My father-in-law was an Army drill sergeant. He told me how the recruits, after receiving training in hand-to-hand combat, thought they were tough, and would go into town to prove it, promptly getting their asses kicked by the locals.
But I doubt those locals were teenagers. The Marines in the article must have been outnumbered.
That happened at Quantico when I was a teen. The farm boys would laugh about it.
Westinghouse had some men out there on temp assignment to work inside the steam generators of a nuke plant.
It takes brute strength to manipulate the tooling and equipment in tight quarters.
A bunch of Marines decided they wanted to dance even though their sarge said don’t mess with those guys.
The Marines came out a very poor second.