While serving in Afghanistan as a brigadier general, Mattis was known as an officer who engaged his men with "real leadership." He also was quoted as saying, "be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet." A young Marine officer, Nathaniel Fick, said he witnessed Mattis in a fighting hole talking with a sergeant and lance corporal: "No one would have questioned Mattis if he'd slept eight hours each night in a private room, to be woken each morning by an aide who ironed his uniforms and heated his MREs. But there he was, in the middle of a freezing night, out on the lines with his Marines."