Iron Woman

[thedrifter]

Iron Woman

25-year-old Baerman doesn’t look like typical Marine Corps drill sergeant
By Cindy Iutzi/Daily Gate City Staff Writer
Published: Monday, October 5, 2009 5:05 PM CDT

When Michelle Vinson Baerman walked into the newsroom wearing blue jeans, a fashionable top and leather boots, U.S. Marine Corps Iron Woman was not the first descriptive word that came to mind.

Flair, confident and attractive all describe the petite blonde-haired, blue-eyed, 25-year-old, whose father, Ed Vinson of Keokuk, now can introduce her as Staff Sgt. Michelle Baerman.

Although not the stereotypical Marine, Baerman is a Marine Corps Iron Woman through and through. She graduated on Sept. 23 from Drill Instructor School at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, S.C., and is ready to shape new Marines.

She is fit, having earned a perfect score in combat fitness during the 11-week Drill Instructor School.

Some of the requirements included picking up an ammo can and lifting it over her head; doing a flexed arm hang for 70 seconds (Baerman did it for 2 1/2 minutes); doing 100 crunches in two minutes; and running three miles in 21 minutes, 22 seconds – just 22 seconds over the standard.

That extra 22 seconds kept her from a perfect overall score of 300. She had to settle for 297.

“I came here wanting that Iron Woman award,” Baerman said after graduation. “I came in fit, I was eating healthy and I tried to stay rested. But it’s hard to do PT (physical training) on your own when you’re so tired, and you have to spend so much time studying.”

Baerman decided to become a Marine for financial stability, pride of herself and to live to a higher standard.

“What I didn’t want to do was sit around in a small town anymore,” she said.

Baerman lived with her mother, Ginger Jones, in Joy, Ill., a town of 450 about 45 minutes south of Rock Island.

A graduate of high school, 18 years old and an employee of the local Tastee Freez, Baerman had looked into attending community college but “hated school,” she said, and had no idea of what she wanted to do.

“I was laying in my mom’s bed,” Baerman said. “I knew it was a turning point in my life when I answered the phone. A Marine recruiter was looking for Michael Vinson.”

She identified herself as Michelle Vinson, heard the recruiter’s spiel and said, “I’m all for it.” Within the week she signed her enlistment papers.

Her father wasn’t happy about it, she said. He thought maybe she should have gone for something less hard core.

“We had talked about it before,” Ed said. “I actually wanted her to go into the Air Force and thought that she was going to do that. The next thing I knew she had enlisted in the Marines. I guess the recruiter was pretty good.

“I just thought of the Marines as rough and tough guys. But I guess it turned out to be a good thing.”

Vinson said his daughter was “always determined as a little kid.”

The Marine Corps has given that determination a focus and has directed that focus, he said.

Unlike some who enlist, Baerman was physically fit. She was a gymnast and had been in track throughout high school. But she learned that her type of fit was completely different from Marine Boot Camp fit. She crawled through the dirt and did what she was told.

“A lot of kids who think they’re not made to be yelled at – I was like that, too – need to put their egos and pride in a box and set it aside,” Baerman said. “Allow yourself to become something different. It’s hard to accept that you suck, but you do right now.

“The Marine Corps molds you into a leader, first and foremost to lead other Marines, and other people, have confidence in the commands that you give and to give well-thought out orders. You learn you can go into combat and follow orders, make tactical decisions and be professional at all times. We are all innately moral. Our parents give us guidelines, but the Marine Corps gives you standards.”

Baerman said the Marines “continually harp on jjdidtiebuckle,” a nonsensical group of letters that serves as a memory aid for the following U.S. Marine Corps’ standards: justice, judgment, dependable, integrity, decisive, tact, initiative, enthusiasm, bearing, unselfish, courage, knowledge, loyalty and endurance.

“Those are the standards that will transform you into a leader,” she said. “I went to boot camp seven years ago.

“Then from July 6, my birthday, to Sept. 23, I was screamed at the whole time and they broke it all down again to mold me into the epitome of what a Marine needs to be. As a drill instructor, you have to transform your troops.”

Sleep deprivation was the toughest part of the drill instructor training, but it prepared Baerman for her job. She’ll work at least 100 hours a week from 3 a.m. to whenever her paperwork is done. Her recruits will go to bed at around 8 p.m., but as drill instructor she must wade through forms and complete other duties shared by the three drill instructors assigned to each platoon.

Baerman is required to follow her troops’ every move for 12 weeks, then get a couple weeks off, get tested again and start with a new platoon.

Although the initial drill instructor basics are complete, her workouts and training are not over. On Oct. 15 she will take two to three weeks of marshal arts instructor training and then go right into her platoon.

Baerman is with the 100-troop November Company in the Fourth Battalion. There are three companies in the Fourth Battalion – November, Oscar and Poppa.

As all Marines must do, she has gone through Marine Corps combat training and the Military Occupation Specialty School where Marines learn how to do their specific jobs. In her first enlistment, Baerman was a firefighter. Then she went into career planning for soldiers who consider re-enlistment. She spent seven months from August 2008 to March 2009 near the burn pits in Al Ahnbar Province, Iraq, as a career planner.

When the wind shifted, the smoke from the burn pit permeated their quarters, she said. Sand storms blew through too, but in addition to helping Marines plan their military careers, Baerman took college courses online.

The college component is the only revision she would make if she had it all to do over again.

“I would have started college as soon as I checked in with my unit,” she said. “Don’t delay. I could have had a degree by now.”

Baerman is married to Travis Baerman, a U.S. Marine Corps diesel engine mechanic.

Ellie

[Lisa 23]

OoRah and Semper Fi!