Boyd (57 page)

After his tour as an instructor, Wyly was promoted to major. But he considered his tour at Quantico a failure. He had changed
nothing. He went to Command and Staff College and was assigned to do a strategic study of a country. He picked Finland and
studied the Winter War of 1939–1940. Wyly thought it was a good war to study because the Finns had prevailed over vastly superior
Russian forces. His professor told him to return to college and study history. He entered the masters program at George Washington
but soon was assigned to Okinawa. Then came another assignment to Quantico. Wyly had written a paper about the Battle of Tarawa
in World War II, a battle dear to the heart of every Marine, and thus had come under the protective eye of Major General Bernard
Trainor, the director of education in the Marine Corps. General Trainor placed Wyly in charge of tactics at the Amphibious
Warfare School. “Tactics is the flat tire. It’s your job to fix it,” Trainor said. “And I don’t want you to hide behind doctrine.
Be out on the fringes. Use your mind.” The assignment was a gem. The AWS is important to the Marines not just for doctrinal
reasons but because only the brightest and most promising young officers are assigned there; it is where future leaders of
the Marine Corps are first identified. Wyly was exactly where he wanted to be.

The lesson plans at the AWS dated back to the 1930s, to the very beginning of amphibious warfare. Wyly scrapped all the old
lesson plans and began teaching famous battles from history. One of his favorites was the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805. Sometimes
called the “Battle of the Three Emperors,” this is one of the most significant battles in military history. Not only did Napoléon
prevail against a numerically superior force, his victory was so decisive that it forced the Austrians and Russians to withdraw
from the war. Napoléon was so successful at knowing what opposing generals were thinking that he wrote Josephine that there
were times when he felt he was leading both armies.

Students at the AWS were captains and majors, not all of whom had decided to make a career out of the Marine Corps. They had
lots
of field experience and they were not reluctant to speak their minds. Under Wyly, for the first time in years, the tactics
course received rave reviews. But Wyly wanted to do more than teach about ancient battles and how to deal with Soviet tanks
on the plains of Europe. He was fascinated by the theme of armies winning against superior forces, of generals who controlled
the thinking of their opposition. Somewhere there was a glue to bind all of this together into a different kind of warfare—but
where?

Wyly turned to Bill Lind, the man who first called Boyd’s followers “Reformers,” and asked him to recommend someone with new
ideas about warfare.

“Colonel John Boyd is your man,” Lind said. Wyly looked at his khaki-covered Marine Corps manuals and he knew that whatever
it was that Boyd offered, it had to be better. He called Boyd and said, “I hear you have a theory about warfare.”

“It’s not a theory. It’s a briefing. I call it ‘Patterns of Conflict.’ It’s five hours long.”

Wyly laughed. “My class has only two hours.”

“I can’t do it in two. It takes five hours.”

“We don’t have five hours.”

“Then you get zero.”

Wyly relented. If his mandate allowed him to operate on the fringes of doctrine, why couldn’t he stretch a class to five hours?
Wyly opened the briefing not just to his class, but to all AWS students.

Boyd arrived in January 1980. Wyly had not heard Boyd’s briefing, so he had no idea what to expect. But if there were no substance,
if the no-nonsense students thought this retired Air Force colonel was wasting their time, the class could turn nasty. The
more Wyly thought about it the more worried he became. What had he done? A retired
pilot
—and not even a Marine pilot but an Air Force pilot—lecturing mud Marines on how to fight a war, how to apply ideas that are
relevant on the modern battlefield? The idea is ludicrous. These aggressive young captains and majors will make mincemeat
out of this guy.

Wyly introduced Boyd. Boyd stood up and his eyes locked on the Marines and he took charge. His deep voice boomed out. The
Plum began to weave his magic. He told them of Sun Tzu and the Battle of Leuctra in 371
B
.
C
. and of Arbela in 331
B
.
C
. and of Cannae in 216
B
.
C
.
He told them of Genghis Khan and Belisarius and Napoléon, of Heinz Guderian and of what made great commanders. He defogged
von Clausewitz and told them how to build snowmobiles. He told them the Army, despite its new AirLand Doctrine, still believed
in “high diddle diddle, straight up the middle,” and followed a doctrine that was a “piece of shit.” He told them of OODA
Loops and
Schwerpunkt
and
Fingerspitzengefuhl
and surfaces and gaps and mission orders and water going downhill.

The five hours came and went, but the Marines stayed. Now a half dozen Marines were on their feet, fighting for Boyd’s attention,
asking hard and thoughtful questions, but questions asked in respect. Their faces revealed their thoughts:
this old man may be an Air Force puke, but he knows warfare better than anyone I’ve ever heard
. The air crackled with excitement. Mike Wyly knew, as did the students, they were witnessing the beginning of something new
and powerful and wonderful.

Six hours passed and the shadows lengthened across Quantico and a few Marines drifted away. Seven hours passed and the remaining
Marines had forgotten Boyd was an Air Force colonel; they looked upon him as if he were the reincarnation of an ancient warrior.
They were young and not saddled with the institutional memory of senior officers. They wanted ideas that would work and that’s
what Boyd gave them. Eight hours passed and now Boyd was sitting in a chair surrounded by eager young Marines. They leaned
toward Boyd as if they could not get enough of what he had to say. And when the session finally broke up, night had long since
fallen on the rolling hills of Quantico. But the young officers still were bright and eager. They wanted to know when Boyd
would return.

Mike Wyly would remember this day for the rest of his life. Boyd had given him new ideas that validated the vague theories
floating around in his head. And Boyd had given the young students ideas that could be translated into tactics that worked
on the modern battlefield.

Mike Wyly had become the sixth Acolyte. He and John Boyd were about to take on the U.S. Marine Corps.

A
FEW
days later Wyly was introduced to the “pain,” the long late-night phone calls from Boyd. He was immensely flattered. He was
a lieutenant colonel being called by a man who had retired as a senior colonel. In the highly structured Marine Corps that
is a big gulf.

Then Boyd returned to Quantico to talk with Wyly about his class. They met in Wyly’s office under the picture of his uncle
Donald leading the charge at Belleau Wood. “What should I be teaching?” Wyly asked. He showed Boyd the official khaki-clad
Marine Corps lesson plans for the AWS. “You can’t read these without going to sleep,” he said. “We have the most exciting
subject in the world:
warfare
. And we make it boring.”

Boyd and Wyly decided the AWS was fundamentally an educational institution, and educational institutions are places where
students consider
all
ideas. One of the best ways to do that is to have students read. So Wyly and Boyd put together a reading list. This was a
radical step for the Marine Corps, the least-intellectual branch of the U.S. military. But General Trainor, by now widely
recognized as Wyly’s protector, blessed the concept and soon the young captains were reading
Victory at High Tide
and
Guerrilla
and
White Death
and
Strategy
and even books by World War II German officers such as
Attacks
by Rommel and
Panzer Battles
by von Mellenthin. Boyd and Wyly were both combat veterans, so when they claimed there was a connection between books and
the ability to lead men into battle, students listened. In fact, students began coming to class early so they could debate
the ideas they had been reading. Soon students were recommending additional books for the reading list.

By now Boyd had collected all his briefings, along with “Destruction and Creation,” and assembled them into a one-inch-thick
document titled “A Discourse on Winning and Losing.” Christie had printed several hundred copies. Because the document had
a green cover it was referred to as the “Green Book.” Wyly wanted copies for his classes but Boyd had only a few left. Wyly
took a copy to the Field Print Plant at Quantico and said, “I want four hundred copies.” He passed them out to Marine officers.

Boyd became a regular lecturer and took an active part in tactics classes. When the classes did amphibious exercises Boyd
walked from group to group, studying their plans. Once, while the groups wrestled with how to put a landing force on the shores
of Iran, Boyd realized the Marines were placing inordinate emphasis on
how
to establish a beachhead. “That beachhead is looming bigger and bigger,” he said. “You guys are paying too much attention
to terrain. The focus should be on the enemy. Fight the enemy, not the terrain.”

The words echoed in Wyly’s brain.

That beachhead is looming bigger and bigger.… Fight the enemy, not the terrain
.

The fundamental content of the classes changed. Wyly now advocated fluid and fast-moving tactics that disrupted enemy thinking.
During tactical exercises he told his students he did not want anyone to report that they had seized and were holding an objective.
He wanted them to bypass resistance. Don’t worry about your flanks, he said. Let the enemy worry about his. He gave them mission
orders,
Schwerpunkt
exercises, and taught them how to lead from the front like Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. They should be everywhere on the battlefield
so they could have an intuitive grasp of the ebb and flow of battle,
Fingerspitzengefuhl
.

“This stuff has got to be implicit,” Boyd said. “If it is explicit, you can’t do it fast enough.” Boyd’s teaching methods
were different from those of a university. He abhorred guidelines or lists or rules or
deductive thinking; everything was intuitive. “You must have inductive thinking,” he said again and again to the Marines.
“There is not just one solution to a problem,” he said. “There are two or three or five ways to solve a problem. Never commit
to a single solution.”

Boyd never said, “This is how Marines should fight” or “This is how you should conduct an amphibious landing.” Instead he
taught a new way to
think
about combat. His new way turned conventional military wisdom on its head. The military believes most of all in hardware.
But Boyd said, “People should come first. Then ideas. And then hardware.”

On Sunday afternoons a group of young captains gathered at Wyly’s house, sat around a big mahogany table, drank wine, and
talked of maneuver warfare. They met for additional seminars at Bill Lind’s home in Alexandria. The cadre of Marines now known
as “maneuverists” continued to grow. Those men were proud of the title. But at the Quantico Officers Club, senior officers
turned their backs on maneuverists and laughed about Marines more interested in OODA Loops than in lifting weights, more interested
in reading of ancient battles than in running five miles. Wyly was leading a guerrilla movement within the Corps, and sometimes
he recalled a line from his lectures: “Guerrillas win wars but they don’t march home to victory parades.”

Trainor asked Wyly to write a new tactics manual for the Marine Corps, but Wyly’s direct supervisor looked at the first three
chapters and rejected them, saying with anguish, “It’s all new.” During the summer of 1981, Trainor transferred from Quantico
and Wyly no longer had a protector. It would not be long before predators began circling.

About this time a story within the story, a story of crucial importance, and a story that would have a significant payoff
in a few short years was beginning down in Camp Lejeune, the sprawling Marine Corps base in North Carolina. That summer, General
Al Gray, who had heard Boyd’s briefing as a colonel, was ordered to Lejeune as commander of the 2nd Marine Division. Gray
was the son of a railroad conductor. He chewed tobacco and walked around in the fatigues Marines called “utilities” and, like
Patton and Rommel, wore goggles across the front of his helmet. He was a warrior: a forceful, decisive, and highly unconventional
Marine. He also was a devoted student of Boyd’s and a man who believed in maneuver warfare.

Two young Marine Corps captains based at Lejeune, Bill Woods and G. I. Wilson, regularly hosted a group of officers studying
maneuver warfare. The group was called the “Young Turks.” When Wyly heard that Gray was coming to Lejeune, he called Woods
and said, “You’ve got to get to Gray.” Woods did. He and Wilson invited Gray to attend a meeting. Gray not only attended,
he said, “This is no longer an informal study group. This is now the 2nd Marine Division’s maneuver warfare board. The first
thing you guys have to do is get John Boyd down here.”

Boyd came down and delivered the briefing. Since Gray had heard the briefing several times, he left after about an hour. Soon
thereafter other senior officers began to leave. But an enthusiastic core of true believers remained.

The scene at Lejeune was a microcosm of maneuver warfare within the Marine Corps; as long as it had the protective umbrella
of senior officers, it was followed—reluctantly by many, enthusiastically by a few. Much of the reluctance was because of
Bill Lind. Lind is a big fleshy man who, when he observed tactical exercises, favored an inverness and a deerstalker. He was
a most incongruous figure as he lectured senior officers. Many of those officers had no patience with this pompous civilian;
after all, he had never dodged a bullet, he had never led men in combat, he had never even worn a uniform. Inevitably, one
of those officers rose in indignation and challenged Lind. And just as inevitably, Lind cut him off at the knees. One example
was the time a heavily muscled, shaven-head officer interrupted Lind in the middle of a briefing and, with utter disgust,
said, “
Schwerpunkt,
bilgepunkt, it’s all the same to me.” Lind smiled down at him and said, “Yes, it is. And, unfortunately, it will always be
that way for you.”