Bullets Flyin', Soldiers Lyin'

Fred Galvin enlisted in the Marine Corps as a 17-year-old and quickly deployed to combat in the Persian Gulf. A few years later, he commissioned as a Marine officer and served with elite infantry, reconnaissance, and force reconnaissance units. In early 2007, Major Galvin deployed to eastern Afghanistan to lead the first Marine Special Operations (MARSOC) task force in combat.

Galvin and co-author Sal Manna tell the full story in their new book, A Few Bad Men (Post Hill Press, 2022). What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.  

I’d never experienced anything so quickly. The suicide IED detonated at 9 o’clock in the morning, and I reported the event up my chain of command, through my Marine Corps liaison who I had not worked with prior to that point. So, after aborting the mission, we got back to Jalalabad and my mind was focused on taking care of our vehicles and doing a patrol debrief with the Marines. Standard stuff. As with any patrol, I wanted to gather from the Marines what everyone had seen so that I could properly assess the situation and answer questions from higher levels of command. I had been in the Marine Corps for 20 years with numerous combat deployments, so I wasn’t excited or freaking out about the tactical situation we had just come through. I was working the problem; I wanted to “feed the beast,” as they say. But I was shocked the news media had already gotten in front of our work, in front of my report, and was putting out a story that mischaracterized tactical events on the ground. I was doing my diligence to gather facts and perspectives from my Marines on the ground, but the media story was traveling much faster. Egged on by these reports, my higher command wanted information immediately to route to CJSOTF, which was understandable. Before I could speak, we were being painted as butchers. The military leadership went along with this narrative, opinions were formed about us, and the rest spiraled.   

Later that evening, you sent an email to mentors in the Marine Corps, attempting to explain what was happening, how the media narrative had corrupted perceptions of events on the ground. Though the content was harmless, the email made its way around MARSOC like a demon pinball, eventually landing with your commanding officer back in North Carolina. You wrote: “What riled [General] Hejlik was that I had sent an email outside my chain of command. He was determined to teach me a lesson about who was in charge.” You noticed senior military officers were turning against you, is that right?

Yes. There are people in my life to whom I owe a lot. One of them is not my earthly father—I went the opposite direction of my father. But I owe a lot to my coaches in sports, the Jesuits, and my sensei in martial arts. I owe a lot to many, many senior Marines, too. The book is accurately titled A Few Bad Men because most of the Marines I worked with were great people, and I looked up to them and still do. But there’s a few bad men in the mix, and I encountered some of them through this incident in Afghanistan. I stand by everything I said in the book and throughout the inquiry. Everyone who threw us under the bus got promoted and saw their careers enhanced after this incident.

I had been a Force Recon Marine for many years, with a lot of combat experience. But when I walked into the courtroom building, I saw [my Marines’] pictures on the wall. The court of inquiry is supposed to be fair and impartial; it’s supposed to be an effort at factfinding. Walking into that building, though, I saw all our names and faces up on the wall as if we were the targets of an operation. It was as if they had built a link analysis diagram that targeted the Marines I led in Afghanistan. And so, I felt that fellow servicemen and servicewomen were coming after us for having done our job in combat and under fire. I felt coerced and threatened in a way I had never experienced before. Their minds were already made up and there would be no factfinding. Just look at the numbers. They had 45 investigators and four prosecutors assigned to our case. Marine Corps Forces Central Command never put these kinds of resources on the Haditha case from 2005 or other cases where there were stronger allegations of criminal behavior.

Bottom line: I knew we were being hunted and we didn’t stand a chance.

Yes, a totally different feeling. Mission prep for combat started very early for me. Even before going into Iraq, when I was doing VBSS missions as a reconnaissance Marine, I learned there was nowhere to run or hide, that turning my body would only present a broader target for the enemy to engage. What I’m saying is that I had been trained in all the tactics; I knew how to respond to a combat situation. I’d faced violence and seen death firsthand, so I knew how to prep long before entering theater. I remember looking at pictures of friends with whom I’d gone through Infantry Officer Course, Marines who’d been shot in the head or blown to pieces on missions. After studying enough of these ambushes, you start to realize that the outcome has very little to do with your combat preparation or readiness. There’s always an element of the supernatural, of chance. You can be the most well-prepared Marine or well-prepared unit to deploy to combat, and still lose in a gunfight or completely random IED strike. It’s a game of chance, in many ways. At some point I realized God protected us, and so I did pray. Going into court was a different experience. There’s no support and no way to prepare for what’s to come. I felt abandoned by other Marines and hunted by the media and the military. It was the feeling of being alone and lost. I didn’t have the Hornets or Harriers or AC-130 gunships to protect me. I was sort of like Peter Pan, living in Never-Never land, thinking the Marine Corps would always be good to me. I had to wake up. The investigators and prosecutors were out to destroy us. I did everything I could to defend myself and my Marines. I prayed constantly.

And I did get some assistance from [former Marine] Ilario Pantano. I got help from Luke McConnell. I also spent a lot of time trying to stay engaged, screening attorneys and looking for the right person to represent our case. Someone advised me: “You need a good attorney, but probably not the attorneys who defend really high-profile cases because of the perception.” That turned out to be good advice.

I was trying to do whatever I had to do. My sister was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and that led me back to Kansas City, where I grew up. I was doing like a Marine Corps officer should—I was trying to improve my position. I was applying to jobs all over the country – 700 jobs – and not getting anything. So, I enrolled in the MBA program at University of Missouri—Kansas City and a friend told me about these cash machines. He was a friend and classmate from the Infantry Officer Course. He started an indoor ATM machine business, the kind of machines you bolt into the ground. I investigated that model, but it was already proliferated. So, as I started looking into the issue I learned about the “blue ocean” strategy, and how a business owner must have a differentiator that nobody else can replicate. Instead of putting these machines all over the place, “I’ll put these machines into a denied area,” I thought. The kinds of places where I can get in and get out.

So, I went on the Jackson County website and did imagery analysis, looking at places where people were using cash, where crime was higher than normal, and then I’d go into the location and do a little ground reconnaissance. When I went into that area, if I got the feeling of “hey, I could be killed in this area,” then I’d mark it down and look at putting an ATM machine there. I knew that feeling well and so it was a pretty good indicator of the type of location I wanted to be my differentiator in the market. I’d install these commercial-grade ATM machines into these locations to serve customers in underserved areas. It was very dangerous—to install, service, and maintain the machines. After about four years I investigated selling the business through my broker. The machines were making a ton of money because it was the only place for people to access cash anytime in 24 hours, but the locations spooked potential buyers who didn’t want to take the physical risk, the very high risk of being killed. It was the risk that began to weigh heavily on my mind. I started to think what it would be like if people were hunting me. Things can happen; the barrel is in your face, and you’re caught in your sleep and can’t do anything about it. I remember sitting at my kitchen table, praying to God because I didn’t want to become a gang statistic, but I had to sell the business. Then I got a call from a Marine friend who pointed me to a job in Hawaii, which I applied for and got offered. Eventually, competitors came to me unsolicited and bought me out.

The organization I loved so much was not there to help me, and I’m not the only one. There’s a problem in the military justice system. I didn’t come to find out the extent of the problem until I got to spend some time with former North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones. He fought to the death for us, literally. He used to say: “Major Galvin, if this is the last thing I do!” He said that repeatedly, and he died after the letter was released in 2019, a letter that cleared us of wrongdoing. He dealt with a lot of military cases. His district included Cherry Point and New River. His staff told me the Marine Corps was the worst at seeing that justice was done in its internal cases. Walter Jones was a patriot. He respected the military and especially the young men and women who serve. He was a Democrat who became a Republican. He was a Protestant who became a Catholic. Nobody had talked to Jones or lobbied him to act on our behalf, but he smelled something was wrong and took a stand. He saw there were very senior military officers condemning a group of Marines, people saying our behavior in combat was a “stain” on their honor. Can you believe the Commandant of the Marine Corps condemned us? When Walter Jones took a stand on the floor of the House of Representatives, that’s when things started to change. It shouldn’t be that way for anyone else.

Because we need to take a hard look at the military and its leadership. We are promoting people who are incompetent or unethical or both. Yes, I’m talking about our general officers. Young sailors, soldiers, airmen, and Marines are led by senior commanders who have a value system that is entirely different than the man in the arena. As my story demonstrates, these leaders want professional destruction of lower-level guys, if it suits their political agenda. Right now, there are senior Marine Corps officers trying to quash my story and stamp out lower-level people who ran afoul of them. As a start, I’d recommend at least a 360-degree evaluation as part of the promotion process. This would help to root out toxic leaders and ensure we’re promoting those who are committed to their Marines and mission accomplishment. The caliber of leadership is directly correlated to the level of morale, which is low across the board. 

John Waters is a writer in Nebraska.