Call Sign Chaos

by Jim Mattis

As the jumping-off day approached, I was confident in our division’s fighting spirit and training, but I had to avoid complacency. I wasn’t yet confident that all my commanders and the critical supporting elements fully appreciated our plan’s complexity and its friction points. While I was discussing this problem with my chief of staff, my twenty-five-year-old aide, First Lieutenant Warren Cook, interrupted with a solution. He recommended that our combat leaders put on various-colored jerseys with their unit designations on the back and walk through the movement plan with everyone watching. I seized on his concept, and my chief of staff put the “mother of all sand tables” in motion. Among the sand dunes, we found a natural amphitheater larger than a football field. Using rocks, tape, and cans of spray paint, our NCOs laid out a map of Iraq with enemy units highlighted. We invited all supporting and adjacent commanders and key staffs—Army, Air Force, Marine and Navy air, CIA, Marine logistics, Seabees, British, and other allies—to observe. We all watched as my commanders walked through the movements of their units, starting from Kuwait on D-Day and advancing deep into Iraq. Thanks to the Legos and the Mojave exercises, the units knew the order of attack and which had priority. Pilots and ground commanders had extensive discussions that continued following the formal sand table demonstration. Well-briefed aviators knew our scheme of maneuver and watched knowingly from the ai...