"Said it better than I can"
That sweet Drill Instructor
Atlanta Journal and Constitution July 27, 2000 Pg. 2JI By Jim Minter For the Journal-Constitution
The notion that some things never change has gone out the window in the 21st century. Everything changes. If you don't believe it, look what's happening in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and even in the Marines. According to a story in USA Today, basic training has gone to what amounts to social promotions in public schools. Everybody graduates. The new Army is bending over backward to help sad-sack trainees. Instead of being thrown to the mercy of tough old sergeants, recruits who arrive too soft and flabby for regular training get an easier course. The nervous and fearful get counseling to calm them down. A Fort Jackson, S.C., colonel says virtually anyone can get through the eight to 12 weeks of boot camp. Even at Parris Island, home of the legendary and merciless Marine DI, rules have changed. "Drill instructors are there for inspiration," explains a brigadier general, a definition that must perplex thousands of Corps veterans. Another staple of boot camp gone with the wind is the tough leather, hard- sole combat boot. Recruits are specially fitted with running shoes. A Navy officer quoted by USA Today points out that few recruits have worn boots or even hard-sole shoes in civilian life. "If you want to know why young people get shin splints and blisters in training all you have to do is look on the street or go to church on Sunday," he says. "Everybody is wearing Nikes." The reasons the services have gone soft on boot camp is obvious. The washout rate under the old system was leaving the ranks unfilled. Females were dropping out at a rate of 29 percent. The news that this generation of recruits isn't up to the mental and physical rigors of their fathers and grandfathers ought to raise a red flag about lifestyles in these easy and unhappy times, especially as they apply to young folks who, after television, get their only exercise by cruising shopping malls. I'm not sure if we could have gotten an army in the field in time to head off Hitler and Tojo if World War II boot camps had included specially fitted running shoes and anxiety counseling. When the World War II draft began a lot of boys and young men were found to be in poor physical condition, but many more were like my farm-boy neighbors. After getting up long before daylight to milk the cows and do chores, they were pleased to find they got to sleep late in boot camp. By their standards. During the Korean War my job was running a basic training company at Camp Rucker. It was a lucky but undistinguished assignment. While my friends and schoolmates were off shooting and getting shot at I spent the war "shoveling sand in Alabama," to paraphrase Gen. Patton. My company sent three cycles through the 12-week course under the old rules. That's over 500 recruits. Only one had to be washed out, that for a mental condition. Some arrived fat and flabby. All were nervous and scared. I recall a young fellow from Pennsylvania caught with a jaw full of chewing tobacco during an after-breakfast inspection. His sergeant ordered him to swallow the tobacco and not get sick when he did. He swallowed and didn't get sick. In those 12 weeks miracles occurred. The fat ones got lean, the goof-offs turned proud. They all went home with new self-esteem. I hope kinder and gentler boot camps aren't shortchanging our young men and women in the service. The old style worked pretty well. Thousands of veterans call it the most valuable experience of their lives. Despite tough old sergeants who showed no mercy, someone --- a fellow recruit, or sometimes one of the tough old sergeants --- was there to prop up those having trouble. Every company had kids who needed help, and usually they got it. The little fellow from Virginia was an example. He wasn't much of a physical specimen, had trouble staying in step, and one night crawled the wrong way on the infiltration course. We could have washed him out, but everybody pitched in and nudged him along, even though the Army didn't have special courses. At the end of basic training, he was given non-combat assignment in Alaska. He protested. He wanted to go to Korea, to prove something to himself and his family, he said. I told him orders couldn't be changed. A week later, I was taking a Sunday afternoon nap when I heard a knock on my door. It was the kid from Virginia. "I hope you won't be angry," he said. " I got my orders changed to Korea." I was stunned. "How did you do that?" I asked. "I got Uncle Max to change them when I was home on furlough," he said. "Who in the hell is Uncle Max?" I asked. "Uncle Maxwell Taylor," he said. Uncle Max was Gen. Maxwell Taylor, World War II hero, chief of staff of the U.S. Army. Under interrogation, he let me in on several other family secrets. One brother was a West Point graduate, another enrolled in the Naval Academy. His father commanded the Navy base at Norfolk. He didn't want to be the black sheep. I was glad we didn't wash him out.
The Marine Corps and Psychotherapy
Tell you what; I've had it with whiners. Further, if I hear the phrase "self-esteem" again, I'm going to kill something. It'll happen. Just wait. Some New Age, psychotherapeutically babbling little parsnip is going to gurgle to me about how arduous his life is, when he probably doesn't have a life to begin with, and about how its somebody else's fault, probably mine, and his self-esteem is all bruised and rancid and has warts on it. And I'm going to stuff him into a concrete mixer. No, wait. I've got a better idea. I'll pack him off instead to Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, in the festering mosquito swamps of South Carolina. I spent a summer there long ago, in a philosophy battalion. All battalions at PI are philosophy battalions. The chief philosopher was named Sergeant Cobb, and he was rough as one. His philosophy was that at oh-dark-thirty we should leap up like spring-loaded jackrabbits when he threw the lid of a GI can down the squad bay. Then, he figured we should spend the day at a dead run, except when we were learning such socially useful behavior as shooting someone at five hundred yards. He didn't care whether we wanted to do these things. He didn't care whether we could do them. We were going to do them. And we did. The drill instructors had a sideline in therapy. They did attitude adjustment. If the urge to whine overcame any of us, Sergeant Cobb took his attitude tool - it was a size-twelve boot on the end of his right leg-and made the necessary adjustments. It was wonderful therapy. It put us in touch with our feelings. We felt like not whining any more. I kid about it, but it really was philosophy. We learned that there are things you have to do. We learned that we could generally do them. We also learned, if we didn't already know, that whimpering is humiliating. The Marine view of life, which would eradicate American politics in about three seconds if widely applied, was simple: Solve your problems, live with them, or have the grace to shut up about them. Can you imagine what this would do to the talk-show racket? Fat housewife to Oprah: "My...I just won't...being so...heavy hurts my self-esteem." Oprah: "So stop sniveling and eat less. Next."The Corps believed in personal responsibility. If your life had turned into a landfill, it might be somebody else's fault. Maybe existence had dropped the green weenie on your plate. It happens. But the odds were that you had contributed to your own problems. Anyway, everybody gets a raw deal sometime. Life isn't a honeymoon in the Catskills. Deal with it. I remember a coffee mug in an armored company's day room: "To err is human, to forgive, divine. Neither of which is Marine Corps policy."
There's something to be said for it. Nowadays everybody's a self-absorbed victim, and self-respect and strength of character have become symptoms of emotional insufficiency. Oh, alas, a lack, sniffle, seek, squeak, the world's picking on me because I'm black, brown, ethnic, fat, female, funny-looking, dysfunctional, data functional, don't use deodorant, or can't get dates. And sensitive? Dear God. If people suffer the tiniest slight, they call for a support group and three lawyers. (Support groups. When I'm dictator, we'll use'm for bowling pins.) Whatever happened to grown-ups? It's incredible the things people whinny about. Go to the self-pity section of your bookstore. It's usually called "Self Help." You'll find books called things like, "The Agony of Hangnails: A Survivor's Guide." They will explain coping strategies, and assure you that you are still a good person, shredding digits and all. Other books will tell you that because you had an unhappy childhood (who didn't?) you are now an abused, pallid, squashed little larva, and no end pathetic. Other books will tell you how not to be toxic to your Inner Child. I'm writing a book now: "Dropping Your Inner Child down A Well.") We'd be better off if most people's inner children were orphans. I once sat in on somebody else's group-therapy session, which was concerned about the morbid condition of the patients' self-esteem. I didn't understand the rules of therapy, and said approximately, "Look, maybe if you folks stopped feeling sorry for yourselves and got a life, things might be better." I thought I was contributing an insight, but it turned out to be the wrong answer. The therapist, an earnest lady - all therapists seem to be earnest ladies - told me firmly, and with much disappointment in me, that this was No Laughing Matter. The patients' self-esteems were undergoing cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and I was suggesting that they get a life instead of picking at their psychic scabs. She reckoned I was pretty terrible.
Stuff'em into a concrete mixer, I say.
Simper Fi
DuckFoot
