The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Identity and Role 63
acts of obedience, taunted with the fact that I volunteered, taught
to take aim on a twelve inch diameter target five hundred yards
away—and hit it. Then at the end of all of this it was hesitatingly
admitted that I just might make a Marine. To say I was seething
with pride at the successful accomplishment of “boot camp” would
be an understatement. 59
Becoming part of the Corps includes embracing, and being able to
reproduce, Marine Corps history. James Burk notes that “a diffuse but still
important, influence on military culture is the collective memory or imagination
of past war that is widely shared among members of the military
and is frequently relied on as a normative guide for behavior in the present.”
He cautions that “collective memories are not histories, characterized by
concern for detail and accuracy; they are symbolic constructions condensing
events to communicate their essential meaning simply and powerfully.” 60
Although T. R. Fehrenbach’s U.S. Marines in Action admits to being less
fact and more fable, he makes some rather good points about the utility of
studying legend in order to understand culture: “The story of the first century
of the United States Marines is as much composed of legend as of fact.
To say this is to do the Corps no disservice, for legend is as important to a
fighting organization as ever any fact. . . . Legends give them a code to live
by, a standard to measure up to.” 61 Terry Terriff agrees: “The history of a
military organization, whether of the organization itself or of specific historical
individual members, furnishes the primary source material that informs
understandings of self- identity. The narratives that constitute cultural identity,
however, are not always composed solely of history per se, for they may
mix historical fact with the apocryphal and the mythical.” 62
Marines take this to heart. Their “history” is their religion. 63 History is
not only taught in the classroom—it is woven into the discourse and formal
construction of all recruit training. For instance, each major requirement of
the “Crucible”—the brutal culminating event of recruit training—is dedicated
to, and framed around, a well- known Marine Corps Medal of Honor
recipient. 64 Marines of all ranks are consciously aware that members of
their Corps know and promote both service and unit history in a depth that
shames their sister services. 65 Some are even rather clear about why:
During [the boot camp] process, we all acquired a number of illusions,
all valuable. We all firmly believed that in its history, the
Marine Corps had never failed at anything, and that upon our
shoulders rested the awesome responsibility of upholding the most
spectacular military tradition known to man. This overall esprit de
corps may suffer in translation over the years, but the basic concept
remains the same: for all of us in the Marine Corps, attitude is a
weapon. 66