Source: U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Alexa M. Hernandez/Released
Posted on 08/09/2021 3:43:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
Source: U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Alexa M. Hernandez/Released
When I signed up for the Marines in ’78, I had no clue what I was getting into. I just wanted to get out of my hometown. After a few minutes at bootcamp, I wanted to go back.
It was too late.
There was only way out now: 13 weeks through a humid, swampy, mosquito-infested chunk of Hell at Parris Island, S.C. – a God-forsaken place where tidal salt marshes breed habitats of pestiferous biting flies. The worst? Blood-sucking sand fleas.
Around 1 a.m., the bus carrying about 60 of us parked beside a platoon of yellow footprints at the recruit depot. We had barely stopped before a drill instructor (DI) stormed the bus. Outside, a squad of DIs prowled the footprints like a pack of pit bulls. We were hungry, sleep-deprived, and now – terrified.
Fear is the recruit’s first welcome to the Corps. Not because of some dumb DI power trip. Fear is serious business. It’s an ever-present reality in the superhuman dangers of war that must be cloned in a controlled environment so recruits learn how to deal with it. War requires you to act quickly, think clearly, and perform high-level physical feats despite the presence of extreme fear, extreme confusion, extreme chaos, and the specter of death.
So DIs would overload us with mental, emotional, and physical challenges to dig into what we were really made of. They had to. We were looking to be the best at Earth’s most brutal profession. Step One was to survive the time-worn crucible that forged some of history’s most lethal fighters. Beneath the DI’s bark was a dead serious mission: to find recruits with the “raw steel” that could be shaped into the kind of mettle that endures the maddening ferocities of war.
All others were weeded out.
For now, we were all “maggots” – vectors of ingrained habits that destroyed the kind of lethality and unit cohesion needed to win wars. DIs had a name for these habits: “civilian trash.” It didn’t matter where we came from, how rich or poor we were, country boy or city – once we stepped off that bus, the trash had to go. We were all the same now. Maggots. And we are all one color. Green.
“You have now entered Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina,” the drill instructor belted. “From now on, the last word out of your mouth will be sir. Is that understood?!”
We blurted smatterings of haphazard “yes-sirs.”
“I SAID IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?!!”
“YES, SIR!!!” Now in ear-shattering unison.
“GET OFF OF MY BUS!”
This cue unleashed the “pit bulls.” They barked us onto the footprints. They barked us in and out of the barbershop. And they barked us into “recruit receiving” where we dumped our civilian gear, for military gear.
This is about the time when a human stench assaulted your nostrils. DIs had a name for that, too: the smell of fear – a collective body odor secreted by Marine recruits fresh from the cushy culture of civilian life.
From Day One at bootcamp to my retirement 20 years later, the clockwork of the Corps’ fine-tuned machinery orbited around two simple things: Preparing for war (readiness), and winning wars. That’s it. This was the gyroscope that anchored us to the sacred purpose of our national existence.
Not anymore.
Today, the highest performance in the brute physical demands of uncivilized combat falls second to the politics of gender equality, LGBT rights, and now, hunting down imaginary white supremacists in the name of race equity. Civilian trash. It’s a shame. It institutes division. Woke politicians know it. They don’t care. But they’ve done it anyway. Sound familiar?
More than anyone, the Obama Administration implemented the most consequential changes in U.S. military history – changes that deviates more towards rights and careerism than combat effectiveness. These are fake problems. We already had that stuff. I witnessed it for 20 years.
But in 2013, Obama’s defense secretary, Leon Panetta, lifted the ban on women serving in combat units. Marine Commandant General Joe Dunford implemented Panetta’s directive by integrating two infantry companies and, through a series of training exercises, matched them against existing all-male infantry units.
The results were predictable.
In 134 combat tasks, all-male units outperformed gender-integrated units in 69 percent of the tasks. Acceptable in peace. Deadly by combat standards. In 2015, Dunford requested that the Corps be exempted from the new policy. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus declined.
That was the same year the Army announced that two females had graduated from Army Ranger School. Journalist Susan Katz Keating, who covered the story for People magazine, discovered that Washington politicians put intense pressure on evaluators to graduate the women. Their performance, by combat standards, was disastrous. But Obama’s appointees didn’t care. They needed the Ranger fiction as proof that women were ready for combat roles. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter opened combat units to females four months later.
Before there was “Defund the Police,” there was “Defang the Military.”
It’s now gone far beyond women in infantry units. As former Army Captain James Hasson points out in his book “Stand Down” (2019), the mission to transform the culture of the military has produced “safe space” stickers on doors at the Naval Academy; officers apologizing for microaggressions against Air Force cadets; the Army being urged to end “hyper-masculinity”; PowerPoints on “male pregnancy”; and monitoring of social media accounts for evidence of white supremacy.
Male and female recruits will soon be required to train together at Parris Island, S.C. and Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego. That’s thanks to the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, the law that authorized the U.S. Space Force.
Robert H. Barrow Jr., Marine Commandant during my first tour, gave a sober warning to a Senate hearing in 1991 against emphasizing “equal rights” and careerism over combat effectiveness. Barrow commanded troops in large-scale conventional wars like WWII, Korea, and Vietnam – unlike the low-intensity conflicts against backward nations that we’ve grown used to.
“Exposure to combat, is not combat,” Barrow said. “Combat is finding, and closing with, and killing or capturing the enemy … It’s killing! That’s what it is. And it’s done in an environment that is as difficult as you can possibly imagine. Extremes of climate. Brutality. Death. Dying. It’s uncivilized! Women can’t do it.”
If America continues down this road, he said, “it would destroy the Marine Corps. Something no enemy has been able to do in over 200 years.”
They didn’t listen.
Barrow’s remarks should be mandatory listening.
If you’re aiming that comment at the generals, they never retire, certainly not in 20 years.
If you’re aiming it at me, I only served 8 years.
What was your score on the rifle range? You need more practice 🙄
Come to think of it you could be right.
After reading many of the comments, I have one thought...that the restoration process needs to start at the top. That would mean prosecution for treason at the hands of much of the leadership, even if it means the president & all leadership under him on down. That’s where we would start.
Yes, we live in a kleptocracy which includes our military leaders.
There is no honor anymore.....only thieves.
The kleptocracy has been so successful that many of those we send to DC to stop it have been co-opted into the kleptocracy.
Trump could not be co-opted because he already had wealth. Everyone else wants more wealth and the kleptocracy is the easies road to that wealth.
Another great read on the military, and I recommend that all follow the link at the end to hear Gen. Robert Barrow’s remarks in Senate testimony, even though parts of it appear in the article its self.
Polticians in Camo.
“Too late now. Fags in the streets. Legal drugs and million of addicts. Entire cities being destroyed.”
It’s never “the end” unless you give up. I don’t know how old you are but I remember the Newark NJ riots and the LA riots and they were also the “end of our country”.
The creeps causing the problems are in a huge minority and already there have been (mostly un publicized ) occasions where the thugs have been engaged and beaten.
We are moving towards a conflict of competing ideologies and I believe once the resistance to the thugs takes hold as I see it beginning to do it will accelerate and grow.
Right now what is important is to resist as we see so many beginning to do. Even Rand Paul is calling for it and he has a very big voice.
Everyone needs to do what they can and that doesn’t mean taking up arms and baseball bats etc.
Air conditioning is where it started....honestly
Average fire support base in Vietnam have AC?
Nope
I grew up south central Mississippi
Average summer temp 95-100
Humidity around 70% to max...about like Parris Island ...maybe even warmer no breeze
I first had air conditioning in nearly 1973 when I was 15.5 years of age
I’m living in central TN without air downstairs now for two weeks plus due to a dearth of parts these days....
17-18 year olds can handle no air ....attic fans are reasonable
“Everyone else wants more wealth and the kleptocracy is the easies road to that wealth.”
Can’t argue with that. Seeking wealth thru kleptocracy is also the road to slovenly physical fitness, mental atrophy, slow-witted organizational acumen and degenerative, chronic disease.
Don’t believe me? Take a walk thru any federal bureaucracy and look at the low-IQ, fat, potato chip eating, pop-guzzling squishes squatting at their desks.
And wear a mask to avoid infection.
A nation of lions led by homosexual sheep.
The Air Force had air conditioning in their O club at Danang. Cold milk, too.
Maybe that’s why we hung out there. Plus, it was fun when the F-4 crews would come back and ring the bell; they’d just bagged another MIG up north.
I was born at Seymour Johnson in 57
There tuscon and San Antonio and Greenville miss
Officers married housing
I doubt there was AC then except selected places
My folks bedroom had AC
I had attic fan
It wasn’t horrible honestly
I lived outside all day like we did then
The “woke” USMC never recovered after The Ribbon Creek incident occurred on the night of April 8, 1956. It’s all been downhill from then and it is never going to return to what it was.
USMC ‘55 to ‘60.
Oh, I don’t know - we did quite well fighting in Vietnam. The enemy learned to avoid fighting us head-to-head throughout our war.
I believe that real drop in the value of the Corps came when we were forced to violate our own standards in the 80’s.
Your point is well taken but, I saw what happen to the DI’s while in boot camp during this and witnessed the DI’s difference in “attitude” as this issue was being discussed. These opinions change for many reasons. All can be part of the changes we see.
Sempre Fi and thanks for your service.
Wow. Sad.
The old saying about the frog and the boiling water certainly seems to apply here.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.