Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit

by Tom Clancy

  I was then promoted to lieutenant general in October of '92 and went to Quantico to command the Marine Corps Combat Development Command. During my two years there, we as a Corps were formalizing and institutionalizing the combat development process, which was the brainchild of General Gray. From there, I moved back to Hawaii and took over my father's last command, Marine Forces Pacific.

  Following in his father's footsteps and commanding the Marine Forces of the Pacific was an honor for Chuck Krulak. But more was to come for the young three-star, as we will soon hear.

  Tom Clancy: When you learned that you were being considered for the post of 31st Commandant of the Marine Corps, what went through you mind?

  General Krulak: My very first thought was, "Am I up to the job?" I questioned whether I was the right man for the job because there were such great people in the running. General Mundy and Secretary [of the Navy] Dalton interviewed every three- and four-star general in the Marine Corps and all were qualified to lead the Corps. We have great generals, and Secretary Dalton made certain that everyone got his day in court. His personal efforts during this process are unmatched in the history of the Navy Secretaries. My second thought was about my wife Zandi, and the pressures that would fall on her. My third thought was that I had a great job as Commander, Marine Forces Pacific, and whatever happened I was going to continue to be challenged.

  Tom Clancy: During this time, was there any thought on your part about how close your own father came to being appointed Commandant of the Marine Corps?

  General Krulak: No. That was on his mind, though, because the reality is that he came a lot closer than most Marines know he did. He had, in fact, been told that he had the job, and then he didn't get it. So his concern was that history would repeat itself, and I just told him, "Quit worrying about it, because I'm not worrying about it." It was not an issue with me personally. I was not looking for the job. In my opinion, the last thing you want in an organization with this type of deep ethos of service is someone who actually wants or is posturing to be the Commandant. That's an ego issue and the wrong motivation. The job is so hard, so demanding, that if any service chief isn't doing it for what I call the "right thing," then he's going to have a real problem.

  Tom Clancy: The day comes and you receive word that the President has nominated you to be the 31 st Commandant of the Marine Corps. What did it feel like?

  General Krulak: It was a phenomenal experience. I found out while circling in a plane about five thousand feet above Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima. General Mundy, his wife, my wife, and I were headed to Iwo to commemorate the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the invasion of the island. A radio operator handed General Mundy a small yellow message form. He looked at it, and then pulled my wife over to look at it. She looked at it, and started to cry. He then gave it to me, and it said, "The President of the United States has today signed and forwarded to Congress your nomination to be the 31st Commandant of the Marine Corps." It was an unbelievable feeling. Every emotion you could possibly think of came over me. You name it: from exhilaration to, "Oh, my God, what is happening?"...to relief...to fear.

  The actual announcement was unforgettable. We were on top of Mt. Suribachi--virtually on top of some of the most glorious pages of Marine Corps history--when Secretary Dalton made the announcement to the assembled dignitaries, not least of whom were the survivors of that great battle. I was being told by the Secretary of the Navy that I was becoming Commandant at the exact same place where fifty years earlier Navy Secretary James Forrestal had looked over at General Holland M. "Howlin' Mad" Smith and, upon seeing the flag raised at the top of Mount Suribachi, said, "The raising of that flag...means a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years."

  My feelings were overpowering. There is a family connection here, because Holland M. Smith was my godfather. Now, half a century later, I'm standing where my godfather once stood and Secretary Dalton is telling the godson of that man that he would be the Commandant who would take the Marine Corps into the 21st century. It was a very emotional moment. I thought of my dad immediately. He and my mom were so excited and happy for me. I am convinced it meant more to them then it did to me.

  Tom Clancy: Are you yet aware just how important this matter of your becoming Commandant was to the Marines out in the Corps?

  General Krulak: No. I often say that they could have picked any of a number of officers to do the job. There were so many great generals who could have done it. I tend to believe that the commandancy makes the officer, not the other way around.

  Tom Clancy: During the 1980s and 1990s, the Marine Corps seems to have been blessed with a string of truly great Commandants. Could you give us your thoughts on some of them?

  General Krulak: You really need to go back into the 1970s when you talk about the string of great Commandants. That's where we began implementing policies that gave us the quality manpower to operate the equipment and conduct the operations that made us so successful in the 1980s.

  General Louis H. Wilson [26th Commandant of the Marine Corps].

  General Wilson inherited a Corps riddled with the personnel problems associated with the post-Vietnam era [racial tension, high desertion and discipline rates, recruiting problems, etc.] and tackled these issues with the same ferocity he demonstrated in combat. He literally turned the manpower tide for the Corps. He was determined to improve the quality of the personnel in the Corps to the point where he vowed to go down to "just two Marines if those two are the kind that we want." I call that the "Wilsonian Doctrine," and it began a revolution that is responsible for the quality of Marines we have in the Corps today.

  General Robert H. Barrow [27th Commandant of the Marine Corps].

  General Barrow expanded on General Wilson's manpower initiatives. He continued to tighten the quality screws; and in 1983 over ninety percent of new recruits were high school graduates. He also launched his own "war on drugs" and issued the policy that put an end to the Corps' tolerance of problem drinkers. The percentage of substance abusers fell from 48% in 1980 to less than 10% by 1985, and the Corps became known as a quality institution sought out by some of the best young men and women our country had to offer.

  General Paul X. Kelley [28th Commandant of the Marine Corps].

  General Kelley's vision of what we were going to need for equipment and his willingness to fight tooth and nail to obtain the funds to modernize the Corps are his great legacy. While we often talk about the warfighting ethos that we took to the desert in Southwest Asia, we should never forget that he was the Commandant who gave us the means and the implements to fight and win on the battlefield. General Kelley is an unsung hero of the Corps. Ironically, some fifteen years later, one of my biggest challenges is equipment modernization, but it's the equipment he fought for during his tenure as Commandant that / must now fight to replace.

  General Alfred M. Gray [29th Commandant of the Corps].

  General Gray gave the Marine Corps a brilliant mind that saw beyond the immediate moment. He saw a need to totally revamp the way we think, train, and educate ourselves. He cultivated our maneuver warfare mind-set, so that when we went into Desert Shield/Desert Storm, we didn't see the minefields that we faced as insurmountable obstacles; we just searched for the gaps, breached them, and went on. He gave us the doctrine to do that job, and more since then. A great, great man, and a real thinker. Everyone who looked at him saw this rough, tough son-of-a-gun; but he was, and is, smart as a whip.

  General Carl E. Mundy [30th Commandant of the Corps].

  General Mundy was a kind, wonderful man, but he knew how to fight. Some wondered if he was going to be able to defend the life of the Corps in the post-Cold War drawdown, and he proved to be a bulldog. His leadership in the battle for an end-strength 174,000 Marines was remarkable. General Mundy will also be remembered for his great moral courage and deep love of Corps and country. He articulated the ethos of our Corps as well as any Commandant. General Mundy and his wife Linda brought real meaning to the Marine
Corps family and to the concept that Marines take care of their own.

  When General Krulak took command in mid-1995, he inherited a Marine Corps whose strength had been for the most part preserved, but which was facing many new challenges: aging equipment, personnel issues, and basic questions about the role of the Corps in the run-up to the 21st century. Grabbing the bull by the horns, he rapidly took control and began to exert his own unique ideas onto the structure of the Marines. He published his now-famous Commandant's Planning Guidance, so that every Marine in the Corps would know what the new boss had planned for them. He also opened up new channels for direct communications of ideas, including Internet access directly to himself. Let's hear his thoughts on this.

  General Charles "Chuck" Krulak (right) with the author during a recent visit to the Commandant's office in the Pentagon.

  JOHN D. GRESHAM

  Tom Clancy: What has been your philosophy in these early days (summer and fall of 1995) of your tenure as Commandant?

  General Krulak: I felt that I had one year from the start of my tenure as Commandant to set the course and speed for what I believed needed to be done. The remaining three years are to be for follow-through. We now have major projects and initiatives started and have generated momentum. During the next three years, we will continue to give course and speed corrections to the things that we see as important. I tried to get us going, with some clear-cut, definitive goals to make sure that everybody involved knew our plan and was prepared to step out and act. That's what the Commandant's Planning Guidance was all about. To let everybody know what my philosophy was and is and then get on board and charge!

  Tom Clancy: Okay, let's talk about some of the things you are working on within the Corps. First, let's hear what you think of the state of the force that you have inherited. Currently, your authorized end-strength is 174,000 active duty personnel. Will you be able to hold onto that?

  General Krulak: I think that it [Marine Corps end-strength] will be under attack almost immediately. In fact, it already is. The Administration [of President Bill Clinton] is locked into the force levels defined by the Bottom-Up Review of 1993; but we have major budget problems in the Department of Defense. Part of the problem is that DoD has more infrastructure [bases and facilities] than there's money to support that infrastructure. I am concerned that there will be pressure to make each of the services smaller, both by reducing personnel and infrastructure, and utilizing the money saved to modernize the armed forces. For the nation, a drawdown of the Marine Corps would be a terrible mistake. The Marine Corps was never a Cold War force. Our mission did not change with the end of the Cold War era, so there is no need for other major changes in the Marine Corps specifically in response to the demise of the Soviet Union. Where we can assist this nation as the other services adjust to the post-Cold War period is to be this country's "risk-balance" force. We provide to the nation the ability to take a risk--in this case allowing the rest of the military services to draw down quickly while still having an organization that is ready to respond. We are the most ready when the nation is the least ready, and you don't want to reduce the only force that provides this nation the capability to react while at the same time assuming the risks associated with the rapid post-Cold War drawdown.

  Tom Clancy: There has been some envy on the part of the other services at your success at holding on to a relatively high percentage of your Cold War end-strength. Will you please tell us your perceptions of drawdown process with regard to the Marine Corps?

  General Krulak: What General Mundy and the Marine Corps did right was create the Force Structure Planning Group that I spoke of earlier and build a plan that made sense. It was a tremendously rigorous effort to analyze the national military strategy and then balance our capabilities against that strategy. From this we came up with the requirement for a Marine Corps with a personnel base of 177,000 active-duty personnel, of which we actually kept 174,000. Now, when people say that we did not cut our strength, they fail to look at the facts. They fail to see that we went from 198,000 active-duty Marines to 174,000. We cut 50% of our tanks and 33% of our tactical aviation strength. We lost a third of our artillery, as well as all six of our Marine Expeditionary Brigade Headquarters units and a quarter of our combat service support units.

  What is really critical is that most of our cuts had to come out of our muscle--our combat power--because as a service, we were already very lean. When we did identify our requirement for 177,000, a hard number with no fluff, we still had to cut. That's why at this point, I'm determined to keep our end-strength at 174,000. Having said that, we can't get stuck on a number, because our challenge today is to determine what we need to fight and win the battles of the 21st century. That's my problem: to get to the 21st century, making the best use of technology and our remaining personnel base, while still giving the nation what it needs.

  One of the biggest challenges faced by General Krulak is maintaining the flow of new Marine recruits into the Corps. The combination of public perception regarding the drawdown of the military as well as a limited pool of recruiting dollars has made this task ever more difficult. Let's hear the Commandant's thoughts on this tough problem.

  Tom Clancy: Talk a little about the raw material of the Marine Corps--the recruits--and the recruiters and the recruiting process. What are your thoughts on the recruiting problems facing the Corps as you continue to search for qualified men and women?

  General Krulak: First of all, my respect and love for recruiters knows no bounds. As the former head of the Personnel Management and Personnel Procurement Divisions at Headquarters Marine Corps, recruiting was one of my responsibilities, so I have a very good sense of the recruiting process. We have great recruiters and they're doing a tremendous job.

  Nevertheless, we have a couple of problems. First, not all of the American people know that we're hiring. They see the military cutting back, they read about the reductions-in-force, and wonder why they should allow their sons or daughters to join the Corps. They just don't see any career possibilities or longevity in the service today. We can tell from our various youth-attitude surveys that America's youth doesn't know we are hiring.

  So, the first thing I need to do is to enhance our recruitment advertising. That takes dollars. But at the same time, we need to reach our target market with our message. That message is embodied in our new commercial called Transformation.

  Transformation symbolizes what the Marine Corps does for this nation: We take America's youth, what you called "raw material," and we transform them into Marines. We instill in them our core values--honor, courage, and commitment. We teach them to be the leaders of tomorrow's Corps and the leaders of their communities and country the day after tomorrow. We recognize that we are recruiting a different kind of American today. They're coming from a different society, with different values than those that have been the hallmark of the Corps' value system. We transform them, and that transformation lasts forever. That's important for our nation and our nation's youth. But they have to know we will do that for them, and that is where advertising comes into play.

  I won't sacrifice quality for quantity, and I believe the "Wilsonian Doctrine" was the right approach. Like General Wilson, we will willingly sacrifice numbers to get the very best of our youth. Then we will transform them forever...into Marines and, more importantly, productive citizens of this great nation of ours.

  Tom Clancy: On to another personnel matter. Could you talk a little about the changing roles for young women in the Marine Corps?

  General Krulak: Our women make tremendous contributions to the Corps. I had 201 women under my command during Desert Shield and Storm and I would not have been combat-effective without them. To a Marine, they were superb. As the Commandant, however, I am tasked to train, equip, and provide fighting forces to the regional commanders-in-chief. I have to consider this as we select and procure the right equipment and train the right people to do the job the nation expects of us. It is also my responsibility to e
nsure the we maximize the effective utilization of those resources. I do not believe that I am maximizing the utilization of the limited resources of the Marine Corps by putting women at the point of a rifle platoon or in units that engage in direct ground combat.

  One of the hallmarks of the 1990s has been that as U.S. forces have gotten smaller, they have also gotten busier. Higher operational tempos (Optempos) have resulted in some notable difficulties, even for the Marines. General Krulak has been forced to deal with some unique problems in the areas of morale, as well as some surprising quality-of-life issues. Let's hear what he has to say.

  Tom Clancy: Morale always seems to be an issue in the military. Can you talk some about the challenges this presents for you?

  General Krulak: First of all, I have not encountered the kinds of morale problems in 1995 that we had in the past. The morale problems of 1995 are minuscule compared with those, for example, of the 1970s. Nevertheless, the first thing I am doing for morale is to show the individual Marine that their Commandant cares about them, as individuals. So when members of Congress asked what they could do for me as I made my in-calls, I asked for an additional ten to twenty million dollars for things like rain gear and boots instead of dollars for additional amphibious shipping, aircraft, and vehicles. When they said, "What are you talking about?" I said, "What I want to give my Marines is field equipment that is of newer design than the Korean War!" I think they thought I was somewhat "off the-wall," but the bottom line is that the first thing that Marines saw from this Commandant was new boots, rain gear, and the new load-bearing equipment system and backpack.