Ultimate Responsibility

Captain Ed "Rebel" Gregory attempting to reach escape velocity
during flight deck PT, somewhere in the Atlantic -- March 1988 .

Thirty years ago this month, the Colonel (then a captain) was at sea, aboard an aging vertical assault ship -- LPH 2, USS Iwo Jima -- and in command of a reinforced rifle company assigned the mission of conducting heliborne assaults and raids for a "special operations capable" (SOC) Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU).

It was the best job he ever had.   

The Marines and sailors of Company C (Reinforced), 1st Battalion, 8th Marines (designated Battalion Landing Team 1/8) were 210 of the best young men the Colonel has ever known.  He has written of them before, and will likely write about them again many times before he stops breathing.  The youngest among them will turn 50 in a couple of years.  Most of them finished up their 4-year enlistment by the end of that decade, went home, and lived peaceful lives.  Several of them reenlisted and made the Corps a career.  A few fought in the liberation of Kuwait in 1991.     

In the history of armed conflict, 1988 was an unremarkable year.  At least as far as the Colonel's accounting goes.  The Iran-Iraq War was ending.  Tensions with Iran were bubbling in the Persian Gulf.  Tensions with Noriega were bubbling in Panama.  But, all in all, it was a quiet year.

Going into 1988, however, the Colonel was convinced that the year would be anything but quiet.  And, at every opportunity he had to speak with his assembled charges, the Colonel always concluded with a variation on the same refrain: "Men, get ready.  There's not a doubt in my military mind that we're gonna see some trigger time before this deployment is over."  

That belief -- that combat was inevitable -- was what drove every preparation for that deployment, from administration to assault tactics.  The Colonel could wax Pattonesque at this point and pen drivel about destiny, but it wasn't a sense of destiny that drove him.

It was an overwhelming sense of responsibility. 

That sense of responsibility is at the core of every military leader's psyche.  Some have it in more or less degrees than others.  The Colonel claims no superiority here.  He was lucky to have mentors who, despite the Colonel's many shortcomings, devoted themselves to developing his nascent leadership skills into something approaching mission-capable adequacy.  But, the point remains that without a guiding sense of responsibility, no leader, military or otherwise, can hope to achieve his or her organization's mission.  

A military leader's ultimate responsibility is to prepare those under his or her charge for the worst possible outcome -- deadly violent, no-holds-barred, combat.  To do less shirks a sacred duty.

As the scope of responsibility broadens with ascension up the ladder of military command, the ultimate responsibility remains ever the same.  To allow any other consideration to detract from that responsibility is, by definition, negligence.  

In 1988, the Colonel, as is often the case, was wrong.  The best rifle company in the Marine Corps saw no combat that year.

But, they were ready...