thedrifter
02-20-07, 07:33 AM
Want to Be a Marine? Learn to Crawl Backward, Run to Gunfire
By Dave Shiflett
Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- We're all too familiar with the people who start and sustain wars, but what of those who fight them?
``The Marines,'' a PBS special airing tomorrow at 9 p.m. New York time, follows recruits of the fiercest military branch through boot camp, officer-candidate school and eventually to Iraq, where Marines have engaged in some of their most brutal fighting since the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam.
The 90-minute program begins at Parris Island, South Carolina, where raw recruits exit a bus in the dark of night and are ordered to step onto painted yellow footsteps.
They have major shoes to fill, a point driven home by constantly barking drill instructors who immediately begin the conversion process. Staff Sergeant Gary Sanger says, ``in a matter of less than 12 hours everything they knew for 18 or more years is suddenly gone and stripped away.''
Over the next three months the recruits will be trained to ``run to the sound of the guns'' -- as Robert Kaplan of the Atlantic Monthly puts it -- and prepare for the most strenuous types of combat.
The Marines are the youngest soldiers in the military, with 60 percent of its members under 25 and 16 percent in their teens. Several just off the bus look like altar boys.
`Brutal Methods'
Their drill instructors don't look -- or act -- so innocent. They maintain a barrage of invective, often mere centimeters from a recruit's nose. ``Why are you wasting my time, son?'' one howls. Such questions, of course, are entirely rhetorical.
Viewers who labor under unpleasant management may suddenly find themselves thinking things could be worse, after all.
The show's tone is respectful, though not free of criticism. In the 1970s, we learn, hundreds of drill instructors were disciplined for ``brutal methods,'' resulting in ``subtle'' changes to the training regimen.
It still doesn't look easy, especially at the officer- candidate school in Quantico, Virginia -- a short drive yet a universe away from the comfortable Washington homes of the folks who send the kids to war.
Quantico is known for ``heat, humidity and hills'' along with the Quigley, an obstacle test designed to provoke a ``phobic reaction.'' The engineering is rudimentary: a concrete drain pipe almost entirely submerged in murky water, though which candidates must pull themselves -- backward.
Those who don't make it end their upward trajectory.
Female Fighters
The Marines are always looking for a few good men, and women as well. Six percent of the force is female, the show reports, and they must go through the same physical training as men. While legally barred from direct combat, those lines are increasingly blurred.
However, women still don't get all the respect they may deserve. Hunter Armstrong, who studies combat behavior and performance in different cultures, says women Marines can do many jobs as well as their male counterparts but -- with rare exceptions -- full-bore fighting isn't one of them.
The show doesn't avoid the downside of Marine life: being maimed or killed. They may be cocky coming out of camp, says one officer, but that attitude vanishes when they bury their first comrade and get used to the ``sickly sweet smell of decomposing flesh.''
All told, more than 40,000 Marines have been killed in action, with another 200,000 wounded, since the corps was founded in 1775.
That bloody tradition continues in the cities of Iraq. Lieutenant General Ron Christmas says urban combat is the ``dirtiest'' kind of fighting. Robert Kaplan adds that contemporary war is often ``small numbers of men hunting down other small numbers of men.''
``Combat diminishes the soul -- permanently,'' says Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks. Retired colonel and author Rick Spooner adds that ``Marines more than anyone else in society absolutely hate warfare.''
Perhaps someone could teach that lesson to the civilian chain of command, where a more theoretical view of war seems to prevail.
(Dave Shiflett is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this story: Dave Shiflett at dshifl@aol.com .
Last Updated: February 20, 2007 00:17 EST
Ellie
By Dave Shiflett
Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- We're all too familiar with the people who start and sustain wars, but what of those who fight them?
``The Marines,'' a PBS special airing tomorrow at 9 p.m. New York time, follows recruits of the fiercest military branch through boot camp, officer-candidate school and eventually to Iraq, where Marines have engaged in some of their most brutal fighting since the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam.
The 90-minute program begins at Parris Island, South Carolina, where raw recruits exit a bus in the dark of night and are ordered to step onto painted yellow footsteps.
They have major shoes to fill, a point driven home by constantly barking drill instructors who immediately begin the conversion process. Staff Sergeant Gary Sanger says, ``in a matter of less than 12 hours everything they knew for 18 or more years is suddenly gone and stripped away.''
Over the next three months the recruits will be trained to ``run to the sound of the guns'' -- as Robert Kaplan of the Atlantic Monthly puts it -- and prepare for the most strenuous types of combat.
The Marines are the youngest soldiers in the military, with 60 percent of its members under 25 and 16 percent in their teens. Several just off the bus look like altar boys.
`Brutal Methods'
Their drill instructors don't look -- or act -- so innocent. They maintain a barrage of invective, often mere centimeters from a recruit's nose. ``Why are you wasting my time, son?'' one howls. Such questions, of course, are entirely rhetorical.
Viewers who labor under unpleasant management may suddenly find themselves thinking things could be worse, after all.
The show's tone is respectful, though not free of criticism. In the 1970s, we learn, hundreds of drill instructors were disciplined for ``brutal methods,'' resulting in ``subtle'' changes to the training regimen.
It still doesn't look easy, especially at the officer- candidate school in Quantico, Virginia -- a short drive yet a universe away from the comfortable Washington homes of the folks who send the kids to war.
Quantico is known for ``heat, humidity and hills'' along with the Quigley, an obstacle test designed to provoke a ``phobic reaction.'' The engineering is rudimentary: a concrete drain pipe almost entirely submerged in murky water, though which candidates must pull themselves -- backward.
Those who don't make it end their upward trajectory.
Female Fighters
The Marines are always looking for a few good men, and women as well. Six percent of the force is female, the show reports, and they must go through the same physical training as men. While legally barred from direct combat, those lines are increasingly blurred.
However, women still don't get all the respect they may deserve. Hunter Armstrong, who studies combat behavior and performance in different cultures, says women Marines can do many jobs as well as their male counterparts but -- with rare exceptions -- full-bore fighting isn't one of them.
The show doesn't avoid the downside of Marine life: being maimed or killed. They may be cocky coming out of camp, says one officer, but that attitude vanishes when they bury their first comrade and get used to the ``sickly sweet smell of decomposing flesh.''
All told, more than 40,000 Marines have been killed in action, with another 200,000 wounded, since the corps was founded in 1775.
That bloody tradition continues in the cities of Iraq. Lieutenant General Ron Christmas says urban combat is the ``dirtiest'' kind of fighting. Robert Kaplan adds that contemporary war is often ``small numbers of men hunting down other small numbers of men.''
``Combat diminishes the soul -- permanently,'' says Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks. Retired colonel and author Rick Spooner adds that ``Marines more than anyone else in society absolutely hate warfare.''
Perhaps someone could teach that lesson to the civilian chain of command, where a more theoretical view of war seems to prevail.
(Dave Shiflett is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this story: Dave Shiflett at dshifl@aol.com .
Last Updated: February 20, 2007 00:17 EST
Ellie