[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 160 (Thursday, November 13, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12523-S12524]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE MARINE CORPS' 222D BIRTHDAY
Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, Monday, November 10, was the 222d birthday
of the U.S. Marine Corps. That day is celebrated by marines, and former
marines, wherever they are, wherever they may go.
Last year, on the Marine Corps birthday, I was on a plane with our
minority leader and several other Senators, on a trip to the Far East.
We were on our way to visit Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. We
had just left Japan, and I was sitting there with my wife, Annie, when
I remembered that it was the Marine Corps birthday. Because it is a
ritual for marines to celebrate their birthday, no matter where they
are, I told Annie that I was going back to the galley to get something
to be our Marine Corps birthday cake. I know this may sound silly to
some people, but to marines, it does not sound silly at all.
So, right as I was getting ready to head back to the galley, other
people on the flight started gathering around where we were sitting. It
turned out that they also had remembered how important this day was to
me, and my fellow marines. Not only did they know what the 10th of
November was, they had brought a cake along with them. It was a
beautiful cake and was decorated with the Marine Corps emblem. So
probably like a lot of other isolated marines in the world, we had our
own party. It was a very memorable celebration.
This year I had the chance to participate in the Marine Corps
birthday ball here in Washington, at the Marine Barracks. Once again,
we had a wonderful celebration.
The corps remains proud of the role it has played in the history of
our country--as the 911 force, the emergency force that is always
available when requirements dictate that the most best is needed now.
The Marine Corps remains unique to the other services, in the respect
that it has all elements of supporting arms in one unit. It has
supplies for 60 days of combat. It has infantry, air, armor, and
artillery. It has all the elements wrapped up in one unit, necessary to
go in and be a very tough, hard-hitting organization for a short period
of time.
This was vividly illustrated in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm.
The Marine Corps came in with two divisions, completely equipped, and
set up a blocking position, to give our other forces time to build up--
a build up that over a several-month period came to number over 520,000
Americans.
This was typical of the role that the U.S. Marine Corps has played as
the ready force. And there isn't a Marine unit in existence that does
not have some of its expeditionary gear, some of its combat equipment
boxed and ready to go now and move within hours. If the Marine Corps
ever loses that kind of readiness, I believe it will have lost its
reason for being.
So in their 222d year of existence, the marines continue to celebrate
the traditions of the Marine Corps. They honor and remember the
sacrifices of marines who fought in places like Belleau Wood,
Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Bougainville, Iwo Jima, Pork Chop Hill and the
Chosen Reservoir, and Khe Sanh.
One thing that has remained the same though out the Marines history,
and something that I am proud of, is in the way in that the Marine
Corps recruits people. The Marine Corps recruits people to serve. They
do not recruit on a promise of ``Here's what is good for you, or here's
what you'll get out of it yourself'', they recruit by asking the
question, ``Are you good enough to serve your country?'' And it is
here, and later where they are trained, that the attitudes required to
prepare them for battle, are instilled. It calls for each person to
devote themselves to a purpose bigger than themselves, a purpose to
each other, a purpose to the unit, a purpose to the corps, and a
purpose to this country of ours.
This was well spelled out in a Parade magazine article last Sunday,
November 9. This article said so much about the training that is going
on in the Marine Corps today, training that continues to be updated
from one war to the next.
This article was not written by some Marine Corps public relations
person, it was written by Thomas E. Ricks, a writer for the Wall Street
Journal. Mr Ricks starts out in the first part of this article by
saying, ``What is it about the Marine Corps that makes it so successful
in transforming teenage boys and girls into responsible, confident men
and women? He goes on to show how ordinary ``Beavises and Butt-heads''
can be molded into effective leaders. And he says of himself, ``I
majored in English literature at Yale, and, like everybody with whom I
grew up and went to school with, I have no military experience. Yet I
learned things at Parris Island that fascinated me.''
He talks about ``Lessons From Parris Island'' that are instilled into
these young people coming into the Marine Corps which are--first,
``Tell the truth;'' second, ``Do your best, no matter how trivial the
task;'' third, ``Choose the difficult right over the easy wrong;''
fourth, ``Look out for the group before you look out for yourself;''
fifth, ``Don't whine or make excuses;'' and, sixth, ``Judge others by
their actions and not their race.''
By my way of thinking, those are some pretty good objectives for
anybody in our society to follow. And they are the building blocks that
are instilled in all U.S. Marines as they go through boot camp.
Mr. President, I will not read this whole article this morning. I ask
unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[[Page S12524]]
A Few Good Truths
(By Thomas E. Ricks)
what we can learn from them
On a hot night in 1992, on my first deployment as a
Pentagon reporter, I went on patrol in Mogadishu, Somalia,
with a squad of Marines led by a 22-year-old corporal. Red
and green tracer bullets cut arcs across the dark sky. It was
a confusing and difficult time. Yet the corporal led the
patrol with a confidence that was contagious.
Ever since that night, I had wanted to see how the Marine
Corps turns teenage Americans into self-confident leaders. At
a time when the nation seems distrustful of its teenage
males--when young black men especially, and wrongly, are
figures of fear for many--the military is different. It isn't
just that it has done a better job than the larger society in
dealing with drug abuse and racial tension--even though that
is true. It also seems to be doing a better job of teaching
teenagers the right away to live than does, say, the average
American high school. And it thrives while drawing most of
its personnel from the bottom half of our society, the half
that isn't surfing the information superhighway.
I wanted to see how the Marines could turn an
undereducated, cynical teenager into that young soldier, who,
on his second night in Africa, could lead a file of men
through the dark and dangerous city. How could a kid we would
not trust to run the copier by himself back in my office in
Washington become the squad leader addressing questions that
could alter national policy: Do I shoot at this threatening
mob in a Third World city? Do I fire when a local police
officer points his weapon in my direction? If I am performing
a limited peacekeeping mission, do I stop a rape when it
occurs 50 yards in front of my position?
To find out how the Marines give young Americans the values
and self-confidence to make those decisions, I decided to go
to Marine boot camp. I went not as a recruit but as an
observer. I come from the post-draft generation. I majored in
English literature at Yale, and, like everybody with whom I
grew up and went to school, I have no military experience.
Yet I learned things at Parris Island that fascinated me--and
should interest anyone who cares about where our youth are
going. In a society that seems to have trouble transmitting
healthy values, the Marines stand out as a successful
institution that unabashedly teaches those values to the
Beavises and Butt-heads of America.
I met Platoon 3086 on a foggy late winter night in 1995
when its bus arrived on Parris Island, S.C. I followed the
recruits intermittently for their 11 weeks on the island,
then during their first two years in the Marine Corps.
The recruits arrived steeped in the popular American
culture of consumerism and individualism. To a surprising
degree, before joining the Corps, they had been living part-
time lives--working part-time, going to community college
part-time (and getting lousy grades) and staying dazed on
drugs and alcohol part-time. When they arrived on Parris
Island, all that was taken away from them. They were stripped
of the usual distractions, from television and music to cars
and candy. They even lost the right to refer to themselves as
``I'' or ``me.'' When one confused recruit did so during the
first week of boot camp, Sgt. Darren Carey, the platoon's
``heavy hat'' disciplinarian, stomped his foot on the cement
floor and shouted, ``You got on the wrong bus, cause there
ain't no I, me, my's or I's here!''
On Parris Island, for every waking moment during the next
11 weeks, they were immersed in a new, very different world.
For the first time in their lives, many encountered absolute
standards: Tell the truth. Don't give up. Don't whine. Look
out for the group before you look out for yourself. Always do
your best--even if you are just mopping the floor, you owe it
to yourself and your comrades to strive to be the best mopper
at this moment in the Corps. Judge others by their actions,
not their words or their race.
The drill instructors weren't interested in excuses. Every
day, they transmitted the lesson taught centuries ago by the
ancient Greek, philosophers: Don't pursue happiness; pursue
excellence. Make a habit of that, and you can have a
fulfilling life.
These aren't complex ideas, but to persuade a cynical
teenager to follow them, they must be painstakingly pursued
every day--lived as well as preached. I have seen few people
work as hard as did Platoon 3086's drill instructors in the
first few weeks they led the platoon. Sergeant Carey, an
intense young reconnaissance specialist from Long Island,
routinely put in 17 hours a day, six and half days a week.
His ability to drive himself at full speed all day long awed
and inspired his charges. Recruit Paul Bourassa said of his
drill instructor. ``When you're gone 16 hours, and you're
wiped out, and you see him motoring, you say to yourself,
`I've go to tap into whatever he has.' ''
Sergeant Carey clearly wasn't doing it for the money. He
was paid $1775 a month--a figure that worked out to about the
minimum wage. Of course, the wages were nearly irrelevant.
The recruits learned that money isn't the measure of a man,
that a person's real wealth is in his character. One of the
funniest moments I saw in boot camp came when Sergeant Carey
was lecturing the platoon on the importance of knowledge.
``Knowledge is what?'' he bellowed.
``Power, sir,'' responded the platoon.
``Power is what?'' he then asked.
That puzzled the platoon. Faces scrunched up in thought.
Eventually one recruit hazarded a guess: ``Money?''
Sergenat Carey was dumbfounded to find such a civilian
attitude persisting is his platoon. ``No!'' he shouted.
``Power is VICTORY!'' (Then, in a whispered aside, he added,
``I swear, I'm dealing with aliens.'')
The drill instructors didn't try to make their recruits
happy. They tried to push the members of the platoon harder
than they'd ever been pushed, to make them go beyond their
own self-imposed limits. Nearly all the members of the
platoon cried at one time or another. Yet by the end of 11
weeks almost all had been transformed by the experience--and
were more fulfilled than they had ever been. They had
subordinated their needs to those of the group, yet almost
all emerged with a stronger sense of self. They
unembarrassedly used words like ``integrity.''
I learned more than I expected. One of my favorite moments
came when Sergeant Carey ordered a white supremacist from
Alabama to share a tent in the woods with a black gang member
from Washington, D.C. The drill instructor's message to the
recruits was clear: If you two are going to be in the Marine
Corps, you are going to have to learn to live with each
other. Recruits Jonathan Prish and Earnest Winston Jr. became
friends during that bivouac. ``We stuck up for each other
after that,'' Prish said.
The recruits generally seemed to find race relations less
of an issue at boot camp than in the neighborhoods they'd
left behind. If America were more like the Marines, argued
Luis Polanco-Medina, a recruit from New Jersey, ``there would
be less crime, less racial tension among people, because
Marine Corps discipline is also about brotherhood.''
Two other things surprised me. I didn't hear a lot of
profanity. Once notoriously foul-mouthed, today's drill
instructors generally are forbidden to use obscenities. Also,
I saw very little brutality. ``I expected it to be tougher,''
said recruit Edward Linsky, in a typical comment as he sat on
his footlocker.
Platoon 3086 graduated into the Marine Corps in May 1995
and became part of a family that includes 174,000 active-duty
members and 2.1 million veterans (there really is no such
thing as an ``ex-Marine''). Over the last two years, members
of the platoon have experienced some disappointments. But as
Paul Bourassa concluded a year after graduating from boot
camp, ``It pretty much is a band of brothers.''
What I think the Marine Corps represents is counterculture,
but the Marines are rebels with a cause. With their emphasis
on honor, courage and commitment, they offer a powerful
alternative to the loneliness and distrust that seem so
widespread, especially among our youth.
Any American--young or old, pro- or anti-military--can
learn something from today's Corps. That goes for the
corporation as well as the individual. Just listen to Maj.
Stephen Davis describe his approach to leadership:
``Concentrate on doing a single task as simply as you can,
execute it flawlessly, take care of your people and go
home.'' Those steps offer an efficient way to run any
organization.
I took away a lot from boot camp myself. I don't talk to my
own kids like a drill instructor (and neither do thoughtful
drill instructors). But I was struck by the importance of the
example the DIs provided: Kids want values, but they are
rightly suspicious of talk without action. So while you need
to talk to kids about values, your words will be meaningless
unless you live them as well. Also, of all the things that
can motivate people, the pursuit of excellence is one of the
most effective--and one of the least used in our society.
None of this is a revelation. Lots of families live by
these standards. But few of our public institutions seem to.
``You'd see the drill instructors teach kids who barely made
it through high school that they weren't stupid that they
could do things if they had the right can-do attitude,''
summarized Charles Lees of Platoon 3086. ``It was all the
things you should learn growing up but, for some reason,
society de-emphasizes.''
The white supremacist and the black gang member who were
thrown together in boot camp both went on to happy careers in
the Corps. Earnest Winston Jr., the D.C. gangbanger, became a
specialist in the recovery of aircraft making emergency
landings and was posted to Japan. ``It's beautiful,'' he told
me. ``Not a lot of people on my block get to go places like
these.'' His friend Jonathan Prish, the Alabaman, became a
guard near the American Embassy in London, Prish had his
racist tattoos covered. ``I've left all that behind,'' he
said. ``You go out and see the world, and you see there are
cool people in all colors.''
____
Lessons From Parris Island
Tell the truth.
Do your best, no matter how trivial the task.
Choose the difficult right over the easy wrong.
Look out for the group before you look out for yourself.
Don't whine or make excuses.
Judge others by their actions not their race.
____________________