Agreed - excellent read.
Mattis’ gripe appears to have been that the design of the operation was such that if Col. Dowdy’s force arrived late, other US forces might have been endangered. By not blowing through resistance, probably with higher casualties to his men, Dowdy might have endangered men not under his command. In actuality, events did not go that way, but Mattis knew they could have...
I think you hit the nail on the head...although no one actually says it in that way.
COL Dowdy, in my mind, weighed the body count of those he commanded, versus the body count of those he did not, and tried to compromise.
That compromise obviously slowed his response and brought him into conflict with GEN Mattis.
COL Dowdy is a man of honor, no doubt, and he accomplished his mission, however, he sacrificed the trust of his commander.
I have a good friend that can attest to the heartache of GEN Mattis in his decision to relieve COL Dowdy, but he has told me that GEN Mattis had the fortitude of character to do what was necessary, and he felt that he could not trust COL Dowdy to repeat himself had the conflict continued.
Even without the relief, COL Dowdy, statistically, would not have gotten a star and GEN Mattis was aware of that and it probably colored his decision a bit.
By all accounts, GEN Mattis is a hard-assed son of a bitch, but he is a beloved hard-assed son of a bitch, as his officers and men know that anything he orders of them, he is prepared and willing to do right there beside them.
I in no way speak for anything that may have occurred...but I'm very much aware of the decisions that a man like GEN Mattis must make.
I've studied GEN George S. Patton extensively and if it were possible for him to be reincarnated...then GEN Mattis is the closet thing to that, but without the overbearing sense of destiny and propensity for grandeur that Patton had.
Just my two cents.
And worth at least one of them.