Smith and his officers were astounded by what they regarded as the haste and heedlessness of Almond’s plan—not only the Marine part of the puzzle, but all of it. A childish naïveté permeated Almond’s ideas, they thought. He tossed around divisions willy-nilly, as though he were playing a game of jacks. “I questioned his judgment,” Smith’s operations chief, Colonel Alpha Bowser, later said. “I think General Almond pictured this in his mind’s eye as a sweeping victory that was suddenly in his grasp.”
