Call Sign Chaos

by Jim Mattis

considered government service to be both honor and duty.

When it comes to the defense of our experiment in democracy and our way of life, ideology should have nothing to do with it. Whether asked to serve by a Democrat or a Republican, you serve. “Politics ends at the water’s edge.” This ethos has shaped and defined me, and I wasn’t going to betray it

On a personal level, I had no great desire to return to Washington, D.C. I drew no energy from the turmoil and politics that animate our capital.

over the course of my career, every time I made a mistake—and I made many—the Marines promoted me. They recognized that those mistakes were part of my tuition and a necessary bridge to learning how to do things right. Year in and year out, the Marines had trained me in skills they knew I needed, while educating me to deal with the unexpected.

Woe to the unimaginative one who, in after-action reviews, takes refuge in doctrine. The critiques in the field, in the classroom, or at happy hour are blunt for good reason. Personal sensitivities are irrelevant. No effort is made to ease you through your midlife crisis when peers, seniors, or subordinates offer more cunning or historically proven options, even when out of step with doctrine.

In any organization, it’s all about selecting the right team. The two qualities I was taught to value most in selecting others for promotion or critical roles were initiative and aggressiveness.

Institutions get the behaviors ...

the Marines reward initiative aggressively implemented.

I knew that those decades of study and watching the competent and incompetent deal with issues similar to what I’d face would greatly inform my work.

I’m old-fashioned: I don’t write about sitting Presidents. In the chapters that follow, I will pass on what prepared me for challenges I could not anticipate, not take up the hot political rhetoric of our day. I remain a steward of the public trust.

when I was commanding a force of 7,000 to 42,000 troops and it was no longer possible to know the name of every one of my charges. I had to adapt my leadership style to best ensure that my intent and concern, filtered through layers of command below, were felt and understood by the youngest sailors on the deck plates and the most junior soldiers in the field, where I would seldom see them.

“A life is not important except in its impact on other lives.”

I never enjoyed sitting in classrooms. I could read on my own at a much faster rate. Instead of a television, at home we had a well-stocked home library. I devoured books—Treasure Island, Captains Courageous, The Last of the Mohicans, The Call of the Wild, The Swiss Family Robinson….Hemingway was my favorite author, followed closely by Faulkner and Fitzgerald. Reading about the Lewis and Clark expedition, I was fascinated that they had canoed on the Columbia River and had passed through our neighborhood.

I learned that no matter what happened, I wasn’t a victim; I made my own choices how to respond. You don’t always control your circumstances, but you can always control your response.

Those sergeants never accepted that we were giving our best effort; rather, they always pushed us to do more. Either you kept up with them on the steep, muddy hill trails, completed the obstacle course in the allotted time, and qualified on the rifle range or you went home. They dangled airline tickets home to entice us to quit, to take the easy way out.

Unique among the four services, every Marine officer is initially trained as an infantry officer. He will later attend other schools to become a pilot, a logistician, or what have you. But all officers begin their service together, learning the same set of basic skills and being shaped into one culture. Every Marine is first and foremost a rifleman and must qualify on the rifle range. Lieutenants learn that everything they will go on to do in the Corps, no matter the rank or the job, relates back to the private who is attacking the enemy. This initiation and common socialization has a strong impact on the Marine Corps, permeating every facet of its warfighting ethos.

At the same time, each of us was establishing an individual professional reputation. Whether you stayed in the Corps for four years or forty, that reputation would follow you: Were you physically fit? Were you tactically sound? Could you call in artillery fire? Could you adapt quickly to change? Did your platoon respond to you? Could you lead by example? You had to be as tough as your troops, who weren’t concerned with how many books you’d read. I tried to work out with the most physically fit and learn from the most tactically cunning.

Thanks to first sergeants like Mata, and a young battalion commander who would one day become Commandant of the Marine Corps, in our battalion the number of bottom-feeders rapidly decreased in number and in influence. Fence-sitters quickly got the message and straightened up. Why? Because there are few fates worse than public rejection and summary dismissal. Everyone needs a friend, a purpose, and a chance to belong to something greater than themselves. No one wants to be cast aside as worthless.

We would embark with only a forty-pound seabag and our combat gear and live out of that for months at a time. We lived a physically demanding life that created a rough good humor among us.

You don’t send a grunt with a rifle when a five-hundred-pound bomb will do the job. Firepower brings to bear America’s awesome technologies, giving our grunts a decided edge. Coupled with the power of the junior officers’ expectations, confidence that their leader knows his job and won’t waste their lives is key to gaining full commitment from our troops. The resulting attitude of confidence is the strongest weapon available to us.

I never committed for the long term. My aims were modest. I thought, Maybe I’ll make captain. It freed me up to not worry about my next command and focus instead on doing the best job I could in the one I had.

Be brilliant in the basics. Don’t dabble in your job; you must master it. That applies at every level as you advance. Analyze yourself. Identify weaknesses and improve yourself. If you’re not running three miles in eighteen minutes, work out more; if you’re not a good listener, discipline yourself; if you’re not swift at calling in artillery fire, rehearse. Your troops are counting on you. Of course you’ll screw up sometimes; don’t dwell on that.

just be honest and move on, smarter for what your mistake taught you.

Physical strength, endurance, calling in fire, map reading, verbal clarity, tactical cunning, use of micro-terrain—all are necessary. You must master and integrate them to gain the confidence of your troops. A good map-reading lieutenant is worthless if he can’t do pull-ups.

When your Marines know you care about them, then you can speak bluntly when they disappoint you.

Be honest in your criticism, but blow away the bad behavior while leaving their manhood intact.

Value initiative and aggressiveness above all. It’s easier to pull the reins back than to push a timid soul forward.

Consistently maintain a social and personal distance, remembering that there is a line you must not cross. But you should come as close to that line as possible—without surrendering one ounce of your authority. You are not their friend. You are their coach and...

You get to know them as individuals—what makes them tick and what their specific goals are. One is striving to make corporal, another needs a letter of recommendation for college, another is determined to break eighteen minutes for three miles. A Marine knows when you are invested in his ...

Third, conviction. This is harder and deeper than physical courage. Your peers are the first to know what you will stand for and, more important, what you won’t stand for. Your troops catch on fast. State your flat-ass rules and stick to them. They shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. At the same time, leaven your professional passion with personal humility and compassion for your troops. Remember: As an officer, ...

How the mission was to be accomplished was left up to me, but it was clear that I was to deliver results.

The Marine philosophy is to recruit for attitude and train for skills. Marines believe that attitude is a weapon system. We searched for intangible character traits: a quest for adventure, a desire to serve with the elite, and the intention to be in top physical condition.

everyone owns the unit mission. If you as the commander define the mission as your responsibility, you have already failed. It was our mission, never my mission.

Reminds of the CRM comment, "it's her process" -- no knucklehead, it's OUR process!

There’s a huge difference between making a mistake and letting that mistake define you, carrying a bad attitude through life.

Partial commitment changes everything—it reduces the sense that the mission comes first. From my first days, I had been taught that the Marines were satisfied only with 100 percent commitment from us and were completely dissatisfied with 99 percent. You can’t have an elite organization if you look the other way when someone craps out on you.

President Eisenhower had passed on. “I’ll tell you what leadership is,” he said. “It’s persuasion and conciliation and education and patience. It’s long, slow, tough work. That’s the only kind of leadership I know.”

I’d been taught an approach when I was a second lieutenant in command of a half-strength platoon. The battalion sergeant major told us lieutenants to focus on training the young Marines we had, not worry about the ones we didn’t have. That way, we would have a cadre we could shape who could instruct the new recruits when they joined us.

I would make do with what I had, and not waste time whining about what I didn’t have.

he never had to raise his voice. He simply assumed you would meet his high standards. And you did—because you did not want to disappoint him.

And you may want to read a newspaper. We’re going to war.” I’d just received a blunt education about any unit commander’s role as the sentinel for his unit: You cannot allow your unit to be caught flat-footed. Don’t be myopically focused on your organization’s internal workings. Leaders are expected to stay attuned to their higher headquarters’ requirements. In the military, we exist to be prepared.

the commanders would drive a handful of much lighter Humvees into the desert, where we’d spread out and talk over our tactical radio nets as if we were commanding our entire units. We worked out our command kinks without wasting the time of our subordinates, who were relentlessly rehearsing.

I had the battalion break camp and move every few days so that everyone was accustomed to immediately reassembling in battle order, night or day.

We rehearsed each drill and contingency ad nauseam, until my troops were glaring at me as if I thought they were idiots. We all knew one another’s jobs so well that we could adapt to any surprise. My intent was to rehearse until we could improvise on the battlefield like a jazzman in New Orleans. This required a mastery of the instruments of war, just as a jazz musician masters his musical instrument.

the explosions, yelled orders, and, above all, the deafening cacophony. Battle is so loud that it is hard to hear—let alone make sense of—what someone is trying to direct you to do in the midst of the chaos.

Verbal clarity requires the same intense practice. We have all heard recordings of 911 calls by frantic people who are talking incomprehensibly. Imagine, then, trying to give clear, terse, accurate descriptions and orders over the radio when you are under fire. So, day after day, I had my platoon sergeants and platoon commanders on the radio, responding to sudden scenarios designed to inject stress.

To risk death willingly, to venture forth knowing that in so doing you may cease to exist, is an unnatural act. To take the life of a fellow human being or to watch your closest comrades die exacts a profound emotional toll. In Michael Shaara’s novel The Killer Angels, Robert E. Lee says, “To be a good soldier you must love the army. But to be a good officer you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love. This is…a very hard thing to do. No other profession requires it. That is one reason why there are so very few good officers. Although there are many good men.”

As the leader, anticipating heavy casualties, I had to compartmentalize my emotions. Otherwise I would distract myself from what had to be done. The mission comes first. Personal solace must wait for another day. I knew my limitations.

in their imaginations commanders have searched in vain for the orderly battlefield that unfolds according to plan. It doesn’t exist.

trained their corpsmen, cooks, drivers, engineers, clerks, and mechanics to fight as infantry. Their training paid off as they tore into the enemy.

The ultimate auditor of military competence is war.