The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

56 Chapter 3
level of the Marines’ fitness standard—are encouraged to apply. Recruiters
today must own their recommendations. They will write to and keep track
of a recruit all through his boot camp training. A failure at boot camp is a
black mark on a recruiter’s record. 14
In some offices a list hangs above a recruiter’s computer warning that
the individuals named on it are not to be allowed into “Our Beloved Corps.”
They have, in some way, shown themselves unworthy to join this coveted
brotherhood but act as pests, trying one recruiter after another. Marine
recruiters recognize that their modern image is that of the elite, the toughest
of the branches, and they flex this to full effect. Gallup polling taken from
2001–11 indicates that across the first decade of the twenty- first century,
the American public consistently viewed the Marine Corps as its most prestigious
branch. 15 It must be noted, however, that this trend stands in sharp
contrast to previous eras. In a national opinion survey conducted just before
Pearl Harbor (November 1941), young men of fighting age, as well as their
parents, ranked the Corps as the least attractive American military service
because of its members’ “rowdiness and hard living.” 16
Marines have learned to use their hard-core reputation to advantage.
Their perception is that the young people drawn to their door want to be
pushed, want to be screamed at by an ungodly drill instructor (DI), and want
to get into the mud. One might make this assertion solely owing to the selfselection
that occurs in response to Marine Corps ads. The Corps went a bit
further, however, and in 1994 hired a team of psychologists to tell them what
the youth of Generation X “wanted.” Their conclusions: “Generation X does
not want to be babied. These young Americans are looking for a real challenge.
They desperately want to be part of a winning team; they crave the stature
associated with being one of the best.” 17 Oral histories of contemporary- era
Marines seem to confirm that this trend continues. When asked why they
picked the Marine Corps, Marines’ typical answers include “’Cause it was the
hardest one”; “I was always interested in the Marine Corps, like the difficulty
of it, of course I wanted to do the hardest . . . which would be the Marine
Corps”; “I wanted to go to the toughest training”; “It was definitely a challenge
and that’s exactly what I was looking for”; “I picked the Marine Corps
because they are the best. I don’t just say that because I am a Marine. We back
it up. The Marine Corps is the hardest branch of the service, and the Proudest.
I always had an interest in the military. But when it came down to it, if I was
going to be in any branch, I didn’t want to know that there was someone out
there in another service that is working harder than me.” 18
Half of the walk- ins to a Marine recruiting office have already decided
that they want to join the infantry. This hard- hitting, frontline image is the
one the modern Corps projects and the one most often in the minds of those
who want to join. Today’s Marines join the Marines because they want to
be “forged” into hard steel, they want a challenge, and they want to be part
of an elite. 19 It is becoming a Marine, above all, that is the lure.