CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Some 500 recruits from India Company, 3rd Recruit Training Battalion, are on a fast-paced, single-file, 5-mile march over dusty, weed-choked hills.
Each recruit — average age 19 — carries a 60-pound pack on his back, an 8-pound rifle in his hands and a desire in his heart to become a Marine. Key to achieving that dream is their drill instructor, the DI.
Within a mile, feet hurt, faces flush, backs ache and lungs burn. Still, their DIs demand that the recruits push on. A recruit complains that he can’t breathe. “YOU’RE TALKING AREN’T YOU?” a DI shoots back.
The recruits might not yet realize it, but a long-established bonding process is underway between them and their DIs. It can forge a bond so strong that when former drill instructor Sgt. Jerrod Glass recently was convicted on eight counts of breaking Marine rules that prohibit hitting recruits, some of those he allegedly abused remained loyal to him and denounced the jury’s verdict that will boot him from the corps.
The DI-recruit bond evolves slowly, not just from all the yelling but because the DIs do everything the recruits do, only better.
During the 5-mile march, the drill instructors carry the same packs and trudge the same hills but, remarkably, aren’t even breathing heavily. As the recruits get dirtier and sweatier, the DIs barely crease their uniforms.
Some of the DIs run up the hills backward as the recruits struggle forward. DIs seem to speak in capital letters, stretching vowels for emphasis.
“TIIIGHTER, TIIIGHTER, TIIIGHTER.”
“IF THE RECRUIT IN FRONT OF YOU FALLS OUT, DO NOT STOP, GO AROUND HIM.”
Unquestioned authority
At the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, a poster adorning office walls shows a steely-eyed DI wearing the broad-brimmed hat that in the Marine Corps bestows unquestioned authority. Not even generals wear the “campaign cover” of a DI.
Beneath the image is a caption: “Believe It or Not, I’m the First Guy You’ll Want to See When You Graduate.”
And they often do, sometimes in grateful tears.
Those recruits who finish the 13-week process and become Marines will fill out a questionnaire about which DI they think did the best job.
Sometimes it’s the senior DI, who does less yelling and plays the father role, hearing complaints and offering tough-love consolation when homesickness, tired muscles and personal turmoil take their toll. But more frequently the recruits pick the more junior drill instructors, including the feared “kill-hat,” whose job is to reinforce the lessons of the other DIs by meting out punishment.
“You’ll forget your third-grade teacher, but you’ll never forget your DI,” said Sgt. David Washington, who became a drill instructor to emulate his own DI.
“The recruits’ relationship with DIs may seem weird,” said Staff Sgt. Chris Lopez, a chief drill instructor. “At the beginning, they think we’re Satan’s sons. But slowly it changes, as the DI becomes a teacher, a mentor.”
Most of the drill instructors have been to Iraq. Some, like Glass, have earned the Combat Action Ribbon, showing that they’ve been under enemy fire and responded appropriately.
“I’m as hard on them as I can be,” said Staff Sgt. Jason Zeise, who has done two tours in Iraq. “But at the same time, I still have to teach then. … My recruits know they’re not going to get away with anything. They’re allowed to make mistakes, but they can’t make a mistake more than once — twice at most.”
To recruits, pleasing the seemingly unpleaseable DI is their entryway, as they see it, into manhood and an elevated status above their buddies back home. And that explains why the recruits in India Company respond so quickly to the latest yelling.
“LET’S GET IT MOVING,” a DI barks when a five-minute break ends. “WE’RE JOCKSTRAPS AND VIKING HELMETS, RIGHT?”
“AYE-AYE, SIR,” the recruits shout as they spring to their feet.
New rule: No bad language
Former Marines connected to the Glass court-martial expressed astonishment, even disgust, that the corps would punish a DI for what they viewed as trivial transgressions. Larry Bangert remembered his DIs from boot camp in 1966.
“I think I had a knot on the back of my head for 10 years from (one) thumping me every time for not holding my rifle straight,” he said. “They thumped us, kicked us, called us names.”
After surviving 15 months in Vietnam, including the Tet offensive, Bangert met his DI tormentor back at Camp Pendleton. Bangert remembers thanking him, “You really made boot camp hard, and I respect you for it.”
The current crop of DIs and the Marines who run the drill instructor school at Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego smile respectfully at stories like Bangert’s and say, basically, that was then, this is now.
At the 11-week drill instructor school, students study the standard operating practices manual for boot camp. Touching a recruit is allowed only in certain cases — to prevent injury or straighten a recruit’s uniform, for example. Degrading nicknames or homophobic or racial slurs are now banned. Obscenities are heavily discouraged.
Of 485 drill instructors at the depot, 44 in the last three years have been charged with recruit abuse. Most were counseled or punished through an administrative process. Before Glass, only two went to court-martial; two others left the Marine Corps to avoid a trial.
Only Marines who have been recommended by their commanders, have passed a screening for post-traumatic stress disorder and have no major marital problems are allowed to enroll in drill instructor school. All have at least one enlistment under their belts. Gunnery Sgt. Charles Joseph, who did three years as DI, said the secret is “getting into each kid’s head, making him want to change, want to grow.” Once a DI can do that, he said, “you become the Zen master of the drill field.”
A DI is taught to teach recruits in the manner prescribed by the Marine Corps, not to substitute his own methods, even if he’s a decorated combat veteran. Some of the DI students have trouble with the concept.
About 15 percent of the DI students wash out. Instructors quickly zero in on the students who aren’t cut out for the job. Or as Capt. James Philpot, director of the school, colorfully put it: “If they’re faking the funk, we’re going to I.D. them.”
Philpot said he does not understand how Glass went from being the honor graduate of his DI class to being convicted of abusing two dozen recruits by hitting them, destroying their property and making them drink water until they vomited.
“Believe me, Glass is going to become a case study” at drill instructor school. “What went wrong?” Philpot said.
A military jury sentenced Glass to six months in the brig and a bad-conduct discharge. Two more experienced drill instructors are charged with lesser offenses. A third DI was demoted. Two officers assigned to supervise all four DIs in the platoon were relieved of duty and reassigned, their careers probably ruined.
It was the biggest case of recruit abuse in decades at the recruit depot, which graduates 20,000 a year as Marines. The training is done at the depot and at Camp Pendleton.
There to help
In recent years, the boot camp curriculum has been modified to include topics like suicide prevention. But like much of the Marine Corps, the bonding process remains unchanged.
Larry Smith, author of “The Few and the Proud: Marine Corps Drill Instructors in Their Own Words,” notes that recruits, by enlisting, have decided to “step abruptly away from high school indulgence and adolescence into an entirely new world.”
“In most cases,” Smith added, “they figure out that the tough-guy stance is a bit of a pose and the drill instructor is actually there to help them succeed.”
When India Company’s march is complete, the DIs give the bedraggled recruits a few minutes to shower and 20 minutes for lunch. The regimen that afternoon will include martial arts and weapons training.
As he waits in the chow line, recruit Steven Golden, 19, of Chicago is asked about boot camp and the high-decibel, close-range instruction.
“It just makes me want to push forward and do the best to make my platoon look the best,” he says, adding quickly, “and make my senior drill instructor proud, as well as my other drill instructors.”
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