10
Loading video...
By Kylie McCoy
Vice President, Strategic Marketing
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Sergeant Major Alford L. McMichael had just come in from his morning run in 1999 when his boss, a three-star general, told him: “Sergeant Major, you’re going to be getting a call from General Jones. Go to the office and wait.” He took a shower instead and missed the call.
His boss sent him back and told him not to move. When the phone rang again, the voice on the line said: “Sergeant Major, this is Jim Jones. How would you like to be the 14th sergeant major of the Marine Corps?” McMichael said yes. It is the dream of every enlisted Marine, he said, to one day become the service’s senior enlisted Marine.
General James L. Jones had just received his nomination as the 32nd commandant of the Marine Corps. He had interviewed five candidates and called two or three back. He now calls choosing McMichael one of the best moves he ever made.
Read More on News
Jones and McMichael spoke with Newsweek in Washington on Tuesday, the Marine Corps’ 251st birthday and the eve of Veterans Day. The two retired Marines described how they used their time at the top to hear from Marines further down the ranks, bringing younger noncommissioned officers (NCOs) to Washington to say what needed fixing. Changes that grow from those Marines’ ideas, Jones said, outlast any commandant.
...
Jones learned early how much officers depend on enlisted Marines. In October 1967, he took over a rifle platoon in Vietnam from a wounded officer, and he said he learned a lot from its staff sergeant and NCOs.
“Enlisted Marines train all the officers,” he said.
Leaders can sometimes fool their superiors, he added, but never the troops.
McMichael saw his own job as “the bridge that brings the message from the lowest level to the highest level.” That bridge already ran through Washington, where senior enlisted leaders met for a weeklong symposium. He and Jones wanted it to reach further.
Related Story
What Is Operation Green Light? What To Know About Veterans Day 2026
With the commandant’s backing, McMichael held a symposium for younger NCOs. He wanted them to know that their leaders had walked in their footsteps and wanted to make life better for them and for the Marines who would follow.
When the younger Marines saw that the offer was sincere, he said, they raised more problems the Corps could have fixed long ago than he had heard in three years of working with his fellow sergeants major.
“It wasn’t hard to get them to believe in it,” he said, “because I was already believing in them.”
McMichael said the issues he brought to Jones as sergeant major included the Exceptional Family Member Program, housing, a more affordable uniform and education for Marines in uniform. None of it sounds like tanks or artillery, he said, “but we understood that if you take care of the things that make them tick, the clock would never stop ticking.”
Jones saw a practical reason to listen. A commandant, he said, can order everyone to move 500 feet to the right, and the whole Marine Corps will shift.
“But if that’s not a good idea, the day you leave office, they will stop doing that because it makes no sense,” he said. “So if you want things to last longer than your term in office, it seems to me that it’s logical to solicit the big ideas from what other people think before you make it a mandate.”
The relationship between officers and enlisted Marines that Jones saw at Camp Lejeune, which both men visited the week before the interview, was the one he remembered. The gap between the troops and the generals there was very narrow, he said, and enlisted Marines gave straight answers when generals asked them questions.
The two also went to tell commanders about Veterans Strong, a program both men work with. The idea came out of NewDay USA, a lender that puts veterans into homes and on whose advisory board both men sit. Jones described Veterans Strong as an effort to map what veterans need throughout their lives. A 22-year-old veteran needs different things than a 58-year-old one, he said.
McMichael sees the program as a way to go beyond a thank-you, which he said can come across as “just lip service.” Better, he said, is helping veterans see that their service comes with benefits they can use to build savings, create credit and seek higher education. He described the goal as a hand up, not a handout.
It is not the first time the two have worked together beyond the Marine Corps. In January 2003, six months before his tour as commandant would have ended, Jones left to become NATO’s supreme allied commander. It was the first time a Marine held the job.
Jones said the alliance was taking in former Warsaw Pact countries whose militaries did not value noncommissioned officers the way Western nations did. NATO had 19 members when he arrived and 26 when he left, he said. It had no senior enlisted adviser.
Before McMichael could retire, Jones called again and asked him to come to Belgium to fill the new post. McMichael said there was no hesitation. He has always called the two of them Batman and Robin, with himself as Robin.
For the rest of his time on active duty, Jones said, McMichael built a network of senior enlisted leaders across the alliance, and its members took up the idea willingly. Jones called the work transformational.
Two phone calls from Jones, McMichael said, changed his life. He considers himself fortunate for both. Before anyone can lead, he said, they have to learn to follow.
“I’ve had great leadership to teach me both,” he said.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines