by Jim Mattis
First Lieutenant Hooks extricated and reconstituted his Combat Train as Major Taylor sent the reserve company in to kill the remaining Iraqis. Major Taylor and Lieutenant Hooks’ conduct was critical in allowing me and the forward elements of 1/7 to focus on our mission and the enemy to our front. Maintaining their composure under fire, directing well reasoned actions that aggressively engaged the enemy and kept my train intact, they earned my recommendation for Bronze Stars. The MEF Awards Board downgraded both to Navy Commendation Medals.
A short time later we were ordered to continue the attack in order to isolate Kuwait International Airport. Resupplying my lead elements up front while we came under fire, Lieutenant Hooks and his men rapidly provided us the main gun ammo and fuel necessary to cross the LD on schedule. Under terrible visibility and with numerous enemy vehicles and fire coming from our right flank, we moved north with Captain Horr coordinating 23 fire missions in the last five hours. We broke through to Kuwait City just at dark.
When the sun came up, we consolidated our positions, linked up with the Kuwaiti Resistance, and cleared the remaining enemy from our surroundings. One man was hit in the arm by a rifle shot. I could observe Captain Bob Hathaway’s cross-attached company clearing an adjacent orchard area on our left flank. During the previous afternoon’s attack, Lieutenant Colonel Diggs had the infantry attack into the densely vegetated area. Now as I watched them clearing the orchard and killing the last Iraqi soldier that Task Force Ripper would confront, Captain Hathaway had the respect of all of us. In the usual Marine tradition, he led from up front. Lieutenant Colonel Diggs recommended him for the Bronze Star. It was downgraded to a Navy Commendation Medal by the MEF Awards Board.
Throughout the period I have described, the individual who had planned 1/7’s attack so well, Major Drew Bennett, S-3, provided the situational awareness that permitted execution of the aggressive, combined arms attack without sustaining a single friendly fire casualty. His presence of mind, sound tactical judgement under fire, and firm direction guided us. Moving on foot when necessary in mine strewn areas during the assault breach and directing my vehicle forward to speed the tempo of our attack at the Emir’s Farm, his combat performance was superb. A pillar of strength in our command, I recommended him for the Bronze Star. The MEF Awards Board downgraded his award to a Navy Commendation Medal.
I must mention here that each of these noted awards was recommended based on direct observation. I understand the difficulty of the Awards Board as it struggles to recognize the contribution of those who faced our combat challenges and overcame them. My Task Force Commander, General Fulford, personally reviewed these recommended awards and concurred. General Draude reviewed them in his role as the Assistant Division Commander/Head of the 1st Division Awards Board. General Myatt forwarded the awards. I doubt that three more experienced, mature and wise combat leaders could be found.
Against this backdrop of downgraded awards, I must mention the recognition approved by the MEF Awards Board for members of the MEF staff. I add this only to provide a comparison; nothing I say here is meant to denigrate the following men or the critical role they played in our Nation’s victory. They are fellow Marines and I respect them as such.
I understand that MEF Assistant Operations Officers received Bronze Stars for their roles. The MEF Strategic Mobility Officer received a Bronze Star . The Assistant Public Affairs Officer for I MEF received a Bronze Star. The MEF Ammunition Chief received a Bronze Star also.
The MEF NBC Officer received a Bronze Star. However, the TF Ripper NBC Officer, Warrant Officer Cottrell, who was critical to all of us in 1/7 because he moved the Fuchs vehicle to hazardous areas in order to check for contamination received a Navy Commendation Medal. The MEF Awards Board downgraded General Fulford’s recommendation for a Bronze Star for WO Cottrell.
General Johnston, we won a magnificent victory thanks to the competence, valor and unselfishness of all hands. To reach these young men’s souls and maintain their affections, we must demonstrate to them our respect for the warriors’ greatest virtue, courage. At the very minimum, those who slept on the ground the entire deployment, went without showers for months, and killed or took prisoner all enemy they fought, should have their contributions noted at least equally with those recognized for meritorious service on staffs.
To be parsimonious in awarding appropriate medals to our lead combat elements serves no purpose. On a wider scale, the presentation of Bronze Stars to Officers and SNCOs who served in Riyadh on Centcom and Marcent staffs only lends more disillusion with the penurious awards system as implemented at I MEF. I am unable to comprehend the rationale for award action that downplays the responsibilities and actions of combat leaders who faced danger while recognizing generously those who lived more comfortably and did not face such danger.
Correct or not, there is now a common perception that the level of the staff to which assigned determined the level of award. The results of the MEF Awards Board appears to indicate heavier emphasis placed on meritorious service in important staff positions as opposed to officers who actually led in combat. I do not concur with this. Was my operations officer’s contribution lessened because he served in an assault battalion when compared to operations officers at MEF? Was my logistics officer’s performance lessened because he did his job under fire while the MEF Strategic Mobility Officer who planned the time phased deployment did not? I believe that we must concern ourselves with an awards system that appears to most highly reward an officer “in inverse proportion to the square of the distance of his duties from the front lines.”
I realize that my perspective is a limited one andI may have incomplete information. But all 1351 Sailors, Marines and Kuwaitis in the Battalion lived for months under rugged conditions and selflessly committed themselves to the uncertainties of combat. They did everything I asked of them and their high spirited courage was my daily inspiration. Those men on high level staffs who designed the brilliant mechanics of our battle plan earned their recognition. It is also necessary to recognize the combat leaders whose animating spirits were, in the end, our pledge of success once contact was made with the Iraqi Army. Their loyalty and discipline represented our Corps well both in the fight and in numerous interviews with the media. I protest what has happened since, and request your support in gaining for these men the recognition that any objective evaluation would clearly reveal they earned.
Very respectfully,
J. N. MATTIS
Lieutenant Colonel
U. S. Marine Corps
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From Business Insider
General James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis Email About Being ‘Too Busy To Read’ Is A Must-Read
Source: G. Ingersoll 9 May 2003
http://www.businessinsider.com/author/geoffrey-ingersoll
In the run up to Marine Gen. James Mattis’ deployment to Iraq in 2004, a colleague wrote to him asking about the importance of reading and military history for officers, many of whom found themselves “too busy to read.”
His response went viral over email. Security Blog “Strife” out of Kings College in London recently published Mattis’ words. Their title for the post: With Rifle and Bibliography: General Mattis on Professional Reading
Dear Bill,
The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your men’s experience), i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed (successfully or unsuccessfully) before. It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.
With [Task Force] 58, I had w/ me Slim’s book, books about the Russian and B
ritish experiences in [Afghanistan], and a couple others. Going into Iraq, “The Siege” (about the Brits’ defeat at Al Kut in WW I) was req’d reading for field grade officers. I also had Slim’s book; reviewed T.E. Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”; a good book about the life of Gertrude Bell (the Brit archaeologist who virtually founded the modern Iraq state in the aftermath of WW I and the fall of the Ottoman empire); and “From Beirut to Jerusalem”. I also went deeply into Liddell Hart’s book on Sherman, and Fuller’s book on Alexander the Great got a lot of my attention (although I never imagined that my HQ would end up only 500 meters from where he lay in state in Babylon).
Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face NOTHING new under the sun. For all the “4th Generation of War” intellectuals running around today saying that the nature of war has fundamentally changed, the tactics are wholly new, etc, I must respectfully say…“Not really”: Alex the Great would not be in the least bit perplexed by the enemy that we face right now in Iraq, and our leaders going into this fight do their troops a disservice by not studying (studying, vice just reading) the men who have gone before us.
We have been fighting on this planet for 5000 years and we should take advantage of their experience. “Winging it” and filling body bags as we sort out what works reminds us of the moral dictates and the cost of incompetence in our profession. As commanders and staff officers, we are coaches and sentries for our units: how can we coach anything if we don’t know a hell of a lot more than just the [Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures]? What happens when you’re on a dynamic battlefield and things are changing faster than higher [Headquarters] can stay abreast? Do you not adapt because you cannot conceptualize faster than the enemy’s adaptation? (Darwin has a pretty good theory about the outcome for those who cannot adapt to changing circumstance—in the information age things can change rather abruptly and at warp speed, especially the moral high ground which our regimented thinkers cede far too quickly in our recent fights.) And how can you be a sentinel and not have your unit caught flat-footed if you don’t know what the warning signs are—that your unit’s preps are not sufficient for the specifics of a tasking that you have not anticipated?
Perhaps if you are in support functions waiting on the warfighters to spell out the specifics of what you are to do, you can avoid the consequences of not reading. Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not allowed that luxury.
This is not new to the USMC approach to warfighting—Going into Kuwait 12 years ago, I read (and reread) Rommel’s Papers (remember “Kampstaffel”?), Montgomery’s book (“Eyes Officers”…), “Grant Takes Command” (need for commanders to get along, “commanders’ relationships” being more important than “command relationships”), and some others.
As a result, the enemy has paid when I had the opportunity to go against them, and I believe that many of my young guys lived because I didn’t waste their lives because I didn’t have the vision in my mind of how to destroy the enemy at least cost to our guys and to the innocents on the battlefields.
Hope this answers your question….I will cc my ADC (Lt. Warren Cook) in the event he can add to this. He is the only officer I know who has read more than I.
Semper Fi, Mattis
Among my favorite books are:
Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations”
Max Boot, “Invisible Armies” & “The Savage Wars of Peace”
Robert Coram, “Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War”
Martin Van Crevald, “Fighting Power”
Nate Fick, “One Bullet Away”
Gen U.S. Grant, “Personal Memoirs”
Colin Gray, “Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace and Strategy”
Liddell-Hart’ “Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American” & “Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoleon”
Laura Hillenbrand, “Unbroken”
M.M. Kaye, “The Far Pavilions”
H.R. McMaster’s, “Dereliction of Duty”
Mandela, “Long Walk to Freedom”
Williamson Murray, “Military Innovation in the Interwar Period” & “Successful Strategies”
Anton Myrer, “Once An Eagle”
Hew Strachan, “The Direction of War”
Colin Powell, “My American Journey”
Steven Pressfield, “Gates of Fire”
Guy Sajer, “The Forgotten Soldier”
Michael Shaara, “Killer Angels”
George P. Shultz, “Turmoil and Triumph” & “Issues On My Mind”
Viscount Slim, “Defeat Into Victory”
Nicholas Monsarrat, “The Cruel Sea”
Robert Gates, “Duty”
C.E. Lucas Phillips, “The Greatest Raid of All”
Will & Ariel Durrant, “The Lessons of History”
Ron Chernow, “Alexander Hamilton”
Alistair Horne, “A Savage War of Peace”
Betty Iverson & Tabea Springer, “Tabea’s Story”
Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”
Andrew Gordon, “The Rules of the Game”
Paul Kennedy, “The Rise and Fall of Great Powers”
David Rothkopf’, “National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear”
Barbara Tuckman, “March of Folly” & “The Guns of August”
Vali Nasar, “The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat”
Henry Kissinger’s, “Diplomacy” & “World Order”
Daniel James Brown, “The Boys in the Boat”
Willaam Manchester, “American Caesar” & “Goodbye Darkness”
Max Hasting’s, “Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War”
David Fromkin, “A Peace to End All Peace”
E.B. Sledge’s, “With the Old Breed”
Michael Walzer, “Just and Unjust Wars”
Wavell, “Other Men’s Flowers” (poetry)
Bing West, “The Village”
Anthony Zinni, “Before the First Shot is Fired”
Malham Wakin, “War, Morality and the Military Profession”
Gail Shisler, “For Country and Corps”
Herman Wouk, “The Caine Mutiny”
Ralph Peter, “Never Quit the Fight”
Max Lerner, “The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes”
Marine Corps Doctrine Publication 1: “Warfighting”
Albert Pierce, “Strategy, Ethics and the ‘War on Terrorism’ “
Joseph Conrad, “Lord Jim”
T.E. Lawrence, “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”
Rudyard Lawrence, “Kim”
James McPherson, “Battle Cry of Freedom”
Archibald Wavell, “The Viceroy’s Journey”
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GENERAL HEADQUARTERS
SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA
OFFICE OF THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
23 August 1943.
My dear Halsey:
D-Day for the operation against Lae has been set tentatively for 4 September, final determination depending upon the weather forecast. The long range forecast, for which our weather men have been running sequences for about three weeks, is excellent and indicates that the operation can go under favorable conditions on D-Day or very close to it. You will of course be informed the moment the final determination is made.
It would be highly advantageous if the Lae operation could be supported by deception in the South Pacific. I am writing, therefore, to ask you to consider a movement by an element of your fleet which would attract the enemy’s attention and serve to fix in place the hostile air strength in the Buka-Rabaul-Kavieng area. The decision is yours as to the practical feasibility of execution of this plan and of its nature and scope. I would appreciate, howe
ver, your careful consideration and an expression of your views.
The action of your forces, ground, naval and air during the course of recent operations has been a source of great pleasure to all of us in the Southwest Pacific Area. Let me take advantage of this opportunity to reiterate my appreciation for your complete cooperation and for the fighting qualities of your command.
Cordially yours,
DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
Admiral Wm. F. Halsey, Jr.,
Commander, Third Fleet.
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SOUTH PACIFIC FORCE
OF THE UNITED STATES PACIFIC FLEET
HEADQUARTERS OF THE COMMANDER
25 August 1943.
SECRET and PERSONAL
My dear General:
I believe that I can create a reasonably affective feint and diversion such as you desire in connection with the Lae Dog-Day.
Briefly, my proposal is this:
On 30 August strong combined Task Forces will sortie from Espiritu Santo and Efate and commence exercises west of the New Hebrides.
On 2 September Fleet will move north of New Hebrides into the Banks-Santa Cruz area with prudent regard for enemy air radii of action, but with the expectation of being sighted by Jap reconnaissance planes on September 3rd.