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STUPIDITY! If you know its wrong, and you follow the lead of a person acting illegally, You got to jail! This is a minor offense compared to the war crimes trials of Germany and Japan but the same conclusion. Following illegal orders or committing illegal acts and trying to say you were following what your superior told me to do will not fly in any court of law.
Another trial starts in boot camp case
By Steve Liewer
STAFF WRITER
December 11, 2007
SAN DIEGO – A former drill instructor convicted of maltreating recruits testified yeterday that he modeled his behavior on the conduct of his counterparts at the Marine Corps' boot camp in San Diego.
Last month, a military jury sentenced Sgt. Jerrod Glass to six months in the brig and demoted him to the lowest enlisted rank. Two drill instructors who worked with him to oversee Platoon 2167, Sgts. Brian Wendel and Robert Hankins, have been charged in the same case.
Wendel's trial began yesterday at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. He is charged with 17 counts of misconduct involving seven charges, including assault, maltreatment, violation of orders and destruction of property.
Before the jury panel was seated, Glass testified he saw Wendel and other drill instructors “tap” recruits in the face with flashlights and push them through doors. He said such actions, which allegedly took place between October 2006 and February 2007, violated standard operating procedures that restrict drill instructors' rights to touch recruits.
“I know the letter of the law from the SOPs,” Glass testified. “But I know from my experience . . . that it's not always the way things are done.”
Glass also said Wendel and other drill instructors skirted rules limiting “incentive training” – a Marine term for punishing recruits with push-ups and other exercises – to eight minutes. They did so, Glass said, by stringing together punishments or conducting longer sessions indoors, where supervising officers would be unlikely to see them.
Glass testified he saw Wendel and Hankins force each platoon member to drink three canteens of water until some of them threw up. He said Hankins was angry because some of the recruits defied his orders by eating pastries during lunch.
“He told the platoon he was going to get the pastries back,” he said.
The jury in Wendel's case, though, won't hear most of Glass' allegations. The military judge, Maj. Brian Kasprzyk, granted the defense's request to bar the testimony because none of the charges against Wendel deal with the accusations Glass made. Kasprzyk said hearing the testimony might prejudice jurors.
Seating a jury panel proved difficult yesterday because nearly all of the prospective jurors already knew much about the abuse cases.
Of the five officers and three senior enlisted Marines, seven said they had read media accounts, and at least three had read portions of an official investigation. All of them knew some of the 58 named witnesses. One had talked about the case with the battalion commander who brought the charges.
Two prospective jurors said drill instructors struck them when they were recruits. One, a master sergeant with 19 years in the Marine Corps, said he was punched in the belly twice – once for laughing and once for looking at something he had been told not to.
“It is my belief, sir, that I deserved it,” he said when Kasprzyk questioned him. “I come from an upbringing of tough love.”
The master sergeant acknowledged it would be difficult to set aside his personal views that the Corps has gone too easy on recruits and young Marines.
“I think a lot of things are going on in the Marine Corps now that have been going on for a long time,” he said. “It's just now not being accepted.”
Kasprzyk dismissed five of the prospective jurors, including all three enlisted Marines. Because at least one-third of the panel must be enlisted, selection will continue today.
Steve Liewer: (619) 498-6632; steve.liewer@uniontrib.com
Most of the stuff that guy did I have no problem with. My DS would do a chickenhead bob close to your face so their Brown Rounds would jab you. We’d have corrective PT for more than 20 minutes, once it went on for an hour.
Is there someone that can explain exactly what this means? Is this eight-minute limit for doing a single exercise witohut rest, or multiple exercises with no rest inbetween? I distinctly remember last year in Basic Training being smoked for 1.5+ hours three times with absolutely no rest inbetween the exercises. One of the smokings was 2-2.5 hours. If this means you must be given a chance to rest (although "rest" could include such positions as flexing your back and sagging in the middle) within 8 minutes of initiating the exercise, then that is incredibly soft (and this is the Marines we are talking about, not the Air Force). Couldn't a two-mile run then be considered in violation of the policy, since you didn't get to rest? I don't really understand what this 8-minute business is all about...
Glass testified he saw Wendel and Hankins force each platoon member to drink three canteens of water until some of them threw up. He said Hankins was angry because some of the recruits defied his orders by eating pastries during lunch.
“He told the platoon he was going to get the pastries back,” he said.
I distinctly remember a few times in Basic that we went running for an hour after eating a large meal (although, technically, just about every meal "in garrison" (if you can call it that) was large; we ate as much as we could every meal; I was in a constant state of hunger for those ten weeks. I could never eat enough. That's probably why I gained 30 pounds in BCT :-)
I don't know if drinking water until vomiting is induced violates USMC regulations (they were made to drink no more than 1.5 gallons (we had two-quart canteens in Basic); that's OK, but if abused, a recruit could die from excessive water intake), but we had similar treatment in the Army. If a soldier was caught eating one of "those foods," the result was a smoke session after chow. Fair enough; we all had a PT test to pass. And it has lasted; it has basically shut down my consumption of soda (or coke/pop, depending where you live...).
Two prospective jurors said drill instructors struck them when they were recruits. One, a master sergeant with 19 years in the Marine Corps, said he was punched in the belly twice – once for laughing and once for looking at something he had been told not to.
“It is my belief, sir, that I deserved it,” he said when Kasprzyk questioned him. “I come from an upbringing of tough love.”
The master sergeant acknowledged it would be difficult to set aside his personal views that the Corps has gone too easy on recruits and young Marines.
Roger that! In my branch we call it the "kinder, more gentle Army," and just about all of us hate it. I think your initial training into the Army should be tough and hard. Look, part of our job description is to kill people as necessary. You can't be going soft on recruits. It has been my observation that harder training seems to make a better servicemember. The Marines seemed to make better troops overall than the Navy and Air Force, with my Army somewhere inbetween (I was in a multi-service training environment for about 7 months). At that point in time, the Marines boot camp was more than twice as long as the Air Force's BMT. Six weeks is just too short, and now it is eight weeks, if I remember correctly. I was told by British personnel on a recent deployment that their Royal Marines go through a hellish 32-week boot camp. Their reputation is that of being just a notch below Special Forces.
I am of the opinion that our military training needs to be a lot tougher. Basic Training was difficult at times, but as a whole it was a lot easier than I expected. But then again, we need all the troops we can get. I found that my idea of the Army before I joined was really that of Special Forces. The Army is made up of a lot of ordinary, average Americans. Some are really impressive soldiers, and some are not so good. But it has been my honor and privilege to work with them all.
At first glance it looks like PC creeping in. But a drill instructor isn’t just this harsh bully figure, the flip side is that the health and safety of the recruits are absolutely his responsibility. I have no sympathy if he violated that responsibility.
We told our marine son about this and he replied, I didn’t know there was any way it was illegal to abuse a marine.
That being said, no matter how ridiculous particular rules may seem, a Non-Commissioned Officer can not be excused from intentionally disregarding them. NCO's- and especially drill instructors- are supposed to serve as an example of military discipline.
An NCO who expects obedience and attention to detail, while openly flouting military regulations himself, is standing on shaky ground. In my experience, hypocrisy of this kind is often a sure fire way to create brooding resentment and low morale among the lower ranks.