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25 Aug, 8 tweets, 2 min read
#Deanehistory 95.

This is one of my favourite anecdotes about leadership.

Jim Mattis is a former US Secretary of “Defense” and a lifelong Marine Corps man.
The story is told by the former Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Krulak, in part to make a point about how cool he is himself, but we will forgive him for it in the circumstances.
On Christmas Day each year Krulak would drive around the lonely Marine guard posts around the greater Washington DC area and give some cookies and fellowship to the poor Marines who’d pulled guard duty.
On one such occasion, he stopped at Quantico. Meeting a Lance Corporal there, he asked who the Officer of the Day was.

LC: “Sir, it’s Brigadier General Mattis.”

Krulak: “No, I know General Mattis: who is the officer on duty today, Christmas Day?”
LC: “errrrrrrrrrr… it really is Brigadier General Mattis.”

Krulak, pointing to the cot at the back of the guard post: “Right, sonny [I may be paraphrasing]: Which. Officer. Slept. There. On. Christmas. Eve?”

LC: “Sir, it was Brigadier General Mattis.”
Saving Krulak a popped vein and the Lance Corporal a world of pain, Mattis walked in at that moment, in his duty uniform.

Krulak: “Jim, it’s *Christmas Day*. What are you doing here?
Mattis: “well, the young man who was on the roster for today has a young family. I thought he should spend Christmas Day with them, so I put myself down for the Christmas Day shift instead.”
Mattis cared about those under his command, & he led by actions that showed that, not just with fine words & with orders.

The same is true of Krulak.

After all, it took *both* of them to be there at an obscure guardpost one Christmas Day to know this moment happened at all.

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More from @ajcdeane

Alex Deane Profile picture
22 Aug
#deanehistory 94. Kilts.

Bureaucratic obfuscation in the face of instructions one dislikes is hardly new or novel. Indeed, it is written upon the heart of the modern civil service, it seems.

Likewise, a spot of the old polite passive aggressive is hardly unusual.
But I still enjoy the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders’ rearguard action against plain & direct orders from the War Office.

War Office: active units are not to wear kilts.

QOCH: surely this is sent to us by mistake?
This alone is often enough to see off the disliked instruction as the other side has moved on to other things.

Not in this case.

WO: nope, no mistake. You’re not to wear kilts.

QOCH: very good. What should we wear? We’re on deployment you know, can’t just pop to the shops.
Read 5 tweets
Alex Deane Profile picture
20 May
#Deanehistory 90. Today is “International Clinical Trials Day.” That which might once have felt rather obscure feels vital & relevant, so here’s the story of James Lind, the British naval surgeon who pioneered the 1st clinical trials on board HMS Salisbury on 20 May 1747.
In those times, scurvy was a huge threat for navies. Indeed, it caused more deaths amongst British sailors than French and Spanish forces combined. We now know that scurvy is caused by vitamin C deficiency, but vitamins were then unknown.
Lind thought scurvy was caused by “putrefaction of the body” and that that could potentially be cured through the introduction of acids. He therefore recruited a dozen men with scurvy for a “fair test.”
(his informed consent process would… not satisfy modern day requirements.)
Read 10 tweets
Alex Deane Profile picture
18 May
#deanehistory 89. Hat tip – my late father, Paul Deane.

This is the story of a great son of Suffolk, Philip Broke, and of his ship, the Shannon.
In 1812 Britain was at war with the United States. Contrary to expectations, the Americans were thumping the Royal Navy at every turn. Bigger ships, heavier guns, larger crews.

Broke was to change things.
The crew of the Shannon drilled tirelessly. Their captain set them challenge after challenge. Gunnery practice. Swordplay. Scenarios: imagine we are being attacked in such and such a way – what do we do? Fire the guns blindfolded, with instructions on your target given orally.
Read 30 tweets
Alex Deane Profile picture
17 May
#deanehistory 88 – hat tip @DrBrexit.

Napoleon won the War of the Fourth Coalition, but he lost the celebration after.
Lest this seem obscure, I remind you of the most dangerous enemy faced by Monty Python’s King Arthur, the Legendary Black Beast of Arrrghhh, against which, after heavy losses, the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch had to be deployed.
It was like this. The Treaty had been signed. Success was affirmed. His Chief of Staff, Alexandre Berthier, was confronted with the typical gift challenge – what to get the Emperor who has everything?

Well, he thought, Napoleon does like to hunt.
Read 9 tweets
Alex Deane Profile picture
9 May
#deanehistory 84. With grateful thanks to @ConradOliveira who really has gone above and beyond on the research for this one.

This is the story of Hardit Singh Malik, “the Flying Sikh.”
Malik was born in the Punjab at the end of the 19th Century, into a wealthy family. His passion for flight developed early, competing with flying kites with cords coated in powdered glass, which one used to cut up one’s rival’s kites. Don’t say you didn’t learn something today.
He was schooled in the UK, and went up to Balliol not long before the war. Blues in cricket and golf followed, and he was playing for Sussex against Kent on the day war with Germany was declared. He tried to join up – but was told he was the wrong colour.
Read 20 tweets
Alex Deane Profile picture
21 Apr
Deanehistory 73. Hat tip @TraderNeo1

This is the story of Eugene Lazowski’s private war.

Lazowski was a doctor in German-occupied Poland – and a very brave one. He escaped a Prisoner of War camp and returned to his home town of Rozwadów to work for the Polish Red Cross.
The garden of his house was directly against the fence that enclosed the Jewish ghetto. Whilst Polish doctors were absolutely not allowed to treat the Jews, he knew that his duty to these most vulnerable people in awful conditions meant that he should somehow try.
A system emerged. When a prisoner of the ghetto became unwell, a rag would be tied to Lazowski’s fence. Remarkably, he would then break INTO the ghetto under cover of darkness, taking medicine to those who needed it & treating patients in rudimentary, moving medical facilities.
Read 15 tweets

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