Some mavericks work ‘inside the box’

Capt. Jonathan Pan / 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division

We are a society that reveres rebellious, dissenting spirits. The media mirrors our admiration for mavericks — especially maverick Soldiers.

A willingness to break the rules and think “outside the box” implies strong leadership and seems to inevitably bring success in combat. But before looking “outside the box,” you’d better have tried everything inside it. Successes are often found within the boundaries of conventions.

No one knows more about stability operations in Afghanistan, inside or out, than Lt. Col. Patrick L. Gaydon, commander of the Brigade Special Troops Battalion of the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. His is a story too boring to make the evening news. But it’s a story about a quiet professional helping the counterinsurgency fight.

Gaydon steadfastly refuses to take the easy path and break rules, even if he knows he can. He and his battalion accomplish missions by working within the boundaries of existing rules and regulations. If the constraints don’t make sense, he seeks to change rather than ignore them. Respected among his men for his steadfastness, he is the unwavering moral compass for the battalion.

“(Lieutenant) Col. Gaydon is the only person who ground-guides his vehicle even for a hundred meters,” 1st Lt. Amador Jaime, a platoon leader in the BSTB, once said to me. “He thinks it’s not important, but little things like that make my men motivated to do the right things.” He sets an example for his Soldiers in many ways, but one that stands out is his perseverance to become a subject-matter expert in the key parts of the mission.

Gaydon spends hours reading books like “The Bear Went over the Mountain,” which describes Soviet combat tactics employed in the same battle space in Afghanistan that 5th Brigade now occupies, and unconventional books like “Outliers,” which argues that excellence is achieved through a tide of advantages, practice and luck. Through his sheer perseverance and using his spare time studying, he has made himself knowledgeable about topics as varied as dams, corruption and value chains — which he also studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Executive Education Program.

His attributes were apparent to the commander of 5th Bde., Col. Harry D. Tunnell, who entrusted Gaydon as a promotable major to take command of his largest battalion, the 900-strong BSTB. Gaydon also oversees the Governance, Reconstruction, and Development Fusion Cell, which acts as a mini-Provincial Reconstruction Team.

Tunnell regards the cell as crucial to the brigade’s success in Afghanistan, recently saying he considered it more important than “a battalion’s worth combat power.”

Gaydon credits Tunnell’s ability to “clearly visualize (the limits of) our battle space,” beyond the reach of most development resources by establishing a fusion cell that enabled the brigade to push resources out to the people in those areas. As a result of the vision of those two officers, the districts of Arghandab, Maiwand and Spin Boldak are scenes of substantial development inside what Gaydon calls “the persistent security bubble that U.S. forces are providing with our Afghan National Security Forces partners.”

Many consider Col. Tunnell uncon-ventional, too. He is anything but. Empowering competent officers in positions of authority regardless of rank, branch or age, and sharing the dangers of the common Soldier by frequently visiting the remote combat outposts might make him creative, even visionary — but hardly unorthodox. Once, he described the realities of the Afghan war from the Soldier’s perspective during a night patrol he joined, in which “the platoon was just trying to stay alive.”

Gaydon and Tunnell are models of common sense, independent thinking, and concern for their Soldiers above all. These are two very conventional officers who are quietly winning a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.

The Maverick Fallacy is a path that many bold men want to take. But I wish there were more men taking the road not taken.