Retired Gen. George B. Crist, a stalwart pioneer in the early days of the modern joint force who helped lead the U.S. military during one of its most demanding times in the Persian Gulf against Iran, died last week at the age of 93.
Crist was the first Marine appointed to lead a combatant command in 1985, specifically U.S. Central Command, then a newly formed element thrust into a tense maritime conflict with Iran — one that loudly echoes in today’s regional crises.
His appointment came amid the broader Iran-Iraq War, which saw U.S. involvement in the form of the “Tanker War” — a tit-for-tat epic in which Iran and Iraq targeted merchant vessels in the Persian Gulf. Under Crist, the U.S. embarked on Operation Earnest Will, which helped protect Kuwaiti-owned tankers from Iranian attacks in the late 1980s.
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Crist passed away in Beaufort, South Carolina, where he and his late wife had a house filled with antiques they collected during his retirement. His son told Military.com that Crist had been suffering from “a series of ailments” over the last year that landed him in hospice. After a recent and final trip to the hospital, Crist elected to go off oxygen and died peacefully.
“I respected it,” retired Marine Col. David Crist, his son and the executive director for the joint history and research office for the Joint Staff, told Military.com in an interview Friday. “He was a man of independence and, like a lot of people, pride.”
Facing intense pressure from Washington, the U.S. military and Iran, Crist was the man in the arena in the 1980s. But during his 36-year career, he also saw conflict in the Korean War, multiple tours in Vietnam, and the Cuban Missile Crisis — he even organized a Caribbean Peace Force during the U.S.-led invasion of Grenada in 1983.
The First Joint Marine General
According to his son, Crist’s lasting impact was his ability to break through years of Marine Corps insularity and pushback from other services to herald a new age of cooperation between the military branches that has lasted for decades.
“I would say his legacy was as the first joint Marine general,” David Crist said. “At the time, there were very, very few Marines who could do that and, as a consequence, he broke down barriers to that.”
At the time, Washington, including the Pentagon, could not ignore the problem of interservice rivalry, which had historical roots throughout many major American conflicts, but reared itself during Vietnam and the invasion of Grenada, and then finally came to a cataclysmic head during the failed attempt to rescue dozens of embassy staff held captive in Tehran in 1980.
The botched rescue, known as Operation Eagle Claw, is remembered as one of the worst military operations in modern history and marred Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency. Still, according to David Crist, there was little appetite for a nascent joint force among some military leaders, but with the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which made sweeping changes to the Pentagon in the wake of operations like Eagle Claw, it was law.
So, when the low-grade conflict with Iran was heating up, Crist was at the helm. But some of the other services, particularly the Navy, were not keen on the idea of having a Marine in charge of their forces. In fact, David Crist said that the stress likely resulted in his father having a heart attack around that time.
“I think it was probably because of the stress of that aspect of it, not the Iranians. It was Washington,” David said of the pressure to lead a joint force. “Today, that’s second nature. We do it all the time. But at the time, it was a massive, big, big deal because now it meant there was a joint commander who would control all the services’ forces.”
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Crist was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1931. The son of a career Navy aviator who was one of the early trailblazers for the service’s new air element, Crist learned from his father’s shortcomings.
David Crist said that his grandfather lacked what is known as military tact, which Gen. Crist saw as something he could improve upon as he rose through the ranks.
“He may think it and then he would figure out how to work around the guy,” David Crist said of his father, “but he wouldn’t be the bull in the china shop.”
Crist attended Villanova University under the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps, commissioning into the Marine Corps as an infantry second lieutenant in 1952. He served during the tail end of the Korean War. David Crist said that his father talked little about Korea, something that is common in veterans of the war, but noted he shared some anecdotes of the cold, the mud and the constant rotating of forces to forward outposts.
As a captain, Crist served as an aide under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and was stationed at the 8th and I Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., in the mid-to-late 1950s. He told his son that Mamie Eisenhower, the president’s wife, would bring food down to the guard posts on cold nights and speak with service members stationed there.
David Crist recalled that anecdote while in Beaufort, South Carolina — where his father passed away — as he stared at a signed photo from President Eisenhower and Mamie.
The aide position, which is known as a career-builder for young officers, gave Crist his first insight into the inner workings of Washington. It would not be his last. While he was a junior officer in D.C., he met his wife Barbara, who died in 2022.
Prior to deploying to Vietnam, Crist graduated from the Advanced Infantry Officers’ School at what was then Fort Benning, Georgia. It was an Army school, and Crist respected the infantry tactics he learned there, his son said, even going on to encourage David to join the Army for its wide-ranging opportunities. It was there he began to understand the benefits of interservice cooperation.
Fall of Saigon to the Kabul Withdrawal
After deploying to the Caribbean during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Crist was assigned to the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, during the war, his son said. MACV was a new element that rose from increased need for military assistance during the war, and Crist was one of the few Marines in its headquarters. He became a “troubleshooter” as part of a small team within the command, his son said.
Like many veterans of that generation, Crist had complex feelings about the war in Vietnam. Like Afghanistan, which has invoked many parallels to the Vietnam War, “there was such a vested personal sacrifice into the conflict,” David Crist said, recalling his father becoming “visibly irate” when watching anti-war protesters and the fall of Saigon.
But “I don’t think he ever would have thought it was probably the investment we should have made,” David Crist said of his father’s recollections of the war. He said that his father recalled traveling with another officer down to the aftermath of an intense firefight near the Mekong Delta. The Army officer he was traveling with took off his own Combat Infantry Badge and pinned it on a captain who was killed in the fight, leaving a lasting impression on Crist.
At 90, Crist watched the fall of Afghanistan, feeling the visceral comparisons to the similar conflict he served in himself.
“He was very much of the view that we were making a mistake by going in and fighting a big insurgency in these countries,” David Crist said of Iraq and Afghanistan. “He used to complain that a lot of his contemporaries from Vietnam were … looking at this entire conflict through their own experience in Vietnam.”
As a lieutenant colonel, Crist served as an aide-de-camp to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Earle Wheeler. While he had served in Washington before, this was Crist’s first foray into the intersection of military and politics, and it came at a time of intense scrutiny on the Department of Defense.
By 1967, the tide of public opinion had turned on Vietnam, when more Americans said it was a mistake to send troops to the country than those who said it was not, according to a Gallup Poll at the time. By mid-1968, a majority of Americans said that it was a mistake to send troops there.
“You’re at that seat of power,” David Crist said of his father’s time as the aide. “You see everything, and back then the front office of the chairman wasn’t as large as it is today,” meaning that Crist took on many responsibilities for a young officer.
David Crist said that his father recalled Wheeler recording nearly every conversation that came into his office.
“That was the introduction of [cover your ass] in Washington, which is what that was for,” he said. “It was so he had a record of everything that was said or said to him, so nobody could change things around.”
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, racial tensions had fueled infighting within barracks across the military. Crist went on to command a battalion at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, during this time, which proved to be a critical leadership experience for him. He deployed again to Vietnam during the 1972 North Vietnamese offensive.
Throughout the rest of his career, Crist took positions that were not highly sought after. At the time, David Crist said, Marine Corps pedigree often saw leaders from the South and who had attended service academies placed in particularly desired jobs. Crist had neither of those qualifications, but his son said he fashioned himself as a tough organization fixer, often coming into a command, swiftly assessing its problems and trimming the fat that caused them.
“A lot of people did not like him,” David Crist said. “Everybody has a description of him” sitting at his desk with reading glasses and a cigarette, the ash dangerously low, “reaming the guy” for whatever was going wrong at the time “in no uncertain terms.”
But he always cared for the underdog, David said, recalling that he would often take the advice of the junior action officer over their senior leaders when the moment called for it. As the deputy chief of staff for Reserve Affairs, Crist was able to lobby Congress for additional money for reserve Marines to get new equipment, which caused resentment from some corners of the active service who saw the reserves as an afterthought.
David Crist recalled his father saying to those corners, “Don’t you understand? You own it all. There is no us or them. It’s all yours.”
Chicago Rules
The Iran-Iraq War had been raging, but settled into a stalemate by the time that Crist took over at Central Command. By then, Iran had been attacking commercial shipping vessels, but to a smaller degree. But both sides were looking to break the stalemate, David Crist said, and eyed increasing the scale at which they were interrupting neutral shipping in the Persian Gulf.
To undermine Iraq, Iran started targeting Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti vessels, prompting Kuwait to ask for assistance in protecting U.S. interests in the area. The U.S. then reflagged Kuwaiti vessels under the American flag and the Navy provided escorts for the tankers.
“At the time, there was no [joint task force] formed, there was no Navy component,” said David Crist, who wrote the book “The Twilight War” about 20 years of U.S-Iran conflict. “There was a small naval headquarters called the Middle East Force, which is really a diplomatic mission.”
The day after Operation Earnest Will began, the MV Bridgeton, which was reflagged and accompanied by U.S. naval forces, struck underwater mines on July 24, 1987. The event sent shockwaves around the world and caused a “rethinking of the whole military operation” in the U.S., David Crist said. The reflagging policy was widely opposed in Washington, he explained.
Crist called the ensuing conflict a “guerilla war at sea,” David Crist said — and felt that U.S. interests in the area were too important to be left to Iranian harassment. With Crist, the U.S. embarked on the largest naval convoy since World War II, supported by intense surveillance of Iranian operations in the area. In turn, the Iranians were using off-shore oil platforms to direct attacks and explosive mining operations.
In 1988, the USS Samuel B. Roberts also hit a mine, causing 10 sailors to be injured. After each Iranian incursion, the U.S. would retaliate. In one of those retaliatory strikes, called Operation Praying Mantis, the U.S. attacked several Iranian targets, some of which surrendered, though others put up a fight. In one instance, the U.S. dropped a 500-pound bomb “down a smokestack” of one of the Iranian vessels, David Crist said.
“It was described as sort of the Chicago Rules,” David Crist said. “They put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue.”
The operation dealt a heavy blow to the Iranian harassment in the region and — as the Iran-Iraq War came to a close, so did the commercial shipping intrusion.
But commercial vessels have come under threat in the region again. Beginning in October, the Navy, along with Marines as a deterrent force, was embroiled for months in a fight with Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen who have been targeting commercial shipping as a Tehran proxy. The U.S. and United Kingdom also bombed Houthi sites across Yemen.
“It absolutely is very similar,” David Crist said.
Reports surfaced last year that the military was considering placing Marines on commercial shipping vessels to help protect shipping, but Military.com found no evidence that took place.
“The geography doesn’t change,” David Crist said of Operation Earnest Will. “The threat of Iran hasn’t changed. … It’s one of the few operations that still continues to resonate.”
Crist retired in 1988 and became a military analyst for CBS News, one of the first generals to take on the media track, his son said. Beyond that, he wanted nothing to do with Washington and was “burnt out” from his long, illustrious career. During his retirement, he spent his days sailing and working on his yard, which David Crist recalled him approaching like he was “storming the beaches of Normandy.”
As a father, “he was stern” but not in an overbearing or stereotypically military way, his son said. He had a strong wit and “just tremendous fortitude.”
“I just hope I get some of those genes,” David Crist said.
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