“How do you spell excess class IX?” Graney routinely querried soldiers of every rank in the battalion. “Class IX” was the military term for the spare parts for our vehicles and other equipment.
“C-O-U-R-T-M-A-R-T-I-A-L,” we had to dutifully spell out.
It was his tongue-in-cheek but serious way of teaching us how a truly disciplined unit worked. It was a tradition, albeit a bad one, in mechanized units, to steal and hoard spare parts. It was certainly tempting. Possessing extra parts gave a driver or unit the ability to repair a vehicle rapidly, without going through the Army Repair Parts system with its paperwork and time lag for delivery. For a commander, fixing a vehicle rapidly meant better vehicle readiness reporting—a positive metric of performance. For a soldier, fixing a vehicle rapidly meant finishing work earlier and having more time off. In countless movies over the years, Hollywood glamorized the “scrounger” who could come up with scarce parts quickly.
But Graney knew it killed the system we ultimately depended on, and he taught us why. Besides the obvious theft involved, stealing or hoarding parts meant vehicles were fixed without forcing the repair system to work. The more we went around it, the less responsive it was. It was basic, but getting the basics right was Graney’s brilliance.
He also killed lunch. In a weekly command and staff meeting not long after he arrived, Graney announced, “I want to do away with the lunch hour,” capturing our full attention. “It will make us more efficient.”
When not on field training, it was habit in most units for soldiers of every rank to take a full hour or more over lunch, often using the time for essential personal business beyond eating. Picking up laundry, paying bills, and other activities caused soldiers to get into their personal vehicles and drive, often off base. Graney thought it was stupid and explained why.
It typically took more than two hours to provide soldiers a single hour. Activities in the motor pool or arms room had to be stopped early to allow equipment and tools to be secured, and soldiers had to move to and from wherever they were working. Graney instead offered the idea that if we limited lunch to the nearby mess hall, we could sharply reduce the time used and that we could then finish work and release soldiers by 3:30 P.M. They would then have free time for personal business. There were initial doubts, as it wasn’t tradition. But it worked beautifully.
In countless hours of detailed explanations, Graney taught us what to do—and why.
Sometimes in the process, he could seem unreasonably demanding. Riding together in his jeep back to garrison one Friday after a long week of training, we saw up ahead of us on the road a column of M113 armored personnel carriers. They were from one of our companies, heading to the motor pool before the weekend.
“Watch this, Stan,” Graney said, grabbing the radio handset. He contacted the company commander up ahead, instructing him to establish secure radio communication with us.
The captain responded to him in an unsecure communications mode, making the familiar excuse that the “Vinson” security equipment—which, when attached to the radios, made their transmissions secure—was inoperable. In earlier days we would have accepted the excuse and told them to fix it when they reached garrison.
“Stay where you are until you can call me secure,” Graney said. “I’ll wait.” The company halted in place and could only proceed in to garrison when they had his permission, which would require them to successfully call him in a secure mode. He brushed off the company commander’s immediate entreaty to reconsider—it was Friday afternoon. We settled in to wait.
I figured I might have a long weekend of sitting in Graney’s jeep, but as we watched, the company scrambled like ants out of vehicles, moving radios, antennae, cables, and other equipment in an effort to collect enough working parts from the different vehicles to cobble together a working secure radio. In less than thirty minutes they did, calling in and receiving Graney’s permission to head in. I learned you get the standards you demand.
It seemed Graney was invariably right, and we soon became disciples operating with extraordinarily high standards under a thin veneer of humorous sarcasm. The battalion’s operating premise was that the best way to take care of soldiers was to build standards and processes into a routine until predictable things worked smoothly. That gave leaders the ability to focus on the unpredictable as needed.
It was also a great time for Annie and me. Our son Sam was born in October 1983, and in the evenings, Annie would load him on the back of her bicycle and ride the short distance to my office to bring me home. With Sam perched in the back, we’d walk the bike back across the parade field, talking about the day, satisfied with life.
* * *
In May 1984 my younger brother Pete graduated from West Point and after Infantry Basic and Ranger School, he came to Fort Stewart for his first assignment in early 1985. Since we were the only infantry battalion in the 1st Brigade, when he came to the brigade, he came to the 3/19th and “the brothers McChrystal” now served together. It was unusual but great.
I was now Tom Graney’s operations officer, responsible for training and operations across the battalion, and although still a captain, I was essentially the third-ranking officer in the six-hundred-man unit. Ignorant, unimpressed, or both, Second Lieutenant Pete McChrystal felt free to come over to our quarters for dinner and critique management of the unit’s training. It was valuable to get unadulterated feedback, particularly if it was negative, from a junior lieutenant. As I became more senior, I remembered how much rank could inhibit hearing the unvarnished truth.
In the summer of 1985 I was considered for early promotion to major and not selected. In the years immediately prior, selection rates for early or “below the zone” promotion to major had been extremely low, so I had little expectation of being chosen. But when the list was formally released and I saw the names of a significant number of my peers, many West Point classmates, I was disappointed.
In later years I came to view not being selected as the best thing that could have happened to me. From that time on, I always had a realistic, almost philosophical view of promotions—the same boards that picked me later “below the zone” were those that had passed me by earlier. That disappointment was an important dose of humility.
* * *
Also that summer, after three and a half years in the 24th Mechanized Division, I was due for reassignment. From a professional standpoint, although I’d originally intended Stewart as a short stop on my way to the Rangers, I’d witnessed an amazing time, the kind that comes perhaps once in a generation. By 1985, the 24th Mech was a remarkably better unit. Countless leaders had been strengthened in the crucible, and processes had been developed, refined, and refined again.
As an officer I’d grown immensely. Tom Graney’s leadership was like graduate school in management, and the different, fast-paced nature of mechanized warfare had given me a new perspective. Making decisions while bouncing across the desert at twenty-five miles per hour demanded a change from the slower, more deliberate mindset I’d formed as a light infantryman. I’d learned to appreciate speed. Leveraged thoughtfully, speed gave you advantages over your opponent. Speed in planning, decision making, executing, and learning became something I pursued for the rest of my career.
But I’d not fulfilled my dream of getting to the Rangers and was sure that because I’d been a captain for over five years, I was too senior in age and my time had passed.
Then the phone rang and in a strong southern accent, the caller identified himself as Major John Vines, the executive officer of the 3rd Ranger Battalion. The 3rd Rangers had, along with a new Ranger regimental headquarters, been formed the previous summer at Fort Benning, Georgia, in the wake of the Ranger participation in Grenada in October 1983, when the Army decided a larger Ranger force was warranted.
“I’m told you might be willing to come to 3rd Ranger Battalion,” Vines said to my astonishment.
* * *
No call ever came at a better time for me. I joined 3rd Rangers in October 1985 and although it was entirely serendipitous, my timing again allowed me to watch the tectonics of the Army shift. Just as I’d arrived at the 24th Mech at the outset of an extraordinary period of energy and rapid development, I joined the Rangers as they began transforming from elite but simple light infantry into a complex special operations force.
The change did not follow a straight line. Following Vietnam, the Army was so broken that it wanted to make two perfect battalions whose excellence could then seep into the rest of the Army. The first two Ranger battalions, reestablished in 1974 in Georgia and Washington State, served as these incubators of excellence. Unlike other units designed to do specialized missions, the Rangers largely used the weapons and skills of conventional infantry. They just honed them to perfection. When compared to other paratroop units like the 82nd Airborne, the difference lay more in quality of execution than in distinctly different approaches.
Operation Eagle Claw—the mission to rescue the Iranian hostages—had changed the role of the Rangers. Participation in both the failed Iran rescue mission and its never-executed successor, Honey Badger, pulled the Rangers into an association with the new special operations community that eventually matured into a multi-service task force. Strengthened by a number of personal relationships, the Rangers assumed an increasingly accepted role as the “heaviest” component of that force.
The impact on the Ranger regiment was gradual, but over a period of years it transformed the organization. Missions like complex raids and airfield seizures—which came to be the Rangers’ hallmark, further distinguishing them from other units—demanded new techniques and skills. Although discipline and attention to detail remained sacred dogma in the Ranger regiment, particularly for the older sergeants, the force evolved into a vastly more precise and nuanced military capability for the nation.
For four years, from 1985 to 1989, I was lucky enough to experience both the “purity” of traditional Ranger operations—long foot marches under heavy packs infiltrating to conduct a raid on a jungle or mountain target—and also to help develop and execute tactics for lightning precision strikes into complex urban areas. Neither was easy, but I found my diverse background as a paratrooper, a Green Beret, and most recently a mechanized soldier gave me a perspective I might have lacked otherwise. I came to see the advantage, when developing leadership skills, of seeking a breadth of experiences, rather than pursuing the tempting path of early specialization.
* * *
For infantrymen, walking is a special curse and source of pride. Civil War infantry bore the brunt of combat and joked about having never seen a dead cavalryman. But more than anything else, they walked long miles, often on blazingly hot days while clothed in woolen uniforms. In 1862 Stonewall Jackson led his men up and down the Shenandoah Valley fast enough to earn the moniker “foot cavalry.”
In this regard, little has ever changed. Bill Mauldin’s World War II cartoon GIs, Willie and Joe, fantasized about dry socks or the occasional ride in a vehicle. Walking, often under crushing burdens of packs, weapons, and sometimes a wounded comrade, has always been an exhausting, necessary aspect of infantry life.
Foot marching became a hallmark of the Ranger battalions and would be a vehicle I used repeatedly during my career to develop discipline, physical endurance, and mental toughness in soldiers I led. It was more than just walking. Because foot marches were executed as tactical movements, we maintained a five-meter interval between Rangers and forbade talking. The pace was fifteen to eighteen minutes per mile—just short of a trot but faster than an amble—stopping for ten minutes each hour to briefly rest or change socks.
That left a man to his thoughts for hour after hour, particularly at night. In long marches, little pains grew as the hours passed and the pack, never less than fifty pounds, began to feel far heavier after the first twenty miles. To avoid blisters I’d paint my feet with tincture of benzoin before rolling my socks on. The effect was to temporarily “glue” my socks to my feet. It prevented blisters but left me for three years with oddly yellow ankles. In summer shorts, I was a sight.
The Rangers were hard men and took pride in it. Things were done to an exacting standard and anything less was derided. Planning was detailed to the point of having fun poked at us by other units, but it created a culture of demanding precision that over time proved infectious across the wider special operations community. To this day senior leaders seeking competent, meticulous planners will specifically ask for a Ranger.
Discipline went to extremes. It was a popular idea that before being captured by the enemy with secret documents, a spy or soldier must destroy them, sometimes by eating them. In 1988 during a training exercise, one of our Rangers was captured while carrying a radio frequency and call sign book. When his captors briefly turned their backs on him, he attempted to eat it, although in this case it was the size of a small paperback book. His captors detected his action but didn’t try stopping him. They sat back and laughed until he did too. At least he tried; Rangers always did.
In the spring of 1989 I witnessed an extraordinary demonstration of leadership in which not a single word was spoken. That March, the 3rd Rangers conducted a battalion change of command on Fort Benning’s large parade field. The afternoon on which we assembled was cold and rainy. Rather than move the ceremony indoors, someone decided we would continue as planned—leaving the entire battalion, about five hundred Rangers, standing in formation in the drizzle waiting for the ceremony to start. The bleachers and individual chairs arranged for the spectators were empty as people waited inside nearby Building 4, the schoolhouse of the infantry since 1964, where my father and brother had trained for Vietnam.
Then, about twenty minutes before we were meant to start the ceremony, a single uniformed individual emerged from the building, walked across the soggy grass, and sat in one of the wet chairs facing the Rangers. It was a special operations commander, Major General Gary Luck. As the rain fell steadily, he sat there, he looking at us, every Ranger eye on him. He didn’t wave or call out. He didn’t order us into rigid attention. He simply sat still, under the same rain that fell on us.
At one point, someone sent a young soldier running from the center with an umbrella that he tried to hold over Luck. But with a reassuring pat on the shoulder, the general sent the soldier away. He sat at least a hundred yards from the formation, but I never saw a commander closer to soldiers than he was at that moment.
I spent my final year in the 3rd Rangers as the battalion operations officer, a job I had held before in Korea and at Fort Stewart. Much of the final year was focused on potential operations into Panama against dictator Manuel Noriega. We conducted several detailed rehearsals, and in June 1989, right before I was due to depart, tensions led us to deploy and posture personnel in the United States and Panama in anticipation of imminent operations. Like others in the battalion, I thought I might finally experience combat. I didn’t. The decision was made not to act at that time, and my tour with the Rangers ended a week later.
I spent four years in 3rd Rangers, culminating a series of troop assignments in the 82nd Airborne, Special Forces, Korea, the 24th Mech, and now the Rangers. These years had kept me interested and later proved invaluable. I’d also seen the Army climb out of the hole it had found itself in after Vietnam, restoring its professionalism and pride. And I was lucky enough to have been a part of a dramatic evolution in both the mechanized infantry and special operations force as each grew and adapted to emerging missions and technology.
For the most part, I’d enjoyed serving under a succession of first-rate leaders, several of whom were truly exceptional. And I had been blessed to build lasting relationships of respect and trust with people like John Vines and Dave Rodriguez, who would be lifelong friends. Finally, I served alongside a new generation of army soldiers. At the time, they were young pr
ivates or sergeants. Years later, on distant battlefields, I’d serve again with many of them—all seasoned soldiers and many of them fathers. The wars they’d fight in years later had their roots in events occurring then, amid the final act of the Soviet-Afghan War.
* * *
My first contact with Al Qaeda actually took place a year before it existed, in a curious encounter outside Cairo in August 1987. After completing Ranger company command in May, I’d joined the battalion staff. One of my first missions was to lead an advance element to Egypt in preparation for the battalion’s participation in Exercise Bright Star 1987. Programmed to conduct operations during the exercise with Egyptian commandos, we set up our small team on the commandos’ base and initiated final coordination.
After we arrived, the U.S. 5th Special Forces Group lent us an Egyptian-born U.S. Army sergeant to interpret for us. Normally a supply sergeant, the athletic, outgoing man, named Ali Abdelsoud Mohammad, was quickly invaluable as he accompanied me to some initial meetings. After several days, Ali Mohammad and I went to the headquarters of the Egyptian 45th Commando Brigade. Ali Mohammad was a gifted translator, but the atmosphere with the Egyptians was uncomfortably cool. It was difficult to determine why. Descending the stairs after the meeting, we passed two Egyptian Army majors, and Ali Mohammad greeted them as old friends. They were friendly but reserved, and we left.
On the way back to our tent area, Ali Mohammad explained that before coming to the United States he had been a major in the commandos, and those were old comrades. The next day he was gone. The Egyptians had asked that he leave the country immediately, which he apparently did. The brigade commander later confirmed it but offered no additional explanation.
I never saw him after that. Only years later did I find out about his subsequent membership in Al Qaeda, after he was arrested in conjunction with the August 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, and his public discussions about Al Qaeda as an organization.
My Share of the Task Page 8