris Island within just a