I Served With James Mattis. Here’s What I Learned From Him

[Bigun]

I Served With James Mattis. Here’s What I Learned From Him

To Marines, Gen. James Mattis is the finest of our tribal elders. The rest of the world, very soon, will know how truly gifted he is.

America knows Gen. James Mattis as a character, Mad Dog Mattis, the font of funny quotes and Chuck Norris-caliber memes. Those of us who served with him know that he is a caring, erudite, warfighting general. We also know that there is a reason he uses the call-sign Chaos: he is a lifelong student of his profession, a devotee of maneuver warfare and Sun Tzu, the sort of guy who wants to win without fighting—to cause chaos among those he would oppose.

To Marines, he is the finest of our tribal elders. The rest of the world, very soon, will know how truly gifted he is. Our friends and allies will be happy he is our new secretary of war; our enemies will soon wish he weren’t.

I worked for Mattis three times: when he was a colonel, a major general, and a lieutenant general. I very much want to work for him again. Here is why.

One: July 1994
I checked into Third Battalion, Seventh Marines in Twentynine Palms, California in 1994. It was 125 degrees in July in the high desert; everyone was in the field. This was a hard place, for hard men training for the hardest of jobs.

Then-Colonel Mattis, the Seventh Marines regimental commander, called for me to come see him. I was not only just a brand-new captain, but an aviator in an infantry regiment. I was a minor light in the Seventh Marines firmament: I was not in any measure a key player.

I arrived early, as a captain does when reporting to a colonel, and waited in his anteroom. There, I convinced myself what this would be: a quick handshake, a stern few sentences on what I was to do while there, and then a slap on the back with a “Go get ‘em, Tiger!” as he turned to the next task at hand. This was a busy guy. Five minutes, tops.

Colonel Mattis called for me. He stood to greet me, and offered to get coffee for me. He put a hand on my shoulder; gave me, over my protestations, his own seat behind his desk; and pulled up a chair to the side. He actually took his phone off the hook—something I had thought was just a figure of speech—closed his office door, and spent more than an hour knee-to-knee with me.

Mattis laid out his warfighting philosophy, vision, goals, and expectations. He told me how he saw us fighting and where, and how he was getting us ready to do just that. He laid out history, culture, religion, and politics, and he saw very clearly not only where we would fight, but how Seventh Marines, a desert battalion, fit into that fight.

Many years later, when Seventh Marines got into that fight, he was proven precisely right. It would not be the last time.

Two: February 2003
Major Gen. Mattis was commanding general of First Marine Division, in charge of the riflemen who were going to bear the brunt of President George W. Bush’s decision to go to war. He was small, wiry, and feisty, energy cooking off of him, the sort of guy who walks into a room of Alpha males and is instantly the leader. Mattis was a lifelong bachelor married to the Marine Corps, with a reputation as an ass-kicking, ferocious leader, an officer who took shit from no man and would do anything for his Marines.

Mattis had led First Battalion, Seventh Marines as part of Task Force Ripper during Desert Storm, and had cemented his reputation as a man on the way up. This reputation, well-earned even then, was solidified when he took Task Force 58, pulled together from two Marine Expeditionary Unit afloat, 400 miles over Pakistan and into Afghanistan late in 2001 to retaliate on behalf of us all against al-Qaeda’s attacks on September 11. He was a blunt, smart warfighter, just the sort of man our bulldog savior, Gen. Al Gray, had started pulling up the ladder behind him when he was commandant in the late 1980s.

I felt very confident with these two major generals—Mattis of the infantry and Amos of the air wing—in charge. And I felt even more confident as I looked around the room.

Excerpt. Much more at link below:


http://thefederalist.com/2016/12/02/served-james-mattis-heres-learned/#.WEF0iL4S7NR.twitter

[Maj. Bill Martin]

Article is most definitely worth a read.

[SirLinksALot]

[RetBobbyMI]

Great pick. Now if Trump will pick a compatible SoS such as Amb Bolton. Romney is not on that list!  RudyG has too much baggage.

[Emjay]

Article is most definitely worth a read.

Yep !!  Particularly for people who are focusing on some of his 'controversial' quotes instead of the full history of the man.

[Maj. Bill Martin]

Yep !!  Particularly for people who are focusing on some of his 'controversial' quotes instead of the full history of the man.

Yeah, a lot of people get caught up in the "Mad Dog" moniker and thing of him as a one-dimensional ass-kicker.  He's a far more thoughtful, considerate person than that.

The article mentions General Al Gray, who was the Commandant who started the whole revolution towards maneuver warfare.  He had the same image -- he's the only Commandant to have had his official portrait taken in utilities rather than in dress uniform.  A real "Marine's Marine."  But he was also an incredibly thoughtful, well-read guy, and it's very easy to see how he and Mattis would have been linked.

He was another guy who cared very deeply about the troops and more junior people in general.  One time, he came with a Congressional delegation down to Quantico, and was accompanied by his counterpart from the Soviet Naval Infantry.  They were there to visit/observe the training at the The Basic School, and there was a big set of fancy tables set up in the back of the Officer's Mess, raised on a dias, where they were all going to eat.  Linen tablecloths, the whole thing.

So during noon chow, the whole bunch of them come in and sit down at the prepared tables to be served and to eat.  Not General Gray.  He gets in the cafeteria line instead next to some Marines -- it was a mixed mess for a few months because the enlisted chow hall was being renovated.  He waits in line with everyone else, and eventually comes out.  He stopped at our Instructors' table for a bit to tell us how great a job we were doing, then goes and sits at a table with some awestruck PFC's and LCpls.  The politicians are having a fit seeing this "disrespect", but you can see the Commandant's aide kind of shrugging and saying he does what he wants.  And the CG of the Soviet Naval Infantry is laughing at the whole thing.

That was the kind of guy he was, and his focus/emphasis on the welfare of the ranks is something that Mattis continued in spades.  It's definitely a part of the culture that those two emphasized.