Look back, look ahead

With Josh and his platoon a few days into Phase II of Marine Corps boot camp, let’s take a look at what he and the other recruits in his platoon have experienced to this point and what they’ll face in the weeks ahead.

Follow the link below to the MCRD boot camp matrix, with Josh as the tour guide.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN2IQA3tyIg

Pack up, we're headed out

Today was moving day for Josh and the other recruits in his platoon. They have called MCRD home for a little more than a month, and now they’re at Camp Pendleton as Phase I of boot camp comes to an end.

As of Monday, the platoon was 80 recruits strong – down six from where it started in July. There could be any number of reasons for the decline.
A severe enough injury, for example, may force a recruit to drop from one platoon, then after he has recovered he would be recycled into another one to pick up training where he left off and, of course, he would then have a later graduation date.

I don’t know the current attrition rate for Marine Corps boot camp. In “Making the Corps,” which was written in 1997, Thomas Ricks wrote that the dropout rate was 14 percent – double that of the Army at the time. The latest figures
I could find from the Department of Defense puts it at 11.7 percent as of 2006. In any event, Josh’s platoon could expect to lose a couple more members and still be within those averages. Hopefully, he will not be
one of them.

The first 23 training days have presented one challenge after another. Each and every recruit in the platoon has been tested both physically and mentally. And as a group, they have excelled. One week ago, on Training Day 17, eight platoons dressed in neat, clean cammies and performed drill movements with M16 rifles in front of judges. Josh’s platoon finished second.

There have been times, many of them, actually, when Josh wishes he was anywhere else – even Army boot camp! At MCRD, the days have been long, the training has been intense, and many recruits have been sick. Going in, Josh knew what he was in for, but with everything coming full force and all at once, perhaps it may have been a little more than he expected.

Still, at the end of the day, he’s right where he wants to be. More than once he has written, “I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this!”

And sometimes, there have been unexpected bonuses. “One thing that I’ve been blessed with is the coolest view from my rack,” Josh wrote in his most recent letter. “At night, I can see the San Diego skyscrapers, fireworks at Sea World, and planes taking off from the airport!”

Tonight, there are different views at Camp Pendleton.

The will to fight

While this is the end of Swim Week, Josh didn’t spend all of it in the pool.

The recruits in his platoon were scheduled to spend Thursday, one month to the day after leaving for boot camp, fighting each other with pugil sticks (heavily padded poles used to simulate rifle and bayonet combat). Each recruit wears a football helmet for this training, which is described as the most intense physical combat they have ever experienced.

“They will have to learn to act despite fear. It is a crucial step in their transformation from civilian to warrior,” says a Marine Corps website.

There are three stages for this training. During the first, recruits learn safety precautions; for the second, which was scheduled to take place this week, recruits fight on wooden bridges 2½ feet above the ground; and during the third round (scheduled for these recruits in late September), bouts are conducted in simulated trenches and confined spaces.

To the Marines, pugil fighting is important because the video game generation is arriving at boot camp overflowing with passivity. Pugil events are seen as a test of the fighting spirit of each recruit, wrote Thomas E. Ricks in “Making the Corps,” a detailed look at one platoon’s journey through boot camp at Parris Island.

Josh has spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours sitting in front of the television playing video games – probably just like nearly all of the other
79 recruits in his platoon. While each generation of games depicts aggression and violence more realistically than the previous one, it’s doubtful any of these guys has personally experienced the level of violence they have during some of the past 22 training days.

Besides fighting with pugil sticks, the recruits have gone through the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program, which combines unarmed fighting techniques from various martial arts with armed techniques designed for combat.

Josh, along with every recruit in his platoon, is required to develop skills in several areas: bayonet techniques, upper and lower body strikes, basic chokes and throws, defensive counters and responsible use of force. Demonstrating proficiency in all of those areas will earn him a tan belt, and going forward he will be able to advance through five colored belt levels as he strengthens those skills.

The training obviously made an impression on him. “We have learned a lot of MCMAP techniques that I pray to God I’ll never have to use,” he wrote in a recent letter.

I’m not sure how Josh did this week with the pugil sticks, but I do know that he aced this week’s challenge in the pool – which earned him a phone card for a five-minute call home.

In the swim of things

Josh and the other 80-plus recruits in his platoon woke up this morning to start their fourth week of training. Up to this point, they’ve learned about first aid, Marine Corps history and ethics. They’ve battled each other with pugil sticks, gone through combat conditioning, run circuit and obstacle courses, and much more.

Today, the 18th day of training, or T18, brings a new set of challenges. Assuming the training matrix is being followed, this is the first day of Swim Week and combat water survival – essentially, learning how to stay afloat in full combat gear. It’s a necessary skill to have because Marines are transported by ship and aircraft, and there’s no telling when lessons such as these will come in handy, even on a battlefield in landlocked Afghanistan.

At a young age, Josh learned how to swim – an extremely important skill for everyone to master. When I was a wee lad – and I don’t recall how old, but likely before I entered kindergarten – I nearly drowned in the pool at the apartments here in Southern California where my family lived at the time.

I survived, of course, and learned how to swim. And much later, when I was a couple of years younger than Josh is now, I was on an AAU swim team with plans to be the next Mark Spitz. While that never worked out, too many boys and girls never have the opportunity to even think about pursuing their dreams. Nearly 300 kids in this country have drowned since Memorial Day, according to a report last night on ABC’s “World News Sunday.” Such a tragedy.

But I digress. I’m confident Josh will do well in the pool at MCRD. Before entering boot camp, he wanted to score a first class in the swim qualification. This week, possibly, is when he finds out if he achieves that goal.

Brass tacks

Not sure if the recruits in Josh’s platoon were even aware of this, but Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego hosted a high-profile visitor Friday: Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

During a two-day visit to San Diego, Gates also toured the destroyer Higgins at San Diego Naval Base, visited the San Diego Naval Medical Center at Balboa Park and a class of Navy SEAL recruits in Coronado.

While at MCRD, Gates served as the parade reviewing officer for a company of 196 new Marines, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. (One of the newspaper’s photographers, David Brooks, shot the photo above.) Gates also watched recruits during their combat training (was Josh one of them?). Some were able to have their photos taken with the Defense secretary.

Gates has ordered a Force Structure Review for the Marines, which likely will result in a smaller Corps. There are 202,000 Marines, as a result of the ground combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, up from 175,000. The future size of the force has yet to be determined – and, by mid-October, if all goes well, Josh will be one of them.

“It takes uncommon patriotism to join the military in a time of war,” Gates said at MCRD. “For my part, I will do all I can to see that you have everything you need to accomplish your mission and come home safely, because I feel a deep personal responsibility for every one of you, as if you were my own sons.”

Fritz said it would be like this

One difference between boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, and at MCRD in San Diego: the weather.

Looking at the 10-day forecast for both locations finds that the high at Parris Island will in the upper 80s or low 90s every day during that time. On Thursday, for example, the predicted high is 93 with 71 percent humidity — pushing the heat index over 100 — with a chance of thunderstorms.

The highest temperature in San Diego during that same period will come on Monday when it will be 72 degrees and mostly sunny.

'L' is for letter

I’ve heard many times that writing letters is becoming a lost art form thanks to e-mail and texting. Generally that observation has come from people born before the Carter administration, and, unfortunately for the U.S. Postal Service, I believe it’s true.

So it’s with that thought that we received two letters last week from Josh.

The first was a brief form letter that opened with this: “I have arrived at MCRD San Diego and have been placed in my training Platoon. I am fine and in good health.”

The second was a little more revealing in terms of what boot camp is like for Josh. “Life is crazy here,” he wrote. “Sometimes the yelling gets really annoying, because it goes on all day, but I think it builds our lungs so it is good. … Eating here is insane – it is very fast and it is kind of undescribable.”

From what I understand, the Marine Corps is the only branch of the U.S. military that limits the ways that recruits in boot camp can communicate with friends and family back home. No phone calls (except the first night and on rare occasions afterwards), no e-mail, no texting; just letters.

I can certainly see the value in that, because it’s another way of separating the recruits from their past lives so they can focus on their primary task during boot camp: accomplishing what they need to so they can become Marines.

Back in the day, Josh’s great-grandmother would regularly send multi-page letters – each line of the tablet-sized paper filled with information about family goings-on in Kansas. My mother would respond likewise with the latest from California.

And while I’ve made a large part of my living as a writer, I have not been one to write lengthy letters. Instead, I’ve preferred the instant response that’s possible through a phone call. Still do.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy sending and receiving letters. I have truly appreciated each correspondence from Josh, and I’ve never been as excited about receiving a form letter as I was last week.

There’s a lot to be said for e-mail and texting, but they’ll never match a letter. You really do get a lot for that 44-cent stamp.