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1 day ago8 min read

“What Should I be Reading?”: Professional Reading for Company Commanders by Lieutenant Colonel Brendan McBreen


Source: Marine Corps Times (https://shorturl.at/6ySvz)

Editor’s Note: In 2015, “Matthew,” an infantry captain serving at The Basic School (TBS), emailed retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Brendan McBreen about what books he should read in preparation for company command. What follows is LtCol McBreen’s response. 


To enhance his recommendations, we’ve included two addenda:


  1. Thematic Book Recommendations: LtCol McBreen’s suggestions organized by theme, complete with hyperlinks for ease of access.


  2. Additional Single-Topic Book Lists: Curated lists from Warfighting Society members Major Zach Schwartz, Major Geoff Ball, Major Matthew Tweedy, and our own Damien O’Connell.


We hope these additional resources enrich LtCol McBreen’s stellar guidance and provide a broader foundation for professional development.

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Email: Reading Lists for Company Commanders


Matthew:


Thanks for the email. “What are you reading?” is always the right question for professionals. Marine leaders need to recommend books, discuss insights, and encourage each other in the study of war.


When someone asks me, “What should I be reading?” I’ve got two answers:


1. Don’t be a chump. You can’t learn to lead from a book. Run more, read less. Every wasted hour reading is one less hour you could be in the gym. Talk to your senior officers. Do you think they got promoted by reading books? No, sir. They were out leading Marines. Even the dumbest grunts know how to get promoted. The best path to recognition and responsibility in this organization is face-to-face leadership. And PT. And chewing tobacco.


2. Read everything. Learn war. Learn warfighting. Consume the history of conflict—nations, armies, leaders, and individuals. Gain an understanding of how we have fought and how we will fight in the future. Know your profession. Study. Share important books. Discuss how other fighting organizations have solved your same problems. Build teamwork and a strong unit through common understanding. When you read, surge on one subject. I recommend selecting a single theme at a single level of responsibility, and reading at least three books in parallel. When you study a battle or a campaign, read three books from three different perspectives.


I tend to value the credibility of authors who were actually there (Moore, Webb), over interviewers (S.L.A. Marshall, Ambrose), or theorists. But historians often have valuable context and insights that serving officers lack. And many times, fiction can be just as valuable as history. I try to broaden my perspective and read about other armies to compare them to the Marine Corps. When I select a battle, I try to keep my focus as narrow as possible to get at the guts—the ground truth of one event. I follow one leader from one unit, who makes one decision at one point in time. Specificity is the key to understanding a complex event.


If I were a TBS instructor preparing for infantry company command, I would write a draft Company SOP and then focus my professional reading on the ruthless pursuit of tactical excellence.


a. Theme & Level: Tactical Procedures at the Infantry Company Command Level.


Read Hunger Hill and Death Ground (Bolger), Infantry Attacks (Rommel), The Defense of Hill 781 (McDonough), The Defence of Duffer’s Drift (Swinton), The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Emma Gees (Nette), and Small Unit Action in Vietnam (West). Incoming company commanders need books with diagrams, decisions, discussions, and illustrative orders. Books of tactical problems—with examples of estimating the enemy situation. Books that talk about defilade and the importance of keeping dirt between you and the enemy. In addition to our infantry manuals, we should have dozens of these types of how-to books. Find more.


b. Theme & Level: Training Practices at the Infantry Company Command Level.


Read Commonsense Training (Collins). But this is old—1979. There are too few books on how to train an infantry company and no worthwhile doctrinal pubs. I recommend reading about how the U.S. Army reinvented training after Vietnam. Read The Secret of Future Victories (Gorman), Selected Papers of General William E. Depuy (Swain), and Changing an Army (Brownlee and Mullen). Depuy is a marvel. He spent his entire career focused on tactical excellence and improving training.


c. Theme & Level: Infantry Companies in Combat at the Company Command Level.


Read Pegasus Bridge and Band of Brothers (Ambrose), The 13th Valley (DelVecchio), Fields of Fire (Webb), Company Commander (MacDonald), We Were Soldiers Once (Moore and Galloway), Panzer Commander (von Luck), and Matterhorn (Marlantes). The officers who led these units are your peers and your ancestors. Extract the most from their hard-won insights.


d. Theme & Level: How to Build a Professional Army at the Institutional Level.


Read The Army and Vietnam (Krepinevich), Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Murray and Millett), The Seeds of Disaster and The Breaking Point (Doughty), An Army at Dawn (Atkinson), German Military Effectiveness (Murray), A Historical Perspective on Light Infantry (McMichael), and On Infantry (English and Gudmundsson). If we add Stormtroop Tactics (Gudmundsson), then three of these titles are from Bill Lind’s seven-book canon. Institutional analyses may be outside the scope of company command, but understanding how an army is built helps you understand your role.


e. Theme & Level: One Battle at the Infantry Battalion Level.


Read three books on a single battle. For the 1982 Battle of Goose Green, read Not Mentioned in Despatches (Fitz-Gibbon), Goose Green: A Battle is Fought to Be Won (Adkins), and The Battle for the Falklands (Hastings and Jenkins). Fitz-Gibbon, a British paratrooper who fought at Goose Green, contradicts much of the official account and is particularly critical of the British Army’s stilted orders process that did not work in combat.


f. Theme & Level: One Campaign from the General to Private level.

Read three books, at three levels, to understand one campaign. For the Burma Campaign, read Defeat Into Victory (Slim), The Road Past Mandalay (Masters), and Quartered Safe Out Here (Fraser). Slim’s book is the best general officer account of World War II. Both Masters and Fraser became best-selling novelists after the war, so their wartime memoirs—Masters at the brigade level, Fraser at the squad level—are classics. Three winning books, at three levels, on a single theme.


g. Theme & Level: Political-Military Relations – Civilian Leadership of Military Operations at the National Level.


Read Supreme Command (Cohen), Churchill’s Generals (Keegan), and Dereliction of Duty (McMaster). Reading these, you learn to sympathize with civilian leaders who are frustrated by blinkered generals.


You get the idea. Read triples. Read a lot. I’ve read all these books and 500 more. Moving forward, I would shift to less World War II and more Iraq and Afghanistan. And we didn’t even start on counterinsurgency and small wars—Malaya (The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya), Vietnam (Nagl), the Philippine War (Linn), Algeria (Horne), or Korea (Fehrenbach). For the eternal truths of how humans react to the threat of close physical violence, read the classic: Gates of Fire (Pressfield).


If I were you, I’d have all your instructors list their three favorite books on a single theme: “Ruthless Pursuit of Tactical Excellence at the Infantry Company Level.” Then have them add two or three important journal articles, like the “Emma Gees.” Post your list on the wall: “TBS Instructors’ Recommended Reading List on Tactical Excellence.” I’d like to see that.


Thanks for the opportunity to put my thoughts on paper. Have a great weekend!


SF,

B.B.McBreen


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Addendum One: Book Recommendations by Theme


Tactical Procedures at the Infantry Company Command Level


Training Practices at the Infantry Company Command Level


Excellent Infantry Companies in History at the Company Command Level


How to Build a Professional Army at the Institutional Level


The Battle of Goose Green at the Infantry Battalion Level


The Burma War at the General to Private Level


Civilian Leadership of Military Forces at the National Level


Bonus: Counterinsurgency, Small Wars, and Close Combat

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Addendum Two: Additional Recommendations


Major Zachary Schwartz

Theme/Level: Culture and Mindset



Culture eats doctrine for breakfast. Get the culture right, and you will have the best possible foundation for everything your company does in training and in combat. Start with This Kind of War to understand what a strong culture looks like and what it enables warriors to accomplish in the face of horror, confusion, and death. The follow on books get at building your own personal mindset and the mindsets of your leaders to enable a healthy unit culture.


Major Geoff Ball

Theme/Level: Cohesion



I once asked Gen McChrystal what advice he would give 2LT McChrystal today. His response recognized that he had overemphasized training pubs and doctrine at an early age as he pursued tactical mastery (or to avoid embarrassment as a new lieutenant). In retrospect, he realized that philosophy is what actually holds a unit together in tough times. If and when you face a true dilemma, trust and cohesion are likely your only solution. 


Major Matthew Tweedy 

Theme/Level: Fiction



Read from McBreen’s booklist. He gave good reasons. I did, and it helped. You owe it to yourself and those you lead to prepare. Stories teach lessons, and those lessons give you an edge. But don’t chain yourself to a list. Be curious. Read widely. Read fiction - especially the classics that endure. Command isn’t just about tactics; it’s also about culture, tough choices, and understanding people. How you navigate those defines your time in command. Tactics matter, but command demands more. It demands grappling with the human condition. And sometimes, fiction reveals the truth better than history ever can.  


Damien O’Connell

Theme/Level: Detailed Accounts of Small Unit Actions



These works complement McBreen’s “Tactical Procedures at The Infantry Company Command Level” list, putting readers over the shoulders of small unit leaders facing tough tactical situations. The accounts reflect a “cast your net widely” approach, featuring fights from the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Chechnya, and beyond. Infantry in Battle is a classic and should be read and reread. The Army’s operational experience monograph collection is a goldmine and great source for battle studies, decision-forcing cases, tactical decision games, and wargames.

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2 Comments

Scott Cunningham
Scott Cunningham
4 hours ago

As a tanker the #1 book for us was "Maneuver Warfare Handbook" (the original, not the revised edition) by Bill Lind. It gets at the tactical mindset you need as a Combat Arms Officer. I could recommend 25 more, but thats the one single book everyone needs to read.

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Ian Brown
Ian Brown
a day ago

In addition to the many good recommendations above, I would add a list on the topic of “Current and Future War.” A lot of the above recommendations get you through the end of Vietnam or perhaps touch on Desert Storm, but Americans have spent virtually all of the 21st century thus far fighting and dying in places overseas. I’m a big believer in meeting today’s service member in a context they can recognize and understand, and that includes the wars they’ve either participated in or observed since 2001. I also like exploring “what if,” knowing the speculative fiction only takes you so far in terms of its accuracy in predicting the future, but it can allow you to think about…


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