WHEN MY BROTHER MIKE walked in one day and announced that he had joined the Marine Corps, the rest of our family was shocked. None of us had thought he was the type. Physically Mike could cut it; he’d wrestled and run track in high school. But like a lot of guys at 18, he was unfocused, not sure of what he wanted in life. He had gone to college for a while, but hadn’t much liked academic life. He’d never had a lot to say about it, even when our parents pressed him about why he couldn’t get serious about anything. My father, an ex-Marine, warned Mike how tough basic training would be. He rented the movie “Full Metal Jacket” so Mike could watch a perfect representation of the rigors of recruit training at Parris Island. On the day Mike signed up my father explained that, while there wasn’t any trouble on the horizon, peace might not last. And when you were in the service, you were there not to learn a trade or travel, but to defend the country. That was in May 2001. By the time Mike left for boot camp in October, the world had changed.
At Parris Island, the assault begins when the bus pulls into the receiving barracks. The drill instructors are waiting to greet new recruits with their own version of shock and awe. The DIs confiscate all the newcomers’ possessions, shave their heads, then issue them uniforms and equipment, while screaming nonstop.
The recruits arrive late at night, a practice designed to prevent them from getting the lay of the land and starting to plan their escape. They’re kept awake through that first night and all the next day, standing at attention or marching. At the end of their first 24 hours on the island, the recruits collapse into their bunks, exhausted but reprogrammed onto the Marines’ schedule–to bed at 9, up at 5–where they will stay for the next 13 weeks.
The first month of training is a calculated terror campaign intended to break the recruits down and strip them of their civilian individuality. There’s constant verbal abuse–the drill instructors have made an art of their cursing. All of this is intended to instill toughness and discipline. After the recruits start to become proficient at their training tasks and gel as a unit, the abuse lessens and the building of them into Marines begins.
WE DIDN’T HEAR MUCH from Mike that first month. We wondered if something had happened, if he’d been sent to the physical conditioning platoon or was otherwise in trouble. But eventually a few short letters arrived. He didn’t complain, but asked us to write a lot, and said the drill instructors wanted all the recruits to write home and tell their mothers to send fudge and a tin of cookies to give the recruits on Christmas. (Mom sent the sweets, but Mike never saw any. The drill instructors intercepted the packages and ate the contents.)
Later Mike wrote to tell us that he had qualified as an expert with an M-16 on the rifle range, besting our father, who had earned the lower badge of sharpshooter when he was in boot camp.
In January, we drove to South Carolina for family day and Mike’s graduation. All the way down Dad made us listen to Sousa marches. As we passed through the front gate of the base, he beamed and saluted smartly and told the corporal he was a Marine.
We drove down a long, winding road past the Iwo Jima statue and a building with the words “The World’s Most Elite Fighting Force” on the façade. Low-hanging Spanish moss shaded the path, and the air was thick with the scent of salt from the marshes that border the island. The serene beauty took me by surprise.
When we parked and got out of the car, we saw stretched out before us half a dozen platoons of maybe 75 new Marines each, all standing starch-stiff in the sun, while a sea of people milled around them studying the faces, each family looking for one face in particular. We spotted Mike, and we knew he saw us, but he didn’t smile, turn his head, or flinch in the slightest. He just stood at perfect attention, like the hundreds of other former recruits, who such a short time before had probably been just as unfocused as he was, but who now were fit and disciplined.
Today, Mike is a helicopter mechanic, serving in the third Marine Air Wing. He’s in the Persian Gulf, and still aboard ship, on an aircraft carrier, but his unit feels they’ve already participated in the action. Last week some of the pilots in his squadron helped rescue prisoner of war Jessica Lynch. He and his fellow Marines have earned the respect of us all.
–Rachel DiCarlo
