Boyd (59 page)

Wyly continued to think hard about reform. After he wrote an article about how generals need to study tactics, his boss came
in and
shut the door—always a bad sign—and said, “Mike, this kind of article is not going to help your career.” He was right: Wyly
never had a command after he began publishing. Passed over for general, he began to think seriously about retirement.

Then old friends began writing letters saying, “Mike, it’s beginning. You need to be at Quantico.” Wyly had served more time
at Quantico than most officers and did not want to return. But the letters kept coming. “The commandant wants you involved
in the reforms at Quantico,” he was told. Friends said, “Don’t retire. Gray has a vision. Look what he did with the 2nd Marine
Division down at Lejeune. He’s bringing you back.” Then came the orders. He had been name requested by the commandant. Wyly
paced up and down the helicopter pad behind his house. This was the toughest decision he had ever had to make. Rather than
asking, as others might, “How will this improve my career?” or “What’s in it for me?” he instead said to himself, “My country
is calling. I have to respond.” If there was a chance to resurrect maneuver warfare, he would give his all.

When Wyly checked in at Quantico, the personnel office was packed with officers. A clerk stood up and asked, “Is there a Colonel
Wyly here?” Wyly identified himself and the clerk said, “Sir, the commandant is calling.” A dozen officers stared curiously
at this colonel who was receiving a phone call from General Al Gray even before he unpacked. “My door is open,” Gray said
to him on the phone that day. “What you are doing is important. You can walk in anytime.”

Wyly smiled as he finished checking in. Staying in the Marine Corps had been the right decision.

Gray gave Wyly two assignments, two dream jobs. First, he was to write a campaign plan for the Marine Corps. The plan was
to chart the course the Corps should follow for the next five years. Second, Wyly was to follow through on an idea he had
presented to Gray years earlier, to make plans for setting up the preeminent war-fighting university in the world, something
called the Marine Corps University.

Wyly’s immediate boss was Major General Mike Sullivan, one of the best aviators in the Marine Corps. Like most aviators, Sullivan
didn’t think much of maneuver warfare; he believed the doctrinal emphasis and the budget should go toward aviation. Wyly was
not discouraged. As he began working on the campaign plan, he told his
wife, “This is a mission. This is how George Washington must have felt en route to the constitutional convention.” Wyly never
imagined he would have this sort of opportunity. He was backed up by the commandant. Gray had, in effect, told Wyly, “Marine
Corps warfighting doctrine is decades out of date. I want new ideas about war fighting codified into a manual. You and Boyd
see to it.”

Boyd and Wyly knew their names could not be on the book; they were far too controversial. And the new manual would be far
more acceptable to junior officers if it bore the name of a young officer. They went to a young captain who already had the
job of writing a new manual but who had become bogged down. Boyd and Wyly spent long hours with him. Boyd said, “Do not write
it as a formula. Write it as a way to teach officers to think, to think in new ways about war. War is ever changing and men
are ever fallible. Rigid rules simply won’t work. Teach men to think.” Boyd paused a moment and added a final thought. “And
keep the goddamn thing simple so generals can understand it.”

Originally the manual was to have a long number in the title, signifying the evolutionary process of Marine Corps tactics
manuals. But Gray refused. “We want this to show that we are starting over, starting at the beginning. Put the number
one
on the cover.”

The manual was called “FMFM-1 Warfighting.”

Against the wishes of most officers on his staff, Gray simply signed on and said this is the way it will be, this is the way
we will train, and this is the way we will fight. He decreed the manual as official Marine Corps doctrine. Shortly thereafter,
Boyd and Wyly went to see General Gray. The commandant was immensely pleased and thought Boyd would be also. But Boyd looked
at the ninety-eight-page manual and said, “Okay, General. Now you have to start changing it.” He still loathed the idea of
finishing an intellectual work.

All this time, Wyly continued sending drafts of the campaign plan to Sullivan. He said the first thing the Marine Corps should
do was clean up the personnel system and stamp out careerism. He wrote of the need to provide professional education for all
Marines, to instill a greater sense of ethics, and to promote for unit cohesion. He stressed the importance of maneuver warfare.

Every idea was rejected. Sullivan slashed and edited and kicked back draft after draft for rewriting. He even wrote “Shit”
on one
version. He summed up his feelings toward Wyly with the greatest insult a fighter pilot can muster: “I don’t think I’d want
you for a wingman.”

Then Wyly attended a meeting where some of his young officers were making a maneuver-warfare presentation to a two-star general.
The general belittled every sentence. Wyly, as the senior maneuverist in the Marine Corps, felt obligated to come to their
defense. He was not going to be intimidated by a general. He stood up and said, “General, let them finish before you begin
criticizing.”

In minutes Wyly and the general were standing toe-to-toe. “We have to keep the tried and true,” the general shouted.

“You mean like Vietnam?” Wyly shouted even louder.

Other officers backed away. When the elephants are fighting, it is best to keep your distance.

Wyly later was told that his confrontation with the two-star ended his chances of being promoted to general. He did not believe
it. The Marine Corps expected healthy debate, didn’t it?

General Sullivan refused every idea Wyly had for the five-year plan. The commandant had given him the biggest job of his career
but his immediate supervisor rejected his best efforts. It was clear that nothing but tired old doctrine would be acceptable
to Sullivan. And Wyly wanted no part of this.

During Easter weekend of 1989, Wyly returned to Kansas City, where his wife and daughters lived in the Wyly family home. Mrs.
Wyly had been waiting until the end of the school year to move to Quantico.

“I’ve decided to hang it up,” he told her. She agreed. Her husband had been mistreated long enough by the Marine Corps. It
was time to join the civilian world.

Boyd called the evening that Wyly returned to Quantico. His pre-science was uncanny. Although he did not say so, the thrust
of Boyd’s conversation clearly revealed that he knew what Wyly was planning. Finally Wyly said, “John, I’ve decided to retire
from the Marine Corps.”

“Mike, you can’t do that. It is not yet time. You still have a job to do, a big job. There is a mission here for you that
you must continue.” Boyd spent almost an hour cajoling Wyly, reminding him of the
OODA Loop, of bypassing resistance, of ambiguity, of making multiple thrusts against an enemy stronghold. “The multiple thrusts
will confuse Sullivan,” he said. “You know your
Schwerpunkt
but he doesn’t.” Boyd took Wyly to the mountaintop and showed him a rainbow-draped promised land, where Marines practiced
maneuver warfare and where there were no generals to impede good ideas.

Wyly put down the phone, thought about what Boyd had said, then called his wife and said he was staying in the Corps. “Pack
up and you and the girls come join me,” he said.

He called again the next day and told his wife how much better he felt now that he had decided not to resign. “It was depressing
to think that I was going to wake up a civilian. No more of those late calls from Boyd. No more OODA Loops or discussions
about rapidity or fluidity. I would have missed those phone calls.” He and his wife laughed; both at times were exasperated
with Boyd’s midnight calls.

Following Boyd’s lead, Wyly decided to put the principles of maneuver warfare to work. He would continue to send drafts of
his five-year plan to Sullivan, but while the general was occupied with that, he would make another thrust—this one straight
toward the commandant. He asked Boyd to come to Quantico and bring the commandant up to date on his thinking about multiple
thrusts and ambiguity, two concepts Boyd had begun emphasizing only in recent months.

Wyly knew Sullivan would refuse Boyd entrance to the commandant’s office, so Wyly bypassed the chain of command. Wyly and
Boyd talked to Gray for three hours. Aides kept trying to interrupt, to get the commandant back on schedule, but he turned
them all away. He refused all phone calls. The next day Gray dropped in on a class at the Command and Staff College and talked
to the students about multiple thrusts and ambiguity and
Schwerpunkt
. He told them of maneuver warfare and said, “This is where the Marine Corps is going.”

Of course, two-star generals don’t like being bypassed in the chain of command, so Sullivan braced Wyly and gave him a royal
chewing out.

Several days later Wyly wrote a memo to Gray, attached it to a copy of his five-year plan—the project Sullivan kept blocking—and
sent it to Gray’s office. The copy was marked and edited and filled with Sullivan’s derisive comments.

Wyly says he sent the plan to Gray not in reaction to Sullivan’s chewing him out but out of frustration. Nothing was happening.
He had to break the logjam. Besides, Gray told him earlier, “My door is always open. Come in anytime.”

Wyly made a copy of the memo and stuck it in his desk. He thinks his desk was searched and the memo found and sent to Sullivan.
This is possible. But it is also possible, especially in view of later events, that Gray, or someone in his office, sent Sullivan
a copy of the memo.

However it got there, several weeks later a copy of the memo wound up on Sullivan’s desk.

Wyly was again up for promotion to brigadier general. His contributions to the Marine Corps were such that he felt he might
make it this time. He was feeling confident. Several days later he was escorting David Hackworth around Quantico. The two
men were observing field exercises. At one point a messenger approached Wyly with a folded piece of yellow paper. “Call General
Sullivan,” it said. Wyly stuck the note in his pocket and continued escorting Hackworth. A second messenger brought another
sheet of yellow paper saying, “Call General Sullivan.” The note did not indicate any emergency. Wyly thought, “The general
knows where I am. He knows what I am doing. He knows when I will be back.” Wyly again stuck the note in his pocket.

Hours later, back at his office, Wyly’s executive officer said, “Colonel, you really need to see the general.”

Wyly looked at his muddy boots and wrinkled utilities and said, “I think I’ll put on a fresh uniform before I go over there.”

A few minutes later he stood in front of a mirror in his office and admired what he saw: starched utilities, polished boots,
and a lean muscular physique. He looked like a Marine.

He reported to Sullivan’s office, where the general handed him a fitness report then pointed to a paper on his desk. It was
the marked-up draft of the five-year plan he had sent to Gray.

“See that paper?” Sullivan asked him.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Did you sign that?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“You’re out of here. I’ve arranged to have you moved out of your office. You’re fired.”

Wyly was cleaning out his office when Boyd called. Boyd always called in a crisis; Wyly was convinced he was telepathic. “How
the hell you doing?” Boyd boomed.

“Not good, John.” He told Boyd what happened.

“So you got your reward; you got kicked in the teeth. That means you were doing good work. Getting kicked in the teeth is
the reward for good work.”

Sullivan’s fitness report on Wyly was so harsh that the three-star reviewing officer refused to send it to the promotion board.
Later, the promotion board called Wyly to tell him it was missing. Wyly said that was General Sullivan’s problem, not his.
He asked Gray to write his fitness report, but the general never responded.

His new job was to do nothing. The man who came to Quantico with a mandate from the commandant again was adrift. He wondered
if Gray even knew what had happened. Surely the man who brought him back to Quantico would come to his rescue.

A few days later he received a call from the commandant’s aide saying, “Sit tight. You will be given meaningful duties. Don’t
be discouraged.”

Then came the assignment: vice president of the new Marine Corps University. Wyly had hoped, since the MCU was his idea, that
he might be the first leader. But a general was in charge and Wyly was the number-two man. His title of vice president was
an unusual one in the Marine Corps; it meant Wyly was a thinker, a teacher, a man who developed concepts. Although it was
not what Wyly wanted, he was perfectly suited for the assignment.

General Gray told Wyly he wanted to put together a list of books for Marines to read. Wyly took the reading list he compiled
years earlier at the AWS, added books that Boyd recommended, solicited recommendations from others, and presto, the Marine
Corps had its first Commandant’s Reading List, a compilation that, while not mandatory, is read by most officers and enlisted
personnel.

Wyly worked in his office until midnight five or six nights a week. He was only vaguely aware that the predators were circling
closer.

One day in April 1991, the day after his father died, Wyly was ordered to report to a three-star general. As he was walking
out the door, Boyd called.

“What’s going on?”

Wyly was thinking only of his father’s death. “I don’t know. The general wants to see me in five minutes.”

“What about?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea.”

Boyd paused. “Mike, this is imperative. Call me as soon as you get back. Got that? The minute you get back, you call me.”

The general got right to the point. You’ve been passed over for general and you have to retire, he said. You have to be gone
by October.