The Public Announcement that the President had nominated [Gen Robert H.] Barrow for appointment as the twenty-seventh Commandment came on 18 April 1979. The first thing Barrow did after the nomination was announced was to gather together all the generals then in Headquarters to expound a bit about his philosophy “which they were probably curious about.” Much of what was said had to do with quality.
Confirmation hearings were held on 1 May. Senator John Stennis of Mississippi chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee. It was a friendly, not challenging, committee. Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia was present, and so was Senator Russell Long of Louisana, who spoke glowingly about Barrow and his family. In his statement to the committee, Barrow stressed that “the Marine Corps was embarked on an era of getting better in areas of people and equipment.” As Assistant Commandant, he had “felt like a fifth wheel . . . not underemployed [but] underinformed.” On 14 May, President [Jimmy] Carter announced the nomination of LtGen Kenneth McLennan as Assistant Commandant effective 1 July. Barrow had chosen McLennan and had decided to combine the billets of Assistant Commandant and Chief of Staff.
On Friday evening, 29 June 1979, at the traditional parade at Marine Barracks, Washington, Barrow symbolically took command of the Marine Corps, relieving [Gen Louis H.] Wilson. In his remarks he reminded the audience that when Wilson took command in 1975, his first order was to “get in step and do so smartly.” Barrow said his first order was to follow Wilson’s admonition and “to keep in step.”
L. Edgar Prina, a veteran writer on naval affairs, devoted an article in the June 1979 Sea Power, the magazine of the Navy League, to the coming Commandancy of General Barrow. In it, he said, “Barrow will inherit a Corps that has attained a high degree of combat readiness for peacetime. He will also inherit a number of serious and nagging problems, including this key one: how to ease the impact of inflation on morale and modernization so that the highest quality personnel and material may be obtained?” Barrow, Prina continued, “makes no secret that quality recruiting remains at the top of his list of priorities. . . . Barrow, like Wilson, will not ease his demands for quality first in the individual Marine: in appearance, conduct, and performance. He would rather see the Corps come down some in total numbers than lower its standards.”
Barrow had to balance the operations and maintenance of the Marine Corps at the moment against modernization for the future. During his first week as Commandant, he announced that he was willing to accept a decrease in end-strength in fiscal year 1980 from 189,000 to 179,000 in order to obtain funds to maintain combat readiness. Barrow meant it, but it came across as a scare tactic. He persisted and received $58 million in reprogrammed dollars. Fiscal year 1980 began on 1 July 1979 with 185,250 Marines and ended a year later with 188,469.
In Barrow’s opinion the “all-volunteer” recruiting effort, which had replaced the draft, was working, but only marginally. Recruiting of high school graduates was now hovering around 75 percent. “I thought we could go all the way to close to, if not, 100 percent,” he stated. And he was willing to go to a smaller Corps to do it: “I let people know that . . .maybe in peacetime the most important thing the Marine Corps could do [was to] recruit well.” Ed Prina also said in his Sea Power article, “The new Commandant may find himself running into some resistance when and if he pushes for the advanced AV–8B Harrier vertical/short take-off and landing aircraft and a new class of amphibious ships, LSD–41, to replace the aging LSD–28s.”
The Navy was loath to spend “blue” dollars for new amphibious ships or special purpose Marine Corps aircraft. Barrow believed that relations with the Navy could be improved. One of his first acts as Commandant was to meet with the CNO [Chief of Naval Operations], Adm Thomas B. Hayward. His message was, “We either hang together or we hang separately. Together we make a very positive presentation about the importance of naval forces, but if we let anyone pick away at us individually or we ourselves shoot at the other side, the other part of the partnership, we’re doing ourselves a great disservice.”
On 5 July, Barrow called a press conference at the Pentagon, speaking at considerable length concerning the Navy-Marine Corps team. He talked about the importance of a maritime strategy built on control of the sea and power projection. He would carry this message to many other audiences.
As he later declared, “One of the things I attempted to do as commandant was to reestablish as much understanding as possible on the part of the public, the Congress, and everyone else, of the utility and usefulness of the Marine Corps. You cannot do that without talking about the Navy or speaking of sea power or maritime strategy or whatever you choose to call it.”
In November 1979, as a byproduct of the Islamic revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was sacked and sixty Americans, including nine Marines, were taken hostage. It shook America that the Carter administration was apparently helpless. In the same month, the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad was sacked and burned. A Marine security guard was killed.
The requirement for a “rapid deployment” force was an imperative coming out of the debacle in Iran. The question was: how could military force best be projected into the Middle East? The Army had begun to talk of a “rapid deployment force,” a 100,000-man strike force that could be airlifted to any point around the globe. Barrow did not regard this as a threat to the Marine Corps’ amphibious mission because he saw limits as to what could be airlifted.
Barrow found Harold Brown, the Secretary of Defense, a brilliant man who did not like small talk. He met with him officially, along with the other Service chiefs and department secretaries, twice a week. Only rarely did he see him on a one-on-one basis. In one of his few personal interchanges with Barrow, Brown asked the rhetorical question: “Do Marines always have to storm ashore?” Barrow answered that amphibious assaults were just a means to an end and that the Corps did most if its fighting after getting ashore, by whatever means. Brown then advanced the idea of ships being preloaded with necessary supplies and equipment to meet with the Marines at a safe port where they could be unloaded. Barrow told him that Marines were “accustomed to having one foot on the beach and one foot in the sea.”
Barrow took the concept back to his staff “to come up with a force of some size and structure that could do the kinds of things one might have to do.” What evolved was an emphasis on the creation of Marine amphibious brigades [MABs] that could “marry-up” with prepositioned ships at some safe port close to the projected area of operations. Barrow briefed the JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] in terms of a 16,500-man air-ground brigade with far more combat potential than the Army’s recommendation of an armored cavalry regiment.
By now it was public knowledge that Secretary Brown had approved a concept called “Maritime Prepositioning.” First step was “Near-Term Prepositioning Ships,” an improvisation with readily available commercial cargo ships. There was an immediately perceptible relationship between maritime prepositioning, a Marine amphibious brigade, and the new rapid deployment force. The brigade took shape as the 7th Marine Amphibious Brigade with headquarters at Twentynine Palms, California.
In December 1979, Secretary Brown announced that the new “Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force” would be headed by a Marine general. That appointment and a promotion of lieutenant general went to Paul X. “P.X.” Kelley, at least partly because of Barrow, who feared that if the assignment went to an Army general, the rapid deployment force would be regarded as an all-Army show. Somewhat surprisingly, this recommendation received the support of Gen David C. Jones, [USAF] the JCS chairman, not known to be a particular friend of the Marine Corps. In the Joint Chiefs’ discussion of the appointment, Jones suggested that the top job be rotated between the Army and the Marine Corps, with the first appointment going to the Marine Corps.
On 31 January 1980, Barrow delivered his first “posture” statement as Commandant to the House Armed Services Committee. Although there was always a formal, written statement, it was Barrow’s style to speak without notes, a practice he would follow for years. He set a goal of ten thousand women Marines. The goal was not reached, but it was Barrow’s way of emphasizing that there were more places in the Marine Corps where women could be used. He remained unalterably opposed, however, to assignment of women to the combat arms.
The Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) was activated on 1 March 1980 with Lieutenant General Kelley as its first commander and with headquarters at McDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida. Key contributions by the Marine Corps would be the training of the 7th Marine Amphibious Brigade in desert operations and the implementation of maritime prepositioning. Barrow visited the loading-out of the Near-Term Prepositioned Ships at Wilmington, North Carolina, with stores drawn from the Marine Corps Logistics Base at Albany, Georgia. Some time later he flew to Australia to see the concept tested with an exercise involving the landing of a Marine amphibious unit near Perth.
The Barrows’ style of gracious entertaining was well suited to the historic Commandant’s House. Invitations to dinner with the Barrows or to attend the summer parties inside the walled garden, enlivened most often by a jazz combo, followed by the unmatched Evening Parade, were much sought after.
But another tragedy was in the offing. President Carter directed the Joint Chiefs to find a way to get the hostages out of Iran. Gen David Jones, the Chairman, became, in effect, according to Barrow, the action officer, “the one individual that knew all the parts better than anyone else.” Barrow himself thought too much was being expected of the Navy helicopters, which were to be flown mostly by Marine pilots and said so at the JCS. While he thought the rescue effort was high risk, he did not think it impossible. In April 1980, the United States Armed Forces experienced the terrible failure of Desert One. Carter’s term was nearing an end: “The hostage situation in Teheran was Jimmy Carter’s albatross,” opined Barrow in 1991. “It preoccupied, I suppose, most of his waking hours.”
Ronald Reagan’s election in November 1980 brought with it a growing optimism among the Service chiefs. Not only were the Services going to be better funded, but they now would have a commander in chief “with firm convictions about a strong America.”
Barrow was in the reviewing stand for the parade following Reagan’s inauguration in January 1981, when the new President whimsically asked him if it would be all right if he saluted the passing colors while in civilian clothes. Barrow assured him that it would be fine. He found the new Secretary of Defense, Casper Weinberger, “a hard-driving, determined,” and sincere person whom he came to admire greatly. Early on, Barrow had a long, wide-ranging talk with the new Secretary of the Navy, the much-younger John Lehman, with emphasis on the Marine Corps’ contribution to a maritime strategy. That started a dialogue that would continue.
By February 1981 the press was reporting a split among the Joint Chiefs over command arrangements for the rapid deployment force. Barrow favored placing the RDJTF under the Pacific Command. Jones and most of the other chiefs thought it should be under the European Command. The outcome was that the rapid deployment force became a new unified command, the Central Command, the command that would fight the Persian Gulf War.
In August 1981, General Barrow stood before his generals at the opening of the year’s General Officers Symposium (which brought in three-quarters of the Marine generals from all parts of the world) and asked them, “Do I look like a Marine Corps general?” All would have answered yes, the epitome of a Marine Corps general, but the question was rhetorical. What he was getting at was the short-sleeved khaki shirt (very popular in Washington’s summer heat) he was wearing, going on to compare it with a sport shirt. At that point he announced his “Let’s dress up, not down” uniform policy. He decreed that the green service uniform would be the uniform of the day, with the wearing of the “woolly-pully” sweater limited to working hours. He stressed the wear of the blue dress uniform by all who had it on all appropriate occasions and encouraged the wear of both the green and blue uniforms off duty. He stressed the wearing of slacks by women Marines. He smartened up the appearance of gate sentries and military police.
In his appearance before congressional committees, Barrow repeatedly expressed his concern over the shortage of amphibious shipping and the slowness with which obsolescent amphibious shipping was being replaced. The total of sixty-seven amphibious ships then in commission fell far short of the established goal to lift one MAF [Marine amphibious force] and one MAB simultaneously. Barrow’s efforts to increase amphibious lift meshed nicely with Secretary Lehman’s goal of a six-hundred-ship Navy. Barrow would have the satisfaction of going to the keel-laying of the Whidbey Island, the first of the new LSD–41 class of “landing ship, dock,” at the Lockheed shipyard in Seattle, Washington, on 4 August 1981.
Beyond amphibious shipping, he was also concerned about the adequacy of naval gunfire, medical support, and mine countermeasures, all Navy responsibilities. Having had several discussions on the subject with Lehman, he was delighted when the secretary testified to a senate subcommittee on the Navy’s intentions to bring two battleships, with their 16-inch guns, out of mothballs. (In December 1982, the battleship New Jersey would be recommissioned. President Reagan would attend, and Barrow would be in the official party.)
Both Wilson and Barrow had argued for the procurement of the F/A–18 Hornet as the replacement for the aging McDonnell-Douglas F–4 Phantoms of the Vietnam era. The first Marine Corps F/A–18 rolled off the line at the Northrup plant, in Hawthorne, California, on 13 January 1982. “The F/A–18 was a much-welcomed airplane, because it was replacing an ancient one that had served us well, the F–4,” said Barrow.
In traveling about the Corps, Barrow encountered a good deal of apathy on the part of the Corps’ younger leaders on the subject of drug use. He decided to use the full authority of the Commandant’s office in a very personalized way. He visited all major commands, addressing audiences of officers and promising to provide the policies and tools to deal with the problem. On 1 February 1982, he issued an “ALMAR” launching a concentrated campaign to eliminate the use of illegal drugs in the Marine Corps. A key provision of the order was that all Marines would be subject to random urinalysis testing: “In the case of staff NCOs and officers, no second chance. Out! Gone! We would encourage probable cause searches at the gate. We got sniffer dogs trained and brought in.”
He “energized,” to use his term, the leadership. Detected drug use began to go down, not dramatically at first, but it went down. In the years that followed, a random test of a sizable unit such as a Marine aircraft group or regiment would reveal only 0.5 to 1.0 percent usage. “That’s better than any institution in America. Hands down,” said Barrow in 1992, then, on reflection: “Maybe the Girl Scouts can do better.”
In his 1982 posture statement, Barrow reported to Congress, “ My personal observations of your Marines convince me that they are as tough and ready as United States Marines have ever been.” He attributed this toughness and readiness to greatly expanded training opportunities. Exercises were taking Marines to some ninety to a hundred places around the globe each year. In that same posture statement, Barrow said, “The Marine Corps’ ability to deploy rapidly and accomplish its mission, however and whenever called, depends on quality individuals who can endure rigorous training, accept firm discipline, respond to sound leadership, and perform with intelligence and capability.”
Barrow’s Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps throughout his tenure as commandant was Leland Crawford, a handsome man with a great deal of presence. “He was a master of direct talk,” remembered Barrow of the Corps’s senior NCO. “He could bring problems to me that perhaps no one else could and . . .I could be confident that he wasn’t being superficial.”
In April 1982, some ten thousand Marines and sailors from the 7th Marine Amphibious Brigade took part in Gallant Eagle ’82 at Twentynine Palms, an exercise that involved an additional fifteen thousand members of the other Services. The exercise simulated a combat situation in a desert environment. The Gallant Eagle series of exercises continued annually. They would be, as it turned out, a rehearsal for Desert Storm.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 created a fresh crisis in the Middle East. The 32d MAU [32d Marine Amphibious Unit], under Col James M. Mead, landed its ground elements at Beirut in late August. The MAU formed the U.S. element of a multinational force which oversaw the safe and orderly departure by sea of Palestine Liberation Organization forces. Mission accomplished, the 32d MAU withdrew from Lebanon in early September. Barrow visited the unit ashore and at sea on 26 September, presenting it with the Navy Unit Commendation for the success of the evacuation. Three days later, the 32d MAU had to land again because of the increasing disorder ashore. It was the beginning of the lengthy, and eventually tragic, Marine Corps “presence” in Lebanon. A month later, the 24th MAU under Col Thomas M. Stokes, Jr. replaced the 32d MAU at Beirut. Almost immediately the Marines ashore assumed a more warlike stance. By the first week of November, they were making jeep patrols out to the “Green Line” which separated the Christian from Moslem sectors of the City.
On 7 December, President Reagan announced the activation of the U.S. Central Command, the expected outgrowth of the Joint Rapid Deployment Force. For political reasons, Israel and Lebanon were not included in the USCENTTCOM’s geographical area of responsibility. Barrow thought this a mistake.
By the first half of 1983, which would be Barrow’s last six months as Commandant, the Marine Corps was benefiting in an increasing way from the Reagan administration’s investment in new and improved weapons and equipment. Problems in Lebanon, however, were increasing. On 2 February 1983, Marine Captain Charles B. Johnson created an international incident by drawing his pistol while blocking an attempt by three Israeli tanks to pass through his checkpoint near the Beirut University Library. Barrow sent him a personal message commending him for standing up to what was obviously a planned provocation. Two weeks after the Johnson incident, on 15 February, the 22d MAU (the renumbered 32d MAU, still under Colonel Mead) replaced the 24th MAU in Beirut. The danger signs in Lebanon grew worse as the U.S. tilted more and more in favor of the Christian side of the dispute.
On 14 March 1983, Barrow wrote a strong letter to Secretary Weinberger demanding “firm and strong action” be taken to stop the Israeli forces in Lebanon from putting the Marines in “life-threatening situations.” Weinberger sent the letter to Secretary of State George Shultz, himself a World War II Marine officer. The State Department released it to the press. In Beirut, on 18 April, a large car bomb exploded just outside the U.S. Embassy, causing massive structural damage, killing sixty-one people and wounding at least a hundred more. One of the dead was a Marine security guard, and seven of the wounded were Marines.
Barrow made his last visit to Beirut on 26 and 27 May. He gave out five Purple Hearts to Marines who had been wounded in the bombing. He also decorated twelve French marines who had assisted after the bombing. He inspected the building that was ultimately blown up in October. To him the reinforced-concrete, thick-walled structure appeared very sturdy and well suited to be the command post. Later he would lament not questioning the number of persons sleeping in the building. Two days later, the 24th MAU, now commanded by Col Timothy J. Geraghty, relieved the 32d MAU. The 24th MAU would be in place, and Barrow would no longer be Commandant, when on 23 October 1983, a truck bomb was driven under a building, killing 241 American servicemen, 220 of them Marines.
In his final weeks as Commandant, Barrow made a last swing through the Far East, visiting Marines in Okinawa and Japan and the scenes of so much of his service. His term would officially end at midnight on 30 June. The ceremony for the turnover of the Commandancy to General Kelley was held Sunday evening, 26 June, at Marine Barracks, Washington. It was a beautiful evening. President Reagan attended. All three—Reagan, Barrow, and Kelley—spoke. In his remarks, Barrow looked back to his days in command at Parris Island and how he would question the graduating Marines as to what they had gotten out of their training. The best answer he received, he said, came from a Marine who said, “Sir, the private will always do whatever needs to be done.”
Editor’s Note: This appreciation was excerpted from BGen Simmons’ chapter on Gen Barrow in Commandants of the Marine Corps, edited by Col Allan R. Millett, USMCR(Ret) and Jack Shulimson, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2004. It is reprinted with their permission. Commandants of the Marine Corps is available at the MCA Bookstore.
Comments
Post new comment