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22 August 2024

A Double Funeral

William S. Lind

On July 29, I attended the funeral and interment at Arlington cemetery of General Alfred M. Gray, Jr., the 29th Commandant of the Marine Corps. Many of us present feared we were also witnessing the funeral of the Marine Corps itself.

I met General Gray in the mid-1970s when he was a new one-star and I had just launched a campaign to change U.S. military doctrine from the French to the German model, under the rubric “maneuver warfare.” General Gray signed on at once. He did so not because I was so persuasive but because what I was advocating resonated with his own military experiences, experience that began when he arrived in Korea in 1950 as a Marine private.

In 1981, General Gray became the Commanding General of the 2nd Marine Division based at Camp Lejeune, NC. He promptly declared maneuver warfare the doctrine of his division, formed a Maneuver Warfare Board of young officers to make it happen (many were my former students) and began a series of free-play field exercises to develop and apply the new concepts. I attended many of those exercises and, at General Gray’s request, led the critiques. I made sure those critiques were Prussian, not the usual American variety where everybody leaves feeling good.


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