Call Sign Chaos

Prologue


In late November 2016, I was enjoying Thanksgiving break in my hometown on the Columbia River in Washington State when I received an unexpected call from Vice President elect Pence. Would I meet with President-elect Trump to discuss the job of Secretary of Defense of the United States? I had taken no part in the election campaign and had never met or spoken to Mr. Trump, so to say that I was surprised is an understatement. Further, I knew that, absent a congressional waiver, federal law prohibited a former military officer from serving as Secretary of Defense within seven years of departing military service. Given that no waiver had been authorized since General George Marshall was made secretary in 1950, and I d been out for only three and a half years, I doubted I was a viable candidate. Nonetheless, I flew to Bedminster, New Jersey, for the interview.

I had time on the cross-country flight to ponder how to encapsulate my view of America s role in the world. On my flight out of Denver, the flight attendant s standard safety briefing caught my attention: If cabin pressure is lost, masks will drop. . . . Put your own mask on first, then help others around you. . . . We ve all heard it many times, but in that moment, these familiar words seemed like a metaphor: to preserve our leadership role, we needed to get our own country s act together first, especially if we were to help others.

The next day I was driven to the Trump National Golf Club and, entering a side door, waited about twenty minutes before I was ushered into a modest conference room. I was introduced to the President-elect, the Vice President elect, the chief of staff, and a handful of others. We talked about the state of our military, where our views aligned and where they differed. In our forty-minute conversation, Mr. Trump led the wide-ranging discussion, and the tone was amiable. Afterward, the President-elect escorted me out to the front steps of the colonnaded

Jim Mattis is a Pacific Northwest native who served more than four decades as a Marine infantry officer. Following two years as the Secretary of Defense, he returned to the Northwest and is now the Davies Family Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Bing West has written eleven books, including, with Jim Mattis, the #1 New York Times bestseller Call Sign Chaos. He served as a Marine grunt in Vietnam and later as an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. He has been on hundreds of patrols in Iraq and Afghanistan, including many operations with General Mattis. He is a member of the Military History Working Group at the Hoover Institution. He lives with his wife, Betsy, in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and Newport, Rhode Island.

A portrait of [Jim] Mattis s life-defining love for the Marine Corps . . . His prose sings. . . . He clearly expresses a commander s intent in any situation and gives latitude to adapt to circumstances. . . . Each mission gives him another body of knowledge, another strength, greater capacity to live his devotion to his country. David Brooks, The New York Times 
 
An instructive and entertaining leadership manual for executives, managers, and military officers . . . Mattis is a gifted storyteller. Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic

Combining simplicity and thoughtfulness, Jim Mattis has produced a classic account of a lifetime of service. Call Sign Chaos is a lesson in leadership and an evocation of humanity in the cause of peace. Henry Kissinger
 
In this magnificent memoir, Jim Mattis details many important events in his career, but he also does much more: He explains how he is informed by his experiences in a way that teaches you how to learn from your own. Read, enjoy, and learn. George Shultz

A recurring theme in Call Sign Chaos is the need to understand the world beyond one s immediate discipline. . . . The result is an engaging, insightful study of leadership. The Wall Street Journal

His book is a compendium of circumstances often beyond his control. What makes it a compelling read is how this warriormonk dealt with and learned from the jams he found himself in. NPR

The book s main concerns . . . are the practical and ethical challenges of military leadership. Mattis draws on his deep professionalism and knowledge of military history in describing the stress of battle and the tough decision to send soldiers into the field to kill and be killed. Foreign Affairs

In Call Sign Chaos, James Mattis shares a lifetime of learning from wars that failed to offer a better tomorrow. We need to take his lessons and do better in the future.