Dear Tom:

There is a built-in fallacy in the assignment of general officers, and that is the assignment of aviators to ground billets. Aviators who progress up the rank structure find that their first opportunity to command anything other than an airplane is when, as a lieutenant colonel, they are given a squadron. Therefore, they are denied the opportunity to learn the intracacies of command at earlier stages, such as platoon, and company level. These are the levels where a leader can really polish skills, so that when he reaches the battalion command level, he is already experienced in command skills; or he should be (Recent observations don't always substantiate that view). Yet, we take aviators and make them generals, and many of them eventually get a ground command. I've met a few who seem to earn their pay, but too many of them lack the very basic skills they were never given the opportunity to obtain. I have gotten arguments from many who feel that aviators' attendance at Basic School, Amphibious Warfare School, etc., gives them the skills to command. That simply is not true. These schools merely give them the information. The education comes when one is given the opportunity to practice and hone the skills which the information enhances, but surely does not give. Many of these aviators seem to have missed the boat on a number of really basic things. It's kinda like the guy who is personable in appearance, puts on a tuxedo, goes to the Queen's coronation ball, and stands there audibly breaking wind with no indication that it bothers him in any way.

If we must give an aviator a non-aviation command, then may I humbly suggest they be given some of the less harmful commands, such as the commanding general of a base, or the commanding officer of a Marine Barracks at some Naval base. Leave the ground combat commands to the ground combat officers - the Pullers, the Peatrosses, the Lowndses. You don't hear of a ground officer being given command of an aviation unit.

Major General Bowman was assigned as the Deputy Commander of Twenty Fourth Corps in Viet Nam when III MAF phased over command to the Army in I Corps. Here is an example of an aviator being given a relatively harmless billet. I assisted in a brief of General Bowman on the Combined Action Program. He flew his own helicopter to our area, exited the aircraft wearing a snub-nosed .38 calibre revolver (in violation of an order regarding personal weapons), and let us know that he was in charge. I next met him when I reported to Camp Pendleton and became the Base Drug Abuse Education Officer. He was CG, Marine Corps Base, another harmless billet. He could justify having a drug abuse education section consisting of two officers and several enlisted personnel, but he refused to admit to a drug problem. He released a statement to the press once which said that statistics showed that less than one percent of the Marines at Camp Pendleton were smoking grass. He was basing his figures on the Provost Marshal's arrest statistics. I tactfully cautioned him that as the Provost MarshaI got more proficient and the arrest figures went up, that our grass statistics would also go up. His answer was, "I won't tell them." He retired from that position and went to the Marine Corps academy at Harlingen, Texas, which is a private military type schooI for high-school age kids. I can just imagine his press releases there: "My statistics show that less than one percent of my cadets are playing with themselves." In recent years there was a fly-boy general given command of a major Marine Corps unit in the Pacific. He was extremely impressed with the awesome position he filled. We were in Okinawa, living in government quarters in the Plaza area at the time. My kid came home one afternoon and told me that the tennis courts down the street had a huge sign posted, stating that "These courts are for the exclusive use of Major General [Finque] daily from 1130 to 1245." I explained to my son that undoubtedly some overzealous aide had posted the sign, and that the general not only did not know about it, he certainly would not monopolize the courts in such an announced fashion. "Generals just don't do that kind of thing." The next day, just out of curiosity, I went to the tennis courts, and sure enough, the sign was not there. I came home and told my son that evidently the general had discovered it and had it removed. The following day my son came home with an I-told-you-so smile and informed me that the sign was back up. I went there with him, and there it was: A piece of four-by-eight plywood, painted red and lettered in gold, exactly as my son had described, with the exception that this sign was twice the size of the first one. A couple of months later, we moved out of that area, and the sign was still there the day we moved.

Lieutenant General Brown, an aviator, is one of the ones who seems to have made it. He became the CG, FMFPac after the retirement of LtGen McLaughlin. He was, and is, good. He would pay visits to Okinawa and do what needed to be done. He wanted to know the capabilities of his fighting units, and had rather unique ways of testing it. On his first visit to Okinawa, a big reception was held at night and a rather ambitious Lamb major cornered the general and was boasting about engineering expertise of his unit. The general listened in a most interested way to this punk describe how great he was and how proficient his battalion had grown under his expert tutelage. The generaI asked the major, "How fast can you lay a bridge strong enough to support a tank?" In a condescending manner, the major answered, "In a few hours." The general, without changing his expression, said, "Good! Hop to it. Lay one at Camp Hansen, and I'll be there at 0900 tomorrow morning to see a tank cross it." The general then walked away and joined another group as the engineer stood there white as a sheet.

General Brown would order a battalion to mount out by a certain time (merely hours away), and watch the activity. He put them to realistic tests. He was interested in everything; supply, ordnance, maintenance, the works.

I don't have the most recent Lineal List, but last year's shows that we had 67 generals in the Marine Corps. Can you believe that? That's too damned many! But, of course, we have to have generals to fill some of the key billets like Pentagon liaison, Congressional liaison, Coordinator of Rock Painting you name it.

I gleaned another interesting statistic from the Lineal List. Of the 67 generals in the Marine Corps, only seven are graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy ("Canoe U", or as affectionately known to the enlisted swine, "The Prick Factory"). Forty-five of the generals have some enlisted time of some sort. That's a step in the right direction. Even our Commandant, General Wilson, is former enlisted.

Our Commandant. Yes. In the days of General Cushman, our morale was declining for what we felt was lack of leadership. A lot of jokes were made about Cushman and his dimensions: The new PFT was going to be three laps around the Commandant; come to Headquarters, Marine Corps, and join the two-desserts-for-lunch bunch. Cushman resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal, so the President appointed Louis Wilson to head the Marine Corps. When I hear that, I did backflips of joy! I felt that he was just exactly what we needed to get the Marine Corps rolling again. That old Mississippi boy wasn't going to tolerate the hanky-panky going on and growing in the Corps. He started out like wildfire, issuing statements of policy, and making a hell of a lot of noise. The best statement he made was something to the effect that he didn't care if the Marine Corps went down to 55,000 men, it was going to be one hell of a tight fighting machine. That has not even begun to happen. We are still overloaded with nonproductive bums. Some feeble efforts have been made, but nothing of any substance. In summary, I am disappointed in him. He is the kind of guy who came to the job with a great deal of credibility with Congress; but he has lost a lot of that. His allowing himself to be boondoggled by the aviators regarding that multi-million dollar toy, the Harrier, got him into hot water with Congress, while he was before Congress begging for more money to buy more of this junk, the 28th one crashed. We only had 125 to start with, and they were crashing left and right.

I have barely mentioned the granddaddy of all Marine generals - "Chesty" Puller. I think the Marine Corps suffered the most severe loss when Puller was retired. There was a man who was loved by all Marines except the generals, and would-be generals. He had a plain, uncomplicated air about him that was seated in an evident love for his troops, and which caused his Marines to do the impossible for him. What a Commandant he woud have made! I regret that I never had the opportunity to serve with that man. Tom, do you know that there is not a single thing, that I know of, which commemorates his service! No buildings, no streets, no schools, nothing, is named for him. We have buildings 1 through 9000. We have A, B, and C Streets. We have the "Stone Street Elementary School" and dozens of other things, any one of which could bear his name. I can understand why nothing is named for him: The Lambs have control, and the sooner this Lion is forgotten, the better.

Of course, he was rather unique: All you got from him was all he could give. What a fantastic Marine!