http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jul/23/marines-invite-educators-to-some-basic-training/
By Gretel C. Kovach
July 23, 2010
Sgt. Major Devon Lee stood in the early morning gloom at the Marine
Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, his arms crossed, a smile on his
face. "They're about to get the shock and awe right now," he said.
Inside two white buses parked in front of the reception building, San
Diego educators were getting their first introduction to life as a
Marine Corps recruit.
"Get off my bus! Your days of moving slowly are over!" the drill
instructor bellowed, his face red and veins bulging under his Old
Smokey campaign hat.
"Aye-aye, sir!" they roared as they scrambled out of the bus, some
stifling giggles.
The men and women stood on yellow footprints painted in orderly rows
on concrete, where the depot has been making Marines since 1923. But
instead of buzz cuts and pubescent pimples, these recruits had
graying beards and bald spots, paunches and pig-tailed hairdos.
This group of 66 teachers, counselors and administrators from the San
Diego, Los Angeles and Las Vegas areas was invited to spend a week,
all-expenses paid, visiting the depot and other San Diego County
Marine bases, to learn about basic training and Marine esprit de corps.
The Educator's Workshops are offered 12 times a year at the San Diego
depot, giving about 960 educators annually from western states a
chance to learn about the making of a Marine. (The boot camp at
Parris Island, S.C., hosts a comparable program for those east of the
Mississippi River.) Once a year, educators from the San Diego area
are invited to attend their workshop finished Friday with
attendance at the graduation ceremony of a platoon of new Marines.
The workshops started in the 1980s with the educators paying their
own way, before the Marines began funding it in 1997. The goal is to
inform educators who might need to advise students considering a
career in the Marine Corps. Those educators who are ignorant,
skeptical or even hostile toward the military are encouraged to
attend, the Marines said.
After the educators were allowed to sit down, Col. Carl F. Huenefeld,
chief of staff for the Western Recruiting Region and the Marine Corps
Recruit Depot in San Diego, said, "everybody, please relax!"
It may look like sadism. But all the hollering and bossing around at
boot camp is done for a reason, he said.
"That stuff is to communicate a sense of the transformation process,
of the kinds of things we have to do to snap that kid out of the
world they've been living in, which is very focused on what they
want, and get them thinking first like a group. Frankly, it is
stripping away some of the personality quirks," he said.
Later the recruits will be allowed to express their individuality
again, he said, once they have the tactical, leadership, and
organization skills to function as good, strong independent members
of a team. "We are not looking to train drones. They're not very good
on the battlefield."
Two-thirds of Marines serve only one enlistment, because the Corps
needs a constant churn of 18- to 23-year-old privates, Huenefeld
said: "That's what fights wars," not 57-year-old officers like himself.
But the Marines are having no trouble finding new leathernecks. In
fact, the military has been riding a recruitment boom despite the
ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In October the Pentagon announced that for the first time in more
than 35 years, all active duty, guard and reserve units of the
military met their annual recruiting goals. The economic recession
helped boost the numbers, as well as about $10,000 spent per recruit
on advertising and other overhead costs, and bonuses averaging about
$14,000 for 40 percent of recruits.
This year the budget for recruiting and re-enlistment bonuses is
dwindling, but the trend continues: in June, each branch met 100
percent of its recruiting goals.
Three years ago Congress authorized a growth in the size of the
active duty Marine Corps from 176,00 to 202,000. It was supposed to
take until 2012 to grow the force, but the Marines did it in 18
months, Huenefeld said.
The Marines, with their relatively smaller force, had been making
their enlistment goals before unemployment hit double digits,
Huenefeld noted. "It's not just that," he said. "I think it is
generational and an unfulfilled need to serve something bigger than
themselves."
As the wars wind down, the Marine Corps is expected to shrink in
size, and tighten enlistment standards further. As it stands, they
can afford to be choosy.
The western region sends about 17,000 recruits a year (about half the
Marine Corps total) to the San Diego depot, where about 7 percent to
10 percent wash out before graduation. Most months recruiters fill
their slots by the 15th.
Even the Army, which had dramatically lowered its recruiting
standards several years ago to accept more low test-scorers, the
overweight, and even felons, raised them again last year.
Student slackers who think they can turn to the Marine Corps as a
backstop are mistaken, Huenefeld warned the educators. Many young
people probably wouldn't be allowed into the Corps under today's
standards, he said. High school dropouts and drug addicts need not
apply. Numerous traffic tickets? Tattoos bigger than the palm of your
hand? Forget it.
Today the Marines want "the cream of the crop, the nation's
treasure," Huenefeld said.
Later that day the educators double-stepped to the chow hall, the
drill instructors barking the whole way, where the group dined with
some of the 5,800 recruits living at the depot during their 12 weeks
of training.
Recruit Eric Powell, 25, from San Diego, told his lunch mates, "I
would never consider being an officer. You need leaders in the
infantry too I consider myself perfect for that. I am a little
older, I don't want another desk job."
After hearing about the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, which gives veterans
almost twice as much in educational benefits, and allows them to
transfer benefits to their children or spouses, the reaction among
many of the educators was "wow."
In San Diego, some educators fought to keep military recruiters out
of career fairs, said Melissa Woods, a career case manager for San
Diego Unified School District. "It was a great disservice to the
kids. In an education setting, we should give them all the
information available about career options."
But Kevin Glynn, a Los Angeles teacher who retired as a Navy
commander in 2003, told the group they should not forget what the
military is really for. In this era, you don't join to go to school,
he said. "You join the military to go to war."
Despite his reservations, Glynn said that the program had been an
eye-opener. Today, the Marine Corps needs more than just trigger
pullers, he said. "No, you have to study your world history," he
planned to tell his students, "because you have to be culturally
sensitive and politically sensitive. There has to be a certain maturity level."
That more nuanced view was "mission accomplished" for the Marines
running the educator workshops. But they didn't overlook the warrior spirit.
As the day drew to a close, the educators, including some senior
citizens, divided into four-person fire assault teams. The Marines
helped them into battle gear, reminding them that the camouflage
blouse went on before the Kevlar vest. Then they cued the soundtrack.
As the rumble of tanks and explosions boomed over the bayonet course,
the educators sprinted from the tree line. Jeff Carpenter, a Rancho
Bernardo teacher, dove through a metal tunnel shouting "Aaagh" the
whole way. (His drill instructor had made them practice their war
cries each time a plane flew by from nearby Lindbergh Field.)
His team suffered an early casualty when one man went down short of
breath. But the others pushed on as ordered.
As a Marine yelled "kill the enemy!" Carpenter plunged his rubber
bayonet at the headless dummy swinging in the breeze.
Afterward, the exhausted educators huddled with Lee. "If we don't
show up tomorrow …?" one asked.
"Wrong answer!" Lee replied cheerfully. They won't leave the hotel
until everyone is on the bus. "We never leave a Marine behind."
--
Gretel C. Kovach: (619) 293-1293; gretel.kovach@uniontrib.com
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