Armed Forces: The Thinking Animal

At 5 ft. 4| in., he was plainly too diminutive to meet the Navy's minimum height requirement (5 ft. 6 in.). So Victor Krulak persuaded a buddy to hit him on the head in hopes of raising a bump big enough to narrow the stature gap. That ploy failed, so—bloody but unbowed—Krulak petitioned and won the right to join the U.S. Marines as the shortest man in the corps. His Annapolis instructors also rated him low—among the bottom 10% of the class of '34 in military aptitude.

In time, Marines learned to look up to Krulak, whose persnickety preciseness had won him the mocking sobriquet of "The Brute" from Naval Academy classmates. Marines found the nickname appropriate. Merciless with incompetents, Krulak attracted feral loyalty as well as hatred. Early in his career he showed that there was nothing undersized about his brain. A specialist in the "dirty tricks" of unconventional warfare, he used hell-raising tactics on Choiseul Island during World War II to such advantage that the Japanese believed Krulak's Marine paratrooper battalion was a full division. At 43, he became the corps' youngest brigadier general.

Krulak was taken off Choiseul in 1943 aboard a PT boat skippered by a young Navy lieutenant named John F. Kennedy. Two decades later, President Kennedy chose Krulak as a special adviser on guerrilla war in Viet Nam. The leatherneck's rosy report, based on a 1963 inspection trip, contrasted with a State Department official's gloomy prognosis shortly before President Ngo Dinh Diem's assassination. "Were you two gentlemen," asked Kennedy, "in the same country?"

In 1964, as a lieutenant general, Krulak was given command of Fleet Marine Forces Pacific. His huge bailiwick extended from El Toro, Calif., to Khe Sanh, with overall responsibility for 80,000 Marines fighting in Viet Nam. Krulak helped to mold tactics for a new type of war, combining hard fighting with civic action among the Vietnamese that only North Viet Nam's massive infusion of regular troops could nullify.

Last week cannons at Kaneohe Ma rine Air Station on Hawaii thundered a 15-gun farewell to the Brute, now 55, who was calling it quits after 34 years. A Distinguished Service Medal, Krulak's second, was added to the rainbow of ribbons on his chest. Watching were Krulak's three sons—a Navy chaplain and two Marine officers who have all served in Viet Nam. Between them, the Krulaks have won 49 medals.

Krulak had vowed to retire if he failed to win his fourth star by becoming Marine commandant, a job that went last year to Assistant Commandant Leonard F. Chapman. "I'm going to sit and inspect my fingernails for a while," says Krulak of his plans. "What I decide to do will be based on one thing: it must involve some opportunity to do something for my country."