Boyd

by Robert Coram

  Boyd and Wyly knew their names could not be on the book; they were far too controversial. And the new manual would be far more acceptable to junior officers if it bore the name of a young officer. They went to a young captain who already had the job of writing a new manual but who had become bogged down. Boyd and Wyly spent long hours with him. Boyd said, “Do not write it as a formula. Write it as a way to teach officers to think, to think in new ways about war. War is ever changing and men are ever fallible. Rigid rules simply won’t work. Teach men to think.” Boyd paused a moment and added a final thought. “And keep the goddamn thing simple so generals can understand it.”

  Originally the manual was to have a long number in the title, signifying the evolutionary process of Marine Corps tactics manuals. But Gray refused. “We want this to show that we are starting over, starting at the beginning. Put the number one on the cover.”

  The manual was called “FMFM-1 Warfighting.”

  Against the wishes of most officers on his staff, Gray simply signed on and said this is the way it will be, this is the way we will train, and this is the way we will fight. He decreed the manual as official Marine Corps doctrine. Shortly thereafter, Boyd and Wyly went to see General Gray. The commandant was immensely pleased and thought Boyd would be also. But Boyd looked at the ninety-eight-page manual and said, “Okay, General. Now you have to start changing it.” He still loathed the idea of finishing an intellectual work.

  All this time, Wyly continued sending drafts of the campaign plan to Sullivan. He said the first thing the Marine Corps should do was clean up the personnel system and stamp out careerism. He wrote of the need to provide professional education for all Marines, to instill a greater sense of ethics, and to promote for unit cohesion. He stressed the importance of maneuver warfare.

  Every idea was rejected. Sullivan slashed and edited and kicked back draft after draft for rewriting. He even wrote “Shit” on one version. He summed up his feelings toward Wyly with the greatest insult a fighter pilot can muster: “I don’t think I’d want you for a wingman.”

  Then Wyly attended a meeting where some of his young officers were making a maneuver-warfare presentation to a two-star general. The general belittled every sentence. Wyly, as the senior maneuverist in the Marine Corps, felt obligated to come to their defense. He was not going to be intimidated by a general. He stood up and said, “General, let them finish before you begin criticizing.”

  In minutes Wyly and the general were standing toe-to-toe. “We have to keep the tried and true,” the general shouted.

  “You mean like Vietnam?” Wyly shouted even louder.

  Other officers backed away. When the elephants are fighting, it is best to keep your distance.

  Wyly later was told that his confrontation with the two-star ended his chances of being promoted to general. He did not believe it. The Marine Corps expected healthy debate, didn’t it?

  General Sullivan refused every idea Wyly had for the five-year plan. The commandant had given him the biggest job of his career but his immediate supervisor rejected his best efforts. It was clear that nothing but tired old doctrine would be acceptable to Sullivan. And Wyly wanted no part of this.

  During Easter weekend of 1989, Wyly returned to Kansas City, where his wife and daughters lived in the Wyly family home. Mrs. Wyly had been waiting until the end of the school year to move to Quantico.

  “I’ve decided to hang it up,” he told her. She agreed. Her husband had been mistreated long enough by the Marine Corps. It was time to join the civilian world.

  Boyd called the evening that Wyly returned to Quantico. His pre-science was uncanny. Although he did not say so, the thrust of Boyd’s conversation clearly revealed that he knew what Wyly was planning. Finally Wyly said, “John, I’ve decided to retire from the Marine Corps.”

  “Mike, you can’t do that. It is not yet time. You still have a job to do, a big job. There is a mission here for you that you must continue.” Boyd spent almost an hour cajoling Wyly, reminding him of the OODA Loop, of bypassing resistance, of ambiguity, of making multiple thrusts against an enemy stronghold. “The multiple thrusts will confuse Sullivan,” he said. “You know your Schwerpunkt but he doesn’t.” Boyd took Wyly to the mountaintop and showed him a rainbow-draped promised land, where Marines practiced maneuver warfare and where there were no generals to impede good ideas.

  Wyly put down the phone, thought about what Boyd had said, then called his wife and said he was staying in the Corps. “Pack up and you and the girls come join me,” he said.

  He called again the next day and told his wife how much better he felt now that he had decided not to resign. “It was depressing to think that I was going to wake up a civilian. No more of those late calls from Boyd. No more OODA Loops or discussions about rapidity or fluidity. I would have missed those phone calls.” He and his wife laughed; both at times were exasperated with Boyd’s midnight calls.

  Following Boyd’s lead, Wyly decided to put the principles of maneuver warfare to work. He would continue to send drafts of his five-year plan to Sullivan, but while the general was occupied with that, he would make another thrust—this one straight toward the commandant. He asked Boyd to come to Quantico and bring the commandant up to date on his thinking about multiple thrusts and ambiguity, two concepts Boyd had begun emphasizing only in recent months.

  Wyly knew Sullivan would refuse Boyd entrance to the commandant’s office, so Wyly bypassed the chain of command. Wyly and Boyd talked to Gray for three hours. Aides kept trying to interrupt, to get the commandant back on schedule, but he turned them all away. He refused all phone calls. The next day Gray dropped in on a class at the Command and Staff College and talked to the students about multiple thrusts and ambiguity and Schwerpunkt. He told them of maneuver warfare and said, “This is where the Marine Corps is going.”

  Of course, two-star generals don’t like being bypassed in the chain of command, so Sullivan braced Wyly and gave him a royal chewing out.

  Several days later Wyly wrote a memo to Gray, attached it to a copy of his five-year plan—the project Sullivan kept blocking—and sent it to Gray’s office. The copy was marked and edited and filled with Sullivan’s derisive comments.

  Wyly says he sent the plan to Gray not in reaction to Sullivan’s chewing him out but out of frustration. Nothing was happening. He had to break the logjam. Besides, Gray told him earlier, “My door is always open. Come in anytime.”

  Wyly made a copy of the memo and stuck it in his desk. He thinks his desk was searched and the memo found and sent to Sullivan. This is possible. But it is also possible, especially in view of later events, that Gray, or someone in his office, sent Sullivan a copy of the memo.

  However it got there, several weeks later a copy of the memo wound up on Sullivan’s desk.

  Wyly was again up for promotion to brigadier general. His contributions to the Marine Corps were such that he felt he might make it this time. He was feeling confident. Several days later he was escorting David Hackworth around Quantico. The two men were observing field exercises. At one point a messenger approached Wyly with a folded piece of yellow paper. “Call General Sullivan,” it said. Wyly stuck the note in his pocket and continued escorting Hackworth. A second messenger brought another sheet of yellow paper saying, “Call General Sullivan.” The note did not indicate any emergency. Wyly thought, “The general knows where I am. He knows what I am doing. He knows when I will be back.” Wyly again stuck the note in his pocket.

  Hours later, back at his office, Wyly’s executive officer said, “Colonel, you really need to see the general.”

  Wyly looked at his muddy boots and wrinkled utilities and said, “I think I’ll put on a fresh uniform before I go over there.”

  A few minutes later he stood in front of a mirror in his office and admired what he saw: starched utilities, polished boots, and a lean muscular physique. He looked like a Marine.

  He reported to Sullivan’s office, where the general handed him a fitness
report then pointed to a paper on his desk. It was the marked-up draft of the five-year plan he had sent to Gray.

  “See that paper?” Sullivan asked him.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Did you sign that?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “You’re out of here. I’ve arranged to have you moved out of your office. You’re fired.”

  Wyly was cleaning out his office when Boyd called. Boyd always called in a crisis; Wyly was convinced he was telepathic. “How the hell you doing?” Boyd boomed.

  “Not good, John.” He told Boyd what happened.

  “So you got your reward; you got kicked in the teeth. That means you were doing good work. Getting kicked in the teeth is the reward for good work.”

  Sullivan’s fitness report on Wyly was so harsh that the three-star reviewing officer refused to send it to the promotion board. Later, the promotion board called Wyly to tell him it was missing. Wyly said that was General Sullivan’s problem, not his. He asked Gray to write his fitness report, but the general never responded.

  His new job was to do nothing. The man who came to Quantico with a mandate from the commandant again was adrift. He wondered if Gray even knew what had happened. Surely the man who brought him back to Quantico would come to his rescue.

  A few days later he received a call from the commandant’s aide saying, “Sit tight. You will be given meaningful duties. Don’t be discouraged.”

  Then came the assignment: vice president of the new Marine Corps University. Wyly had hoped, since the MCU was his idea, that he might be the first leader. But a general was in charge and Wyly was the number-two man. His title of vice president was an unusual one in the Marine Corps; it meant Wyly was a thinker, a teacher, a man who developed concepts. Although it was not what Wyly wanted, he was perfectly suited for the assignment.

  General Gray told Wyly he wanted to put together a list of books for Marines to read. Wyly took the reading list he compiled years earlier at the AWS, added books that Boyd recommended, solicited recommendations from others, and presto, the Marine Corps had its first Commandant’s Reading List, a compilation that, while not mandatory, is read by most officers and enlisted personnel.

  Wyly worked in his office until midnight five or six nights a week. He was only vaguely aware that the predators were circling closer.

  One day in April 1991, the day after his father died, Wyly was ordered to report to a three-star general. As he was walking out the door, Boyd called.

  “What’s going on?”

  Wyly was thinking only of his father’s death. “I don’t know. The general wants to see me in five minutes.”

  “What about?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

  Boyd paused. “Mike, this is imperative. Call me as soon as you get back. Got that? The minute you get back, you call me.”

  The general got right to the point. You’ve been passed over for general and you have to retire, he said. You have to be gone by October.

  Wyly was numb with shock. He returned to his office and called Boyd. “Where am I supposed to go?” he asked.

  Boyd loosed a volley of profanity.

  “I don’t think I’m going to tell my wife about this yet,” Wyly said.

  “No, you have to tell her.”

  The two men talked for a long time. And for the next several months, Wyly called Boyd four and five times daily. He was in the greatest pain of his life, lost and wandering. But he carried on as Marines always do. He chaired a symposium at the MCU when everyone in the audience knew he had been forced out of the Marine Corps.

  It often seemed the fates conspired to heap even more indignity upon him. Wyly invited Martin Van Creveld, a renowned military theorist, to speak at the symposium. But his superiors said Van Creveld was too controversial and Wyly had to withdraw the invitation. He invited David Hackworth, the most decorated soldier in Vietnam, to speak. But Hackworth, too, was deemed too controversial and Wyly had to withdraw the invitation.

  During his last days in the Marine Corps, Wyly got some satisfaction when young officers found a copy of his masters thesis in the MCU library and began briefing his ideas on amphibious warfare. Wyly told them not to use his name, that he was a pariah. The young officers came back to Wyly and told him the briefings not only were well received but there was talk of reworking amphibious warfare doctrine to be more in accord with the thesis and with the principles of maneuver warfare.

  The plan for how Marines might conduct amphibious landings in future wars is highly classified. But today if anyone wants to know the philosophical underpinnings, the doctrine behind those top-secret plans, all he has to do is read Wyly’s thesis. It does not call for row after row of amphibious craft moving toward a long beachhead in a linear attack. Rather it calls for swarms of amphibious craft landing maybe two or three at a time on a small beachhead, allowing Marines to move in fast and deep. Officers will lead from the front. They will have a clear Schwerpunkt and they will bypass hard points of resistance, always moving, ignoring their flanks as they press toward the enemy’s rear area.

  It was also a matter of considerable pride to Wyly that during the 1980s the Marine Corps evolved from being knuckle draggers who take the hill to the most intellectual branch of the U.S. military; even enlisted men were reading Sun Tzu.

  When a Marine Corps colonel retires, especially a senior colonel who is a decorated combat veteran, there is a parade and a ceremony where he is presented with a Legion of Merit. His wife is given a large bouquet and there is a letter from the commandant thanking the colonel for his years of meritorious service.

  Wyly got none of these. He drove out the front gate of Quantico unnoticed.

  But then, guerrillas do not march home to victory parades.

  Chapter Twenty - Nine

  Water-Walker

  NOW we must go back to the late 1970s to pick up the thread of another story in which Boyd played a crucial role. This is the story of Jim Burton, a story that demonstrates, as does that of Mike Wyly, Boyd’s great gift as a mentor. Because he had no father, he did not know how to be a father. But because of Art Weibel and Frank Pettinato he did know how to be a mentor. There is no doubt Boyd took tremendous pride in the work of Wyly and Burton. Through these two men, Boyd was able to continue his own work; he used Wyly and Burton to do what he no longer could do. And just as he had been receptive to the molding and the direction of his mentors, so these men were receptive to Boyd’s molding and directing.

  After making colonel on the third and last attempt, Burton knew he was no longer an Air Force golden boy. He would never make general. He would never be someone in the Air Force, but he still had the opportunity to do something.

  The strongest possible indicator of Burton’s rectitude and how he was perceived by his superiors is that after returning to the Pentagon in the late 1970s, he served as the military assistant to three consecutive assistant secretaries of the Air Force. The job of military assistant is one of the most sensitive in the military—so sensitive that those who fill it often last only for a year or so. Almost never do they go from one administration to another. But Burton served in both the Carter and Reagan Administrations.

  A military aide rarely is loyal to his civilian boss because he knows that in a year or so he returns to regular military duties. If he has been loyal to his generals and protected the interest of his branch of the military, he usually is promoted. Some three-dozen military assistants work in the Pentagon. Their ostensible purpose is to act as a liaison between their civilian boss and their branch of the service. But in reality they are spies, there only to protect the interests of their generals and their branch. Every meeting of their civilian boss, every relevant phone call, even the areas of interest the civilians have, are all reported back to their generals.

  Burton did not fit that mold. On numerous occasions he informed his civilian boss of how the Air Force was trying to deceive or mislead him. He saved his bosses from a host of embarrassing mistakes
. That is why he was braced against the wall one day and poked in the chest by a general who said he was being disloyal to the Air Force and who reminded him that one day soon he would be returning to the regular Air Force and no longer would have the protection of the assistant secretary.

  But instead Burton was assigned for his third tour in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and given a job overseeing the testing of various weapons. The vice chief of staff of the Air Force was not happy when he heard of Burton’s new assignment; he knew Burton’s background, that Burton was close to Boyd and the Reformers. He knew the harm that such a man could do to the Air Force and to other branches of the military. The vice chief was only three days from retirement when he got word of Burton’s assignment. “Not while I am in the Air Force,” he said to an aide. One of his last official acts was to cancel Burton’s assignment and order him to Wright-Pat, where his job was taking care of parachutes and oxygen masks.

  The assistant secretary of the Air Force said he wanted Burton in OSD. Once again, the battle lines were drawn. A group of Air Force generals totaling eighteen stars marched into the assistant secretary’s office and said the Burton affair was an internal Air Force matter of no concern to the assistant secretary. It was a personnel matter. The assistant secretary insisted that he wanted Burton. The generals refused to back down.

  To better understand why the generals thought this such a crucial issue, one needs a bit of background. Civilians unacquainted with the ways of the Building have only vague ideas about what it is the Pentagon does. They think the real business of the Pentagon has something to do with defending America. But it does not. The real business of the Pentagon is buying weapons. And the military has a pathological aversion to rigorous testing procedures because in almost every instance the performance of the weapon or weapons system is far below what it is advertised to be and, thus, far below the performance used to sell Congress on the idea in the first place. Weapons development is inherently risky and the costs can be difficult to predict. But the big problem is what Spinney calls “front-loading,” the practice of deliberately underestimating the costs in order for Congress to fund the program. The weapons-buying business has few checks and balances; from beginning to end it is an advocacy proceeding. Not only do military rewards and promotions go to the officer in charge of a major program but he almost always finds a high-level job in the defense industry upon retirement, often with the company whose project he ushered through the Pentagon. This is the true nature of the Building. And this is why Air Force generals did not want an unbending and rectitudinous man such as Jim Burton in charge of testing weapons. This is why generals wearing a total of eighteen stars tried to intimidate the assistant secretary.