As Told By: Brig Gen Leon W Goodson, USAF (Retired)
I would like to tell a story to the grandchildren. Your Grandpa was a hero to me well before I even met him. This story is one of for sure dozens, perhaps even hundreds of such stories that illuminate the kind of man your Grandpa was: a true intellectual giant who was gracious, kind and extremely helpful to everybody. This one is about his being kind and generous and helpful to Captains and Lieutenants – to me and three others – over thirty years ago. Two of the four are here today.
Setting: it’s late 1968 and early 1969. I am a Captain, just back from a tour in Vietnam, in the Pentagon, and wishing I were someplace else flying fighter airplanes. There’s a new guy in charge of SA – Maj Gen Glen Kent who is tearing through the organization, destroying everyone’s easy comfort level saying we had to focus on the "Grand Strategy" – by which he meant the rational trades of the major force elements at the highest levels, fighters for airlift, munitions for shelters, that sort of thing – the sort of thing that nobody had the slightest clue about how to treat with analysis.
I was the lowest ranking guy in the outfit so I was ultimately stuck with the project to work out how this could be done. They went out and found me three really bright, fresh lieutenants one of whom is here today, and we went to work – shot through with confidence that no practical mathematical problem existed that could withstand determined assault, so long as that assault was mounted with sufficient enthusiasm.
Our confidence was wildly misplaced. Worked very enthusiastically for 8 to 10 months to no avail. Gave up. Gen Kent wouldn’t let us go – instead, just turned up the heat. Invited us to, or sent us off to regular and painful meetings in which our shortcomings were specified in detail. Now we are in real trouble.
In desperation, we decided to research the literature. Most impenetrable part of the problem is treated in principle by an arcane discipline called game theory. We found that in the entire world at that time, there were only two people who had a very deep understanding of it, and had actually written books on the subject. One book was written by Mel Dresher at the Rand Corporation fundamentally for novices, which fit us pretty well. It had lots of drawings and pictures, so we devoured his stuff, then visited him in Santa Monica, the result of all of which was that we still could not work the problem – wasn’t enough depth, and the real world problem had far too many moving parts for a direct application.
So we reluctantly turned to this other book that really had the beef in it. Written by a fellow named Clayton Thomas. We tried to get our minds around it, but that required some considerable stretching. We understood more, but not enough to actually implement any workable solution. Still stumped. What would happen, we wondered, if we could find this Clayton Thomas – this person who clearly had an intellect sufficiently gigantic that he could completely surround and tame a subject that for most of us just made our heads hurt for trying to understand it! Could he help us? Could he give us some shortcuts? Indeed, would such a man even talk to us if we could find him? We did find him – in the Pentagon no less, in another organization known as the Office of Operations Analysis. We started to put together our game plan in case he would see us – what would we ask him, what was the most important thing to find out if he didn’t have much time for us, and so on.
Yes, I know. Today, such trepidation seems absolutely ludicrous to us who knew the least thing about what Clayton was like, but remember that we didn’t know him yet. All we knew was that for the last 10 months we had been faced with this high, thick, steel reinforced concrete wall that we’ve been trying to make fall down by enthusiastically bashing our heads into it – and it’s not budging. And then we look up and way up there we see there’s a guy standing on top of the wall.
In these circumstances it is far from an automatic given that the guy on top of the wall would toss down a line and haul you up just so you could be up there where he is. Knowing it was your grandpa, you know of course that he did toss us a line, and did haul us up, and he always would. He was kind and gracious, overly generous with his time, and in the end very helpful to a Captain and three Lieutenants in grave distress.
Those who have worked with Clayton also know of course that he always worked things around so you thought you actually had something to do with getting on top of the wall. Hence, he would never present us with a pre-packaged, ready made solution, even if he had one handy, but rather would provide advice which would put you on a track to get your own mind around it. The line that he tossed us was advice on how to think logically about the problem – that the solution would not likely rest on a single mathematical technique, but most likely on a combination of several, and perhaps we might ought to investigate how they might be combined to generate some form of approximate solution. And that did work. Within a short time, the light had dawned, we had worked out an approximate scheme, it was wildly successful – led to our giving briefings on the subject throughout our own government and to all the Defense ministries in all the NATO Capitals. Derivatives of those methods are still being used quite successfully today.
That success allowed me to go out and fly airplanes again. When I returned to head AF/SA in 1983, there was Clayton who had moved to SA, now he has even more walls that he has somehow got to the top of, and is still throwing down lines and hauling people up after him. As I was starting home at the end of the day, I would often wander by Clayton’s office, and almost always finding him there, would inquire about whether it might be a good thing if he went home soon. And he would smile that smile of his and say "Yes, that he’d be doing that soon." Finally, it dawned on me what he was doing. He was assuring that no Captain or Lieutenant, or Major or Colonel or General in need of a line to haul him up on top of some insurmountable wall would wander by and find him not there. And he was always there for all of them.
Clayton Thomas has already provided a legacy to several generations – a legacy that will continue to live at least until we no longer find it necessary to study war, and in the most important aspects, beyond even that. The mere thought of making such a claim for himself would of course horrify Clayton. So, on behalf of those of us who have struggled with repeated failures to reach the places he has long since been, I will make that claim on his behalf. We will have so very few opportunities to place others in his league.