Making the Corps: 10th Anniversary Edition with a New Afterword by the Author

Unknown "A thousand years from now, a historian looking at the U.S. military will do well to cite Ricks's book." -- USA Today "An important book...essential reading for anyone who cares about the role of the military in America." -- The Washington Post Book World "Anyone reading this book cannot help but think that America has many lessons to learn from the Marines." -- Chicago Tribune “A thousand years from now, a historian looking at the U.S. military will do well to cite Ricks's book.” – USA Today “An important book...essential reading for anyone who cares about the role of the military in America.” – The Washington Post Book World “Anyone reading this book cannot help but think that America has many lessons to learn from the Marines.” – Chicago Tribune “The most unique aspect of the Marine Corps -- its enduring culture -- has made it a renowned fighting force and endearded it to generations of alumni. Thomas E. Ricks has captured the essence of this legendary organization.” –Frederick W. Smith, Captain, USMC 1966-1970, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Federal Express “More vividly than any outsider in recent memory, Tom Ricks has given us an acutely analyzed look at how the Marines have sustained themselves as the finest organization this country has ever produced. This is a book filled with insight and compassion, marked by respect for those who serve, and yet told from the questioning perspective of a first-rate reporter.” –James Webb, Former Secretary of the Navy and author of Fields of Fire Marines are different: distinct not only from ordinary U.S. citizens but from the ranks of the army, navy, and air force as well. The difference begins with boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, where the history and future of the United States Marine Corps intersect in the training of every new recruit. In Making the Corps , Ricks follows a platoon of young men through 11 grueling weeks of boot camp as their drill instructors indoctrinate them into the culture of the Few and the Proud. Many arrive at Parris Island undisciplined and apathetic; they leave as marines. With the end of the cold war, the role of the American military has shifted in emphasis from making war to keeping peace. "The best way to see where the U.S. military is going is to look at the marines today," says Ricks, as the other armed forces have begun to emulate the marine model. To understand Parris Island--a central experience in the life of every marine--is to understand the ethos of the Marine Corps. Ricks examines the recent changes in the Standard Operating Procedures for Recruit Training (the bible of Parris Island), which indicate how the corps is dealing with critical social and political issues like race relations, gender equality, and sexual orientation. Making the Corps pierces the USMC's "sis-boom-bah" mythology to help outsiders understand this most esoteric and eccentric of U.S. armed forces. --Tim Hogan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. From Chapter 3, Training The end of Week Three brings the actual tests. Physical testing, held on a dewy field near the Third Battalion on the morning of March 22nd, is predictable. Gary Moore Jr. looks unhappy. At the other end of the platoon, Andrew Lee, in his usual Terminator mode, burns through ninety-nine sit-ups in two minutes and then does thirty pull-ups. "Every time we did PT, I wanted to be Lee," Jumal Flow will later say. "He went through the obstacle course with a smile. He was just hard." Sergeant Carey runs three miles in eighteen minutes, forty seconds, ahead of all but three members of the platoon. Standing at the finish line to exhort those who follow, Sergeant Carey congratulates a recruit who stumbles across the line, staggers to the grass, drops to his knees and vomits. "That's the effort we're looking for," he says. "But don't eat so much breakfast." He stands in the middle of the ring of recruits walking to cool off and instructs with his personal mantra. "You got to test yourself everyday. If you don't test yourself, that day is wasted." By the time they graduate, they will be able to recite those sentences word for word, no matter if they are so bushed they can't remember how to count off. They also will grow accustomed to another of his admonitions, one they hear as he gives them extra PT on the quarterdeck, as if bestowing a present rather than punishment: "Pain is just weakness leaving the body." The minimum performance in today's physical test is three pull-ups, forty sit-ups, and three miles in twenty-eight minutes. The platoon averages ten pull-ups, sixty-six sit-ups, and a run time of 23.30. That totals to an average PT score of 188, out of a possible 300. "That's pretty good," says Staff Sergeant Rowland, nodding at Sergeant Carey as if to remind him that not everyone is Force Recon. But there are two failures. One is a recent pickup named Stephen Torchia, who did only two pull-ups and also failed the run by half a minute. The drill instructors distrust his attitude and have been waiting for an opportunity to move him on. And Shawn Bone, a cautious black college student from Birmingham, Alabama, came in dead last in the run, at 28.39. A "WNOD" -- that is, "Written Notice of Deficiency" -- is placed in his file, but he isn't dropped. Sergeant Carey marches the platoon back to the barracks for a shower. "Nice and easy," he yells in cadence with the march. The platoon shouts back: "Nice and slow!" But after he takes them to the mess hall for noon chow, the heavy hat paces uneasily. The inspection of uniforms, rifles, and appearance looms, and he is more troubled by the prospect than are his unwary recruits. He knows something they don't: they will be inspected by Sergeant Humphrey, a DI from 3085 who became Sergeant Carey's friend at drill instructors school. The two men are intensely competitive with each other. "It's a good thing they didn't put the two of us with the same platoon, 'cause we'd burn it out," says Sergeant Carey. "Me and Humphrey, we're action guys." That is a euphemism for being a hard-charging in-your-face, Type Triple-A Marine NCO. This is not good news for Platoon 3086. Conscious of their impending doom, Sergeant Carey works after chow to clean up his recruits. "I want you to get those stinkin' gas masks out of the footlocker NOW. Ten, nine, eight, seven,..." After a weak "Aye, sir," he cracks the verbal whip: "I don't like that little monotone belligerent attitude," he says. "I'll take you to the freaking pits." Those are the giant sand boxes just outside the barracks windows in which recruits suspected of recalcitrance are made to run -- a taxing effort in the deep, squishy sand -- and then do push-ups, offering their faces and forearms to the eager jaws of the thousands of sand fleas that thrive in the boxes. Charging up and down the line through the barracks, Sergeant Carey pulls a hanging thread -- what the Marines call an "Irish pennant" -- from the starched camouflage uniform of Tony Wells, a twenty-five-year-old recruit who came here from a Du Pont chemical factory near Rocky Mount, North Carolina. "You accept substandard performance," shouts the agitated DI. "That's why America will fall one day, just like the Roman Empire. But not me, understand? BUT NOT ME!" At 2:19, Doom himself appears at the end of the barracks: Sergeant Humphrey, a black fireplug of a man from Columbia, South Carolina, with arms so muscled they appear difficult to bend. He conducts the inspection with the heated language of an evangelist running a revival. But he dismisses the failures with the cold heart of a soldier machine-gunning a charging enemy. He begins with Recruit Shelton, who appears almost cocky. "You're lazy," he hisses in a voice that sounds like it carries a poisonous sting. "Did you clean that rifle? Oh, I'm sure you did. Did you shine those boots with a brick?" Recruit Shelton doesn't know what hit him. Short Sergeant Humphrey cocks his head and gazes up the tall recruit's nostrils. "Your hygiene is unsatisfactory. Did you shave? No discipline. NO DISCIPLINE!" For all that, Recruit Shelton passes a tacit part of this test: He doesn't lose his bearing. Sergeant Humphrey has the next recruit in line recite the Marine equivalent of The Lord's Prayer: "This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life. My rifle without me is useless. Without my rifle I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot him before he shoots me." Sergeant Humphrey nods and moves on. Anthony Randolph, a nineteen-year-old former construction worker from Cookeville, Tennessee, doesn't know the name of the battalion sergeant major. Sergeant Humphrey rasps: "The most important people in your life is your chain of command." He cuts the guts out of Recruit Randolph: "Rifle manual -- below average. Rifle -- below average. You don't know anything about this weapon, which you sleep with every night. Poise -- average. Hygiene -- unsatisfactory. Knowledge -- average. Overall -- below average." So it goes with the rest of the platoon. Recruit Moore, who believes his white DIs are racists, finds he fares no better with this black DI. "Below average," he is labeled by Sergeant Humphrey. Landon Meyer, a thin, pimply former short order cook from Long Beach, California, also loses his way on the chain of command question. "Sir, this recruit was confused," he says. "How old are you?" asks Sergeant Humphrey. "Nineteen, sir." "You've been confused for nineteen years," says the sergeant, utterly dismissing the recruit's life before Parris Island. Part of the message is that whatever you were or did before your life in the Marines is absolutely, entirely, irrevocably irrelevant. What matters is what you do here, in a ruthless meritocracy. Invariably, you aren't doing enough. Copyright © 1997 by Thomas E. Ricks --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Thomas Ricks, the Pentagon correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won a Society of Professional Journalists Award for best feature reporting for his writing on the Marine Corps. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From the Publisher Semper Fi. The few, the proud. From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. Once a Marine, always a Marine. The United States Marine Corps, with its fiercely proud tradition of excellence in combat, its hallowed rituals, and its unbending code of honor, is part of the fabric of American myth. No other group in America leaves so deep and permanent a mark on its members. Today, though, the Marine Corps feels increasingly besieged, at war with a new kind of enemy the vast social and political forces that it feels threaten to destroy its values. Making the Corps visits the front lines of that war: boot camp, Parris Island, South Carolina, "where the difference begins." Here, old values are stripped away and new, Marine Corps values, forged. Acclaimed military journalist Thomas E. Ricks follows sixty-three raw recruits, the men of recruit platoon 3086, from their hometowns to Parris Island, through boot camp, and into their first year as Marines. As three fierce drill instructors fight a battle for the hearts and minds of this unforgettable group of young men, a larger picture emerges, brilliantly painted, of the growing gulf that divides the military from the rest of America. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Kirkus Reviews Wall Street Journal Pentagon correspondent Ricks effectively combines a vivid account of the rigorous basic training received by US Marine recruits with commentary on what separates the demanding, disciplined culture of America's military elite from the more permissive culture of its civilian society. The author tracks the 60-odd volunteers who comprised Platoon 3086 at Parris Island i 1995 through the challenging 11-week course known as boot camp. Unlike their counterparts in other branches of the US military, aspiring marines do not train alongside women; nor do they have access to alcohol, automobiles, candy, cigarettes, drugs, or various other diversions dear to the hearts of young American males. Ricks offers anecdotal evidence on what USMC recruits must endure in the way of indoctrination from fearsome (but no longer gratuitously brutal) drill instructors in the deep piney woods where apprentice warriors get their first taste of what combat is like, and in other invariably sweaty venues. He goes on to review the washout rate of 14 percent or so (which thins 3086's ranks to 55 by graduation day), the ongoing debate on ever-tougher entrance requirements (which probably cost the corps some superior fighting men), and the army's purposefully ``user-friendly'' training regimen (which reportedly neither instills esprit nor prepares soldiers to do battle). Covered as well is the risk that alienation could induce cream-of-the-crop troops like marines to take a more forceful role in the governance of the nation they are pledged to protect, if not engage in an outright coup. The author argues that it behooves America's largely oblivious middle and upper classes to take a more direct interest in their military. A revelatory briefing on what sets the USMC apart and the consequences of its superiority during a postCold War era when, for all the talk of peace dividends, the wider world remains an armed and dangerous place. (16 pages photos, maps, not seen) (Radio satellite tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Library Journal Ricks, the Wall Street Journal's Pentagon correspondent, here follows a Marine Corps training platoon (#3086) from the arrival of the recruit bus at Parris Island, South Carolina, to graduation. The background he gives on most of the recruits is solid, but Ricks is also concerned with the recent history and present-day image of the corps. According to Ricks, what sets the Marines apart from other U.S. military services is its reliance on teamwork, discipline, and commitment. By following the 3086th through its first year, he not only shows how the new recruit is molded but paints a larger picture of the corps. John Wayne movies have shaped most Americans' image of the Marines?an image that, as Ricks shows, is not necessarily reality today. Highly recommended for all libraries, especially those with large historical collections.?Mark E. Ellis, Albany State Univ., Ga.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Read more