Women recruits in boot camp reveal Marine Corps’ battle for its identity
Stretched
PA RRIS ISL A ND, S . C . » above the main boulevard on this historic training base in the MidAtlantic marsh is a white and black-lettered sign: WE MAKE MARINES.
The sign has been there for years, often serving as a snapshot backdrop for families arriving to watch their recruits graduate from boot camp after 13 weeks of mentally and physically exhausting training.
But in recent months, as lawmakers have pushed the Marine Corps to combine men and women in the same training platoons, just how the Corps will make Marines is the latest struggle for its identity.
The proposal to place men and women in the same platoons at boot camp, already well-practiced in other military branches but long resisted by the Marines, is only one part of the service’s move toward gender integration and follows the opening of combat arms schools and units to women.
The status quo at Parris Island and the Marines’ other recruit depot, in San Diego, has for years been a sort of psychic Alamo in the Corps.
Preserving what some Marines see as the sanctity of gender-segregated indoctrination is a final stand: an attempt to keep at bay a changing American society that threatens the very fabric of a force that regards itself as the nation’s toughest.
“This works,” Brig. Gen. James F. Glynn, the commanding officer of Parris Island, said of gender-segregated platoons in February, just weeks before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus temporarily paused a shipment of recruits to the island and left much of the military trying to combat the illness. “Anything outside of this is unknown.”
At Parris Island in the cold waning days of February, Jacob James, a 19-year-old recruit, eyed the rope bridge in front of him. It was the first day of the Crucible, the final 54-hour field exercise that signified the transition from recruit to Marine. For this obstacle, Jordan’s Crossing, named for a Silver Star recipient from the beginning of the Iraq War, James was in charge of 15 of his peers, both men and women. Their goal: move half a dozen 30pound ammunition cans across the bridge.
It was the first time the roughly 330 men and women in Bravo Company were forced to work and speak to one another with a shared aim of completing a goal. About 11 weeks of training had already passed.
The recruits had participated in other exercises, sometimes feet apart, practicing martial arts or on separate firing lines at the rifle range. But the proximity, aside from maybe a quiet greeting or question, meant little with their Smokey Bear hat-wearing drill instructors in constant orbit around them.
Now, for the Crucible, the recruits of Bravo Company were no longer in their platoons but were instead smashed into smaller units of both genders from the company.
James and his peers had been awake since 2 a.m. and had already hiked more than 12 miles. It was raining, windy and ferociously cold for a South Carolinian winter day. James laid out his plan to move the ammo cans: They would take a strand of cord connected to the cans, hang it over their necks and shuffle across the rope bridge.
Katelin Bradley, 19, standing in the huddled mass of her peers, raised her eyebrows. This did not sound like a good idea. She suggested attaching the cord connected to the cans to the rope bridge itself and pushing the load to the other side.
James pondered the idea and dismissed it. “The men are strong enough and can do it,” he said.
Bradley fell back into formation, taking her post on the edge of the obstacle, providing security from any possible, albeit fake, enemies.
The Marine Corps path to the brief disagreement between James and Bradley during the climactic event of their three months at boot camp has taken decades. Only a few years ago, as male and female recruits began training in closer proximity, cadres of drill instructors ensured that the recruits were forbidden to speak to one another under almost any circumstances.
In the early 2000s, male platoons were often told to turn around when a female platoon walked past to avoid looking at them. Urban legends of male recruits being kicked out of training for passing notes to a nearby woman during church were rampant.
Much has changed. Last year, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., inserted a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that was intended to ensure by law that the Marine Corps would integrate recruit training, down to the platoon level. But the vague language — “training at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina, may not be segregated based on gender” — left enough room for the Marine Corps to interpret the directive in its own manner.