The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

62 Chapter 3
“Making Marines” at the boot camp stage is more form than function.
Civilian identity is stripped and replaced with Marine posture, reflexes, priorities,
and attitude. Disciplined courtesy, strict codes of appearance, tightly
orchestrated movement, and respectful language are drilled into recruits as
Marine codes of conduct. 51 The harshest punitive measures are not meted
out for failures of martial skill but rather for breaches of Marine cultural
protocol. 52 The Corps is overt about this core feature of initial training. In
its seminal doctrine, Warfighting, Corps general officers state, “All officers
and enlisted Marines undergo similar entry- level training which is, in effect,
a socialization process. This training provides all Marines a common experience,
a proud heritage, a set of values, and a common bond of comradeship.
It is the essential first step in the making of a Marine.” 53
Essential to that transformation is the stripping of individuality in favor
of the team. When “boots” first arrive at Parris Island, Ricks observes, they
are positioned on yellow footprints so closely aligned that “newcomers can’t
be seen as individuals. Standing nearly heel to toe in the dark night their
faces are hardly visible, and their bodies become one mass. The effect is
intentional: Marine Corps culture is the culture of the group, made up of
members who are anonymous.” 54 Fick notes that officers are socialized the
same way. Being called an “individual” is a profound insult, spat out as if
it were a “synonym for child molester.” 55 In both enlisted and officer training,
it is repeatedly emphasized to would- be Marines that they have left a
culture of self- gratification, the “me” society, for one of self- discipline and
a focus on the group. Drill serves the same function, to build unit cohesion
and discipline. 56
Enlisted recruits are required to adopt a submissive posture by addressing
themselves in low- ranking third person (“This recruit requests permission
to . . .”). Only if they successfully endure the physical and mental
tests imposed on them will they have the privilege of calling themselves
“Marines.” Slips of address are harshly reprimanded. E. B. Sledge remembers
his World War II–era DI booming, “Your soul may belong to Jesus,
but your ass belongs to the Marines. You people are recruits. You’re not
Marines. You may not have what it takes to be Marines.” 57 Young men and
women who successfully run this gauntlet are preconditioned by Marine
Corps advertising (“Maybe you can be one of us!” 58 ) and their American
sense of Marine Corps elitism for the emotional peak of the transformative
moment. In 1976 the Gazette selected an essay among the many submitted
to “represent what we believe many Marines feel on the 201st anniversary”
of the Corps. In it, Gy.Sgt. John H. Lofland III captures familiar Marine
sentiments at the conclusion of boot camp:
My esprit de corps, superciliousness, if you prefer, began at “boot
camp,” or Marine recruit training. There I was treated with contempt,
marched a thousand miles, put through a million drilled