Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead

Call Sign Chaos opens with a cursory glance at Mattis’s youth. His parents are mentioned only in passing. His father was a sailor, and his mother worked for the army in World War II. They give Mattis significant freedom as a young man, allowing him to hitchhike around as young as 13. The Mattis family lives in the Pacific Northwest, and he does a good deal of hiking and camping.

Mattis does not devote much time to explaining why he became a Marine. He only relates that he likes the Marine Corps attitude: “You deal with life. You don’t whine about it” (4). In 1972 Mattis becomes a second lieutenant, and from that point until his retirement Mattis is a full-time Marine.

The early 1970s were a turbulent time, and Mattis reveals that the Marines were not immune to the societal tensions of that era. He mentions in particular that racism and drug usage were issues in the Corps at this time. In an anecdote, one of the members of his platoon threatens to kill him on a hard march. Mattis brings him to a noncommissioned officer, or NCO, who kicks him out of the Marines. Mattis relates that low-tolerance policies such as these helped preserve the unity and efficacy of the Corps during the 1970s.

Mattis learns the tactics of ship deployment in the Pacific and Indian oceans. He learns skills and tactics from other nations’ warriors, including how to call in artillery strikes. While learning these basic skills, Mattis adopts what he calls the three Cs of leadership: Competence, Caring, and Conviction. “Competence” is easily understood. “Caring” is, for Mattis, an investment in the troops personally, and “conviction” he describes as continuity in applying rules to his subordinates, not necessarily having anything to do with conviction in terms of commitment to the mission philosophically or politically. The chapter ends with Mattis ruminating on the significance of 1979, the year that Ayatollah Khomeini took over Iran, and its reverberations through the following decades.

The focus in Chapter 2 shifts to Mattis’s domestic deployment as head of a Marine recruitment office based in Portland, Oregon. His unit recruited from Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Hawaii, and Guam. At the time of his posting, his unit was faring poorly compared to other recruiting stations.

Mattis takes over the field office and provides a target for each of his recruiters: They need to find four recruits a month. He emphasizes that this is a group effort and that anything they might need from his as commander he will provide.

What makes the ideal Marine candidate, in Mattis’s eyes, has less to do with skill than with attitude. He believes that what makes a Marine a potent warrior is a sense of adventure, even rebelliousness, as well as a competitive desire to be the best. The Corps provides the skills, but the mindset is the concern of the recruiter.

Mattis reveals something of his hard-nosed character in this chapter. Mattis has his men (many of whom have families) working 80-hour weeks to meet the quota. When a recruiter refuses to work these hours, Mattis has him removed from the Marines. In his own words, “You can’t have an elite organization if you look the other way when someone craps out on you” (18).

Before long Mattis’s unit is the best-performing station in the western United States. Mattis closes the chapter noting that recruiting taught him the importance of “quantitative” and “qualitative” skills. It mattered how many recruits they brought in monthly, but it mattered equally the quality of the recruits that they were offering.

In 1990 Mattis is given command of a battalion, which typically consists of 900 men. The battalion he is given has 500. Mattis is confident he can lead his men well, as he has been well trained over the last 18 years by the Marines in the principles of leadership. The battalion trains in the deserts, in the Pacific Ocean, and in the mountains, with Mattis focusing on creating initiative-taking unit commanders.

In the middle of training, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, and the battalion is called up for duty in what will later be called the Gulf War. They are slated to be the tip of the spear, responsible for breaking enemy lines on the first day of the assault. They spend months in the Saudi Arabian desert preparing for the assault. Mattis is told to expect high casualties, as they are attacking an enemy that is dug in and prepared for a frontal assault. Mattis tells his commanders not to report back to him the names of those who are wounded or killed during the attack. He knows he needs to keep his focus on the mission and does not want to be distracted by concern or grief.

The attack commences on February 24, 1991. Mattis’s well-trained battalion clears the first line of obstacles in a mere 11 minutes. The attack goes better than anyone expected. Air superiority and poor Iraqi morale contribute to a relatively easy victory.

Mattis stays with his frontline troops through the battle. On the third day of the assault, he inadvertently walks into an ambush and is nearly cut off from his supply line. However, Marine logistics support staff are also trained troops in their own right, and so the Iraqi attempt to take out the clerks, mechanics, etc. ends in their own defeat, and Mattis emerges unharmed from the ambush.

Not a single Marine is killed in the assault and subsequent battles. Mattis credits much of the victory to President George H. W. Bush’s clear goals and ability to gather an alliance that included Arab states.

Following the Gulf War, the Marines have to trim their forces from 189,000 to 172,000. Mattis has the ironic task of culling his ranks as aggressively as he once recruited them. He acknowledges the importance of keeping the Marines a small elite unit but observes that the extra personnel are missed when 9/11 occurs.

During this lull in battle, Mattis continues to refine his leadership skills. There is an extended section in this chapter on the particular importance of being well read. Mattis spends a year after the Gulf War at the National War College, but his argument goes beyond formal learning. In his own words, “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent […]” (42). For Mattis it is irresponsible not to learn from the war leaders of the past since a single person’s experience is not sufficient when battling a wide array of enemies. Every Marine has a required reading list specifically for their rank. Mattis himself includes a list of 55 books in Appendix B that he found to be especially helpful.

After War College Mattis is selected to lead the 7th Marines, a regiment of over 6,000 soldiers. He pursues a leadership style that eschews detailed communications in favor of empowering junior officers to make decisions, keeping information flow as minimalist as possible. If everyone understands the objectives of the regimental commanders, then in battle they can find the best path to that end. This is a running theme throughout the memoir, summarized by Mattis here:

The details you don’t give in your orders are as important as the ones you do. With all hands aligned to your goals, their cunning and initiative unleashed, you need only transparent sharing of information (What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I told them?) to orchestrate, as opposed to ‘control’ or ‘synchronize,’ a coordinated team (44).

It is in this context that Mattis receives the nickname gracing the book’s cover, CHAOS, an affectionate acronym for (does the) “Colonel Have Another Outstanding Suggestion?” (46). As Mattis tends to avoid frequent communication, he would instead give brief suggestions as to how to move forward; CHAOS would become Mattis’s call sign.

In 1996 Mattis serves as an executive secretary for the secretary of defense. He is then transferred to the Pentagon to serve as senior assistant for the deputy secretary of defense, having been promoted to brigadier general. However, Mattis never feels at ease behind a desk and is pleased when in July 2001 he is given command of the 40,000-strong I Marine Expeditionary Force.

September 11, 2001 sets the stage for this chapter and everything after, militarily speaking. Initially the Marines are rejected as potential combatants in Afghanistan. Marines are technically a naval force, trained to strike from the shore, and Afghanistan is a landlocked country.

Mattis manages to convince Admiral Willy Moore, the head of the Fifth Fleet, to let the Marines attack southern Afghanistan by flying troops and supplies over Pakistan from the Marine fleet. The ultimate objective is Kandahar, second largest city in Afghanistan. It is an ambitious plan, as it is a 400-mile trip from the boats to the selected staging area (called Rhino) in Afghanistan. Mattis pulls together the troops and supporting staff he needs (designated Task Force 58) and sets about convincing General Farooq, the head of the Pakistan military, to give him clear air corridors through Pakistan.

Mattis gathers a staff for the mission, but true to his leadership principles, his staff is roughly 80% smaller than what would be standard for a mission of this size. He succeeds using a concept called “skip-echelon” that he learned from an Iraqi major. The idea is that support staff do not need to be repeated at every level of rank—so if the officer below you has a chaplain or a lawyer on staff, then you do no need to add one to your own staff.

Mattis admits to some chicanery here. Technically he is only approved for raids, but his intent is more accurately characterized as an invasion, as he intends to set up a base and attack Kandahar from that base within Afghanistan. Mattis’s bait and switch does cause him some trouble after his Marines are safely ensconced at Rhino base camp. General Tommy Franks, the overall commander, demurs when Mattis presses for allowing his Marines to attack Al Qaeda and Taliban strongholds. His troubles are compounded when Franks orders him to limit his troops to 1,000 at Rhino at all times, meaning that the bulk of Mattis’s soldiers are shipbound hundreds of miles away.

Mattis grows increasingly unhappy with the strategic decisions being made at the top as the war progresses. He feels that decisions are being made in Washington without an awareness of the tactical situation on the ground. A culmination of such errors leads to a missed opportunity to capture Osama bin Laden, who escapes through an open border that Mattis wanted to seal with his Marines.