Taking vacation is the Marines

[ryangassxx]

One of the big selling points I see advertised for the Marine Corps is the 30 days of vacation a year. But, how exactly does taking vacations work? Do your 10 days of liberty following boot camp count against your balance? Also, I'm assuming it's at the discretion of your superiors when or if you'll be approved for vacation when requested, so how often or likely are you to be approved for a stretch of vacation days when you request it? When I know WELL in advance that I'll need about a week off for some sort of family function like a wedding or yearly event, does giving more advanced notice influence how likely you'll be to be approved for it?

[rufus1]

When you are in the Marine Corps you are on vacation 52 week a year and visit such tropical places like Vietnam and winter wonderlands like the Frozen Chosin! You never know what type of paradise you will end up at next! You do fill out the paperwork and put in for LEAVE (not vacation) and you will get it if it does not interfere with the Marine Corps plans.

[rufus1]

Back in years gone by they had Emergency Leave for pressing events like a death in your family or such and this was put through the chain of command very quickly!

[ecom]

You earn 2.5 days a month which comes out to 30 days per year. This number includes weekends and holidays too. For example if you take leave leave from December 21 to December 27, then that counts as 7 days even though December 25 is a holiday and there is a weekend in there somewhere.

The 10 days of boot leave does count against your 30 days so when you return from boot leave, you are 2.5 days in the hole. You'll make it up during SOI or MCT and MOS school.

The 10 days after boot camp is leave, not liberty. Liberty is something your unit commander grants you independent of leave and it generally will never exceed 96 hours. Leave is something you earn and accumulate. If your leave coincides with liberty, it still counts against your leave balance.

If you take leave to visit a foreign country, your unit will probably want to know about it. They did not stop me from going on leave, but they gave me a security brief about the foreign country based on reports from US State Dept. and made sure I had plans in place and knew where the US Embassy was located should something happen. There may be some restrictions on where you can and cannot go so be advised of that. The countries I visited were innocuous.