Corams book understates the importance of Gray.  While Col Wyly was doing a lot of theoretical development, being the prophet in the wilderness, mentoring new diciples, Gray was when at various command levels doing the real world application.  As a divsion commander he released a lot of frustrated officers to accomplish a higher level of training, and showed many more that there was more than drilling by the book.  By knowing when to keep his mouth shut and exactly when to speak Gray made in to the Commadants office where he could institutionalize the changes Wyly proposed.  I suspect Gray worked hard to position a number of like minded generals for a shot a the commadants office.  Krulak certainly was of the same mold as Gray & following him to CMC four years later helped lock in Grays changes, then take them a step further.  The other Commadants of the last 20 year have been less spectacular personalities than Gray and Krulak but I think several other have helped carry the USMC into the 21st Century. 

  Strongly agree.  I have statd it before and wil stae it again, in my opinion General Gray saved the Marine Corps from becoming just a small version of the Army and paved the way for those that followed him. 

I dont think that is a accurate description of Col Wyly but Gray definitely made the beast behave as he wanted.  Exactly how that happend is not clear to me & deserves further study.

One Marine officer remarked, rather cruelly, that Wyly was the rodeo clown who distracted the bull while Gray wrestled it down.

 

Between operations in Al Anbar and  Tal Afar which took place under the latitude of a commanders intent for a given tactical Area of Operations for which he was responsible, were accomplished in a manner that would latter be reminiscent of the Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP) to be later associated with the SURGE. In these operations the commander had the discretion of allowing his forces to operate in a manner consistent with his tactical goals, it is not up to his discretion to rewrite his strategic guide lines.  The TTP's utilized generally under the surge could not be implemented generally until there was a commander that was amenable to these TTP's.  As stated previously when given discretion to follow there own judgment to achieve a specific operational (but limited) objectives both the Army and Marine Corps did so in a manner that reflected best Military practices. 

IMHO