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.