for as long as it took to make it work.
It took many years.
Needless to say, there was a lot of resistance to this process. The old tough Marines didn’t like it: “This is all touchy-feely shit we don’t need,” they said. “Forget all that race crap. There’s no black or white Marines; they’re all green. Every Marine’s green. Just put Marine discipline in the unit, that’ll solve any problems we got.” Fortunately, the leadership of the Corps combined a strict adherence and maintenance of its standards with a more open means for communications.
As a result, the quality of the training picked up, and it came to be more and more accepted. Not always, but every once in a while, troops would really let loose, air out what really bothered them, and begin to connect.
Eventually, as the good changes became the norm, the need for the training went away. For many, it got to be seen as a pain in the butt.
That was not a sign of failure but of success.
The other side to the process involved weeding out real troublemakers — the thugs, the radicalized, the violent. The best place for such people was the brig, followed by an aircraft back to the states and jail. But the Corps also found ways to get rid of lesser troublemakers without having to go through a long legal process, by issuing what were called “expeditious discharges.” That is, people were given the opportunity to choose to leave with general discharges, and so avoid legal procedures and a worse discharge. It was easier for everybody.
Throughout the 1970s, as the size of the post-Vietnam Corps came down, the Corps was increasingly successful at weeding out those who’d come in under Project 100,000 and others who didn’t fit or had chronic qualification problems.
Meanwhile, a few weeks of firm and effective guard work stopped riots and demonstrations at Camp Foster, and Zinni’s guard became very popular. Many in the command now wanted to join it. It was
Zinni’s eight months in 3rd FSR, he later realized, were the most difficult of his Marine career. He’d never imagined he’d face Marine-on-Marine confrontations; at Camp Foster, he had to deal with them almost daily… not to mention levels of violence that made a logistics base feel like a combat tour. These were hard realities for an eager and dedicated young Marine to accept. On the other hand, he was able to leave Camp Foster with some confidence. He had encountered the worst of the problems facing the Corps, and the rest of the military, and knew that they could be handled.
He left 3rd FSR in August 1971 and one month later reported in to the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He was back in his original command.
BACK TO THE INFANTRY
When Zinni checked in to the 2nd Marine Division, he fought off the personnel officer’s kindly attempt to give him a break after his two tough Vietnam tours and life-threatening wounds. He didn’t want an undemanding staff job; he wanted to go to a rifle company, where the action was — the heart of the Marine Corps. You don’t get more central to Marine identity.
“Okay, then, you got it,” the personnel officer told him, “if that’s what you want.” And he sent Zinni down to the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines. There the battalion commander offered him command of Company D, which was in cadre status[27] at that time. It was to be remanned in the coming weeks.
Zinni was delighted. He was to get command of his sixth company; and it was a rifle company.
A Marine rifle company is usually made up of three infantry platoons — called “rifle platoons”—and a weapons platoon, which has the company’s crew-served weapons: in those days, 60-millimeter mortars, M-60 machine guns, and perhaps an antitank capability. The number of men in a company varied based on a number of organizational changes at that time and the fluctuations in manning levels. Zinni found himself with a 120-man company, a far cry from the 250 he had in Vietnam, and a sign of the times.
He now had an opportunity to gain further command experience with a rifle company as well as to put into practice the many new training ideas that had come out of his time in Vietnam and his constant reading in matters military, from technical manuals to history and biography. Like most company commanders, he wanted to produce the best, most tactically proficient company in the division, but he also enjoyed actually teaching the skills he’d come by through trial and error, study, and observation.
Training a company takes many forms: There’s weapons and tactics, obviously, but also more specialized training for cold weather,[28] desert, or mountain operations; for working with tanks and armor; for amphibious operations (especially before a deployment). Some kinds of training were standardized, some were unique to whatever specialized mission or deployment was on the schedule.
Zinni’s company did it all — below-zero training in sixty inches of snow in upstate New York, training for jungle operations in Panama, and for amphibious operations in the Caribbean. The latter was Zinni’s first serious experience with the Marine Corps’ bread-and-butter mission, which was also the most complex of all military operations: the transfer of elements from a ship onto some form of transport (surface or air), and then moving them in a closely timed and synchronized way to a landing under fire on a hostile beach, followed by a continued buildup ashore. The entire process — from coming out of the ships through what’s called “the ship-to-shore movement” and into combat operations — must be accomplished in one smooth, continuous flow. Using air strikes and naval gunfire to support the units going ashore, passing control of the operation ashore from the ships, getting in the logistics and supplies, and matching it all up is an undertaking of tremendous complexity, requiring equally complex planning (landing sequence tables, assault schedules, helicopter deployment schedules), very close coordination, and a great degree of communication… while facing an enemy doing its best to disrupt and destroy it all.
As his career developed, Zinni made many sea deployments and amphibious ops — missions he came to love. He enjoyed life at sea, and the traditional image of the Marine Corps storming ashore and rushing up the beaches always excited him. In time, he became fascinated by these operations
Zinni commanded Company D for a little over a year, by which time he was sure they could handle any combat mission that came their way — an opinion he would soon have to prove when D Company took the division-directed company tactical test.
The test contained a series of tough challenges: The company might, for example, be asked to make an amphibious landing and then go into an armor-mechanized attack, or a night heliborne assault. The idea was to stretch the commander’s capabilities by whipping a number of missions on him and putting him under a lot of stress. He got no sleep, he had to keep moving; and all the while, the judges were looking at his ability to give orders and to successfully execute his tasks. At the same time, the judges were examining his troops’ performance, endurance, and tactical skills, and the NCOs and officers and their tactical skills.
So far, every company in the division had failed it.
Zinni and his company passed.
It was a big moment for Zinni, and (justifiably) swelled his ego. Soon came letters of congratulations and glowing calls from the regimental and the division commanders. Since the company was also excelling in its discipline statistics, reenlistment rates, and other nonoperational measures, there were further occasions for pride. Although Zinni reveled in his success, it came with a price.
He loved being a company commander; he couldn’t think of anything else he wanted to do except possibly to get back to the advisory unit in Vietnam.
The successes of his company ended that bliss.
