in war fighting than the senior officers.
The captains loved talking about operational issues — working them through, worrying over them, coming up with new ideas. We were the Vietnam guys. We’d suffered through all the lousy tactics, the poor policies, and the shitty things that went on in the field. So we had a burning desire to make sure we had the skills we hadn’t seen there. We went into the crucible right out of the blocks.
But the senior officers were another thing; and this really shocked me. I expected to learn a lot about war fighting from the horse’s mouth; but it didn’t happen that way. They certainly knew war intimately; they had all experienced it in World War Two, Korea, and Vietnam. But war fighting was pretty far down on their agenda. Operational competence was simply not valued or demanded as much as administrative competence. In those days, they were judged on their management and not their tactical skills.
It was rare, in fact, to find anyone above the rank of captain who talked tactics and war fighting.
I understood that Vietnam was ending and the big concerns presented by the war’s aftermath — race and drug problems, the critical shortage of personnel, the severe budget cuts, reorganizations, and many other issues — consumed their time and attention. Yet I expected there would be far more focus on the core of our profession — how to fight. This was my passion; I thought it would be the passion of every Marine. It wasn’t.
One day I was chatting with General Poillion.
“My God,” I said to him, “there’s something badly wrong with us. We’re losing our operational edge. We don’t hold people to task. I see senior officers — battalion or regimental commanders — that either don’t know anything about war fighting, or else they’ve forgotten it. They were in Vietnam and all, but they’ve lost it. There’s no way we hold them accountable. We run TAC tests on the company commanders and the tests are tough. But after that there’s nothing. What happens to test the others?”
He thought a moment, then he looked at me. “Have you ever heard of anybody being relieved for poor, shitty tactics?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“Have you ever heard of anybody being relieved for poor administration or logistics?”
“Yes.”
That happened all the time — for badly managing money and personnel and the like.
“Well, there it is,” he said. “Officers are held accountable for poor leadership or poor administration, but not for poor operational skills. That’s the problem.”
There was one notable exception to this pattern.
Back when I commanded D Company, a fellow captain and company commander, my friend Jack Sheehan (I’d known him since my early days at Quantico; he eventually became a four-star general), had bragged a lot about his great battalion commander. Jack’s commander really knew the stuff the gung ho younger officers were living and breathing and spending every spare moment talking about — landing plans, tactics, small units, patrol formations, weapons employment, all of that stuff. He’d had a long stretch in Vietnam, five or six years, and his operational skills were legendary; and like all the best leaders, he’d read everything. Not only that, he was one of the few senior officers who actually liked to sit down and talk tactics and hold forth on his own with the junior guys. His name was Al Gray.
“Hey, how about coming to dinner?” Jack said to me. “You and I can hook up with Colonel Gray — sort of like a guys’ night at the club.”
“Sure,” I said.
I knew something about Gray; it was hard not to at Lejeune. He was a legend. The troops loved him, and he was truly great with the enlisted Marines. He himself had come up through the ranks and never lost that connection. Later, as the aide, I learned that he was held in equally high regard by the generals.
So I met Al Gray at the officers’ club at Camp Lejeune with Jack Sheehan. When he walked in, the first thing that impressed me was how down to earth he was. He talked to us, not down to us (he was not patronizing). But what really impressed me was how much he was really into the operational stuff. “He knew his shit,” as the troops would put it. He had the same sort of fire that I had. No matter what came up for discussion, he had an informed and pointed opinion about it. I had seen this kind of fascination for tactics and war fighting in only a very few senior officers. I was really impressed.
Of course, I hoped I’d have a chance to see him again and take our discussions further; but being realistic, I figured it was unlikely. Not only was I in another battalion, I was in another regiment, and probably just another captain to him. Well, it turned out that he must have seen something worth cultivating in me; and he stayed in contact — took me under his wing.
By the time I became the general’s aide, he had moved up to become regimental commander of the 2nd Marines, and I saw him frequently… he always had a lot of business with the general; and we grew increasingly friendly. Later, as we both rose up the ranks, the friendship continued to develop and mature — the classic mentor relationship. I’ve always considered him as my strongest mentor (and I’ve had several, starting with General Mick Trainor). It was a relationship that has stood for thirty years. Gray went on to become the commandant of the Marine Corps and significantly change the way the Corps thought and conducted combat operations.
When my tour as aide ended, I had an offer to command another company (it would have been my seventh). I jumped at the chance, but General Poillion snuffed out that idea. I’d already had six companies; it would not be well received if the general’s aide got a seventh.
I was assigned to the G-3, the operations section of the division — a disappointment. But the good news was that Al Gray, now a colonel, had just given up command of his regiment and was to be the new G-3. If I couldn’t be in an infantry unit, then the next best assignment, in my view, was in an operations or training assignment. I knew I would learn a lot from Colonel Gray.
When I checked into the section, Colonel Gray surprised me. “What do you want to do?” he asked.
“Something in training will be great,” I said, thinking the best I could get as a captain was to be some sort of training assistant — an administrator who kept the statistics or arranged schedules. It was a boring job, but it would at least allow me to observe training. Such was the fate of junior officers on a division staff.
“No, Captain, you didn’t hear me,” Colonel Gray said. “I didn’t ask you what job you expected to get stuck with. I asked you what you really want to do. I want you to take a few days to think about your answer.
“You and I have talked a lot about improving the infantry skills of the units in the division,” he continued. “We both think that our units lack tactical skills they should have and that company commanders have not been given the assets and help they need to train their units. Since you feel so strongly about that, why don’t you think about something you can do to help that situation.”
I came back a few days later with a wild idea — a center of excellence for infantry operations and weapons skills that provided training and training support for the infantry companies and battalions, a facility that could put units and their leaders through training courses and programs, and offer training “packages” containing references, support materials, suggested schedules, ranges and training area recommendations, specialized instructor support, and unit training evaluations.
Colonel Gray liked the idea; and we drew up detailed plans. We’d get around the limited assets, personnel, and funds available in the postwar drawdown by converting an old training facility scheduled for demolition and running it with a minimum staff. It was in the most remote part of the base, and deep into the woods and swamps. Access was only through dirt roads, and many of the old firing ranges from the now-defunct Infantry Training Regiment were close by. It was perfect for what I had in mind.
After reviewing the final plans, Colonel Gray took them to the new commanding general, Major General Sam Jaskilka, a hard-as-steel old fighter whose heroism in Korea at the Chosin Reservoir under massive
