What We Can Learn From Them
On a hot night in 1992, on my first deployment as a
Pentagon reporter, I went on patrol in Mogadishu, Somalia, with a squad
of Marines led by a 22-year-old corporal. Red and green tracer bullets
cut arcs across the dark sky. It was a confusing and difficult time. Yet
the corporal led the patrol with a confidence that was contagious.
Ever since that night, I had wanted to see how the Marine Corps
turns teenage Americans into self-confident leaders. At a time
when the nation seems distrustful of its teenage males-when young
black men especially, and wrongly, are figures of fear for many-the
military is different. It isn't just that it has done a better
job than the larger society in dealing with drug abuse and racial
tension-even though that is true. It also seems to be doing a
better job of teaching teenagers the right way to live than does,
say, the average American high school. And it thrives while
drawing most of its personnel from the bottom half of our society,
the half that isn't surfing the information superhighway.
I wanted to see how the Marines could turn an undereducated, cynical
teenager into that young soldier who, on his second night in Africa,
could lead a file of men through the dark and dangerous city. How could
a kid we would not trust to run the copier by himself back in my office
in Washington become the squad leader addressing questions that could
alter national policy: Do I shoot at these threatening mob in a Third
World city? Do I fire when a local police officer points his weapon in
my direction? If I am performing a limited peacekeeping mission, do I
stop a rape when it occurs 50 yards in front of my position?
To find out how the Marines give young Americans the values and self-confidence
to make those decisions, I decided to go to Marine boot camp. I went not as a
recruit but as an observer. I come from the post-draft generation. I majored in
English literature at Yale, and, like everyone with whom I grew up and went to
school, I have no military experience. Yet I learned things at Parris Island that
fascinated me-and should interest anyone who cares about where our youth are going.
In a society that seems to have trouble transmitting healthy values, the Marines
stand out as a successful institution that unabashedly teaches those values to the
Beavises and Butt-heads of America.
I met Platoon 3086 on a foggy late winter night in 1995 when its bus arrived on
Parris Island, S.C. I followed the recruits intermittently for their 11 weeks on
the island, then during their first two years in the Marine Corps.
The recruits arrived steeped in the popular American culture of consumerism
and individualism. To a surprising degree, before joining the Corps, they had
bee living part-time lives-working part-time (and getting lousy grades) and
staying dazed on drugs and alcohol part-time. When they arrives at Parris
Island, all that was taken away from them. They were stripped of the usual
distractions, from television and music to cars and candy. They even lost
the right to refer to themselves and "I" or "me." When one confused recruit
did so during the first week of boot camp, Sgt. Darren Carry, the platoon's
"heavy hat" disciplinarian, stomped his foot on the cement floor and shouted,
"You got on the wrong bus, 'cause there ain't no I, me, my's or I's here!"
On Parris Island, for every waking moment during the next 11 weeks, they were
immersed in a new, very different world. For the first time in their lives,
many encountered absolute standards: Tell the truth. Don't give up. Don't
whine. Look out for the group before you look out for yourself. Always do you
best-even if you are just mopping the floor, you owe it to yourself and your
comrades to strive to be the best mopper at this moment in the Corps. Judge
others by their actions, not their words or their race.
The drill instructors weren't interested in excuses. Everyday, they transmitted
the lesson taught centuries ago by the ancient Greek philosophers: Don't pursue
happiness; pursue excellence. Make a habit of that, and you can have a fulfilling life.
These aren't complex ideas, but to persuade a cynical teenager to follow them,
they must be painstakingly pursued everyday-lived as well as preached. I have
seen few people work as hard as did Platoon 3086's drill instructors in the first
few weeks they led the platoon. Sargent Carey, an intense young reconnaissance
specialist from Long Island, routinely put in 17 hours a day, six and a half days
a week. His ability to drive himself at full speed all day long awed and inspired
his charges. Recruit Paul Bourassa said of his drill instructor: "When you've gone
16 hours and you're wiped out and you see him motoring, you say to yourself, I've
got to tap into whatever he has.'"
Sergeant Carey clearly wasn't doing it for the money. He was paid $1775 a month-
a figure that worked out to about minimum wage. Of course, the wages were nearly
irrelevant. The recruits learned that money isn't the measure of a man, that a
person's real wealth is in his character. One of the funnies moments I saw in
boot camp came when Sergeant Carey was lecturing the platoon on the importance
of knowledge. "Knowledge is what?" he bellowed. "Power, sir," responded the
platoon. "Power is what?" he then asked. That puzzled the platoon. Faces scrunched
up in thought. Eventually one recruit hazarded a guess: "Money?" Sergeant Carey
was dumbfounded to find such a civilian attitude persisting in his platoon. "NO!"
he shouted. "Power is VICTORY!" (Then, in a whispered aside, he added, "I swear,
I'm dealing with aliens.")
The drill instructors didn't try to make their recruits happy. They tried to
push members of the platoon harder than they'd ever been pushed, to make them
go beyond their own self-imposed limits. Nearly all the members of the platoon
cried at one time or another. Yet by the end of 11 weeks almost all had been
transformed by the experience-and were more fulfilled than they had ever been.
They had subordinated their needs to those of the group, yet almost all emerged
with a stronger sense of self. They unembarrassedly used words like "integrity."
I learned more than I expected. One of my favorite moments came when Sergeant
Carey ordered a white supremacist from Alabama to share a tent in the woods with
a black gang member from Washington D.C. The drill instructor's message to the
recruits was clear: If you two are going to be in the Marine Corps, you are going
to have to learn to live with each other. Recruits Jonathan Prish and Earnest
Winston Jr. became friends during that bivouac. "We stuck up for each other
after that," Prish said.
The recruits generally seemed to find race relations less of an issue at boot
camp than in the neighborhoods they'd left behind. If America were more like the
Marines, argued Luis Polanco-Medina, a recruit from New Jersey, "there would be
less crime, less racial tension among people, because Marine Corps discipline is
also about brotherhood."
Two other thing surprised me. I didn't hear a lot of profanity. Once notoriously
foul-mouthed, today's drill instructors generally are forbidden to use obscenities.
Also, I saw very little brutality. "I expected it to be tougher," said recruit
Edward Linsky, in a typical comment as he sat on his footlocker.
Platoon 3086 graduated into the Marine Corps in May 1995 and became part of a
family that includes 174,000 active-duty members and 2.1 million veterans
(there really is no such thing as an "ex-Marine"). Over the last two years,
members of the platoon have experiences some disappointments. But, as Paul
Bourassa concluded a year after graduating from boot camp, "It pretty much
is a band of brothers."
What I think the Marine Corps represents is a counterculture, but the Marines
are rebels with a cause. With their emphasis on honor, courage, and commitment,
they odder a powerful alternative to the loneliness and distrust that seems so
widespread, especially among our youth.
Any American-young, or old, pro-or anti-military- can learn something from today's
Corps. That goes for the corporation as well as the individual. Just listen to Maj.
Stephen Davis describe his approach to leadership: "Concentrate on doing a single
task as simply as you can, execute it flawlessly, take care of your people and go
home." Those steps offer an efficient way to run any organization.
I took away a lot from boot camp myself. I don't talk to my own kids like a
drill instructor ( and neither do thoughtful drill instructors). But I was
struck by the importance of the example the DIs provided; Kids want values,
but they are tightly suspicious of talk without action. So while you need to
talk to kids about values, your words will be meaningless unless you live
them as well. Also, of all things that can motivate people, the pursuit of
excellence is one of the most effective-and one of the least used in our
society.
None of this is a revelation. Lots of families live by these standards.
But few of our public institutions seem to. "You'd see the drill
instructors teach kids who barely made through high school that they
weren't stupid, that they could do things if they had the right can-do
attitude," summarized Charles Less of Platoon 3086. "It was all the things
you should learn growing up but, for some reason, society de-emphasizes."
The white supremacist and the black gang member who were thrown together
in boot camp went on to happy careers in the Corps. Earnest Winston Jr.,
the D.C. gangbanger, became a specialist in the recovery of aircraft making
emergency landings and was posted to Japan. "Its beautiful," he told me.
"Not a lot people on my block get to go to places like these." His friend
Jonathan Prish, the Alabaman, became a guard near the American Embassy in
London. Prish had his racist tattoos covered. I've left all that behind,"
he said. "You go out and see the world, and you see there are cool people
in all colors."
Reprinted with permission from Parade © Sunday November 9th 1997. All right reserved.
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