I felt heat rush to my face. When I stepped up for my turn, I refused to use the ramp. The DIs didn’t seem to care. But they certainly didn’t encourage anyone else to avoid it. A few of my platoon mates followed my lead, but several didn’t, even though I knew they didn’t need that damn ramp.
As if the ramp wasn’t enough of an insult, women also had three minutes to finish the O-course, an extra sixty-second cushion that no one seemed bothered by but me. However, much to my surprise, I sometimes found myself deliberately slowing down as I ran through the course. I knew that I could go faster, but I was cautious, knowing I could catch an extra breath between obstacles if I needed to. I had no incentive to do my best.
It seemed our DIs were not of one mind about double standards in the Corps. During group conditioning, the DIs led us to the pull-up bar. Only five women in our platoon aside from me could knock them out. Most women struggled to do even one or two, the pain visible in their faces. Baughman was aghast, storming up and down our platoon of sweaty green bodies. I was relieved to have one arena where she left me alone.
Back at the barracks that evening, Baughman gathered us together. Her tone was deadly. She said that to earn respect in the Corps, we had to train to do twenty pull-ups, just like the men. Some of the women looked confounded, but I felt a sense of hope. Baughman was the first Marine I met who demanded that women excel.
• • •
The longer I lasted at Officer Candidate School, the more I realized women were expected to behave differently from men in the Marine Corps, in ways that had no bearing on our ability to defend the nation, and in some cases, working entirely against it. Hair regulations were one of the best examples of the Marine Corps’ gender dysfunction.
There was no shortage of male pride in the mandatory buzz cuts or “high and tights,” sheer above the ears and shaped ever so gently into peach fuzz on the top of the skull—but they were forbidden to women. One day, Peterson, who had blown her hip out in a previous class and come back ready to graduate or die trying, had cut the hair on her head dangerously close. She was crossing over into male territory and Baughman was not having any of it. We were not permitted to be like the guys. We got a theatrical lecture from Baughman on haircuts that day, and my platoon mate was forced to grow hers out another two inches.
I was convinced someone had deliberately designed hair regulations to make our lives a living hell. Long hair entailed unusual sacrifices. Hair could not fly away in strands, which meant loose hair had to be matted down with ounces of toxic goop that hardened over the skull like a helmet and caused irritating headaches. Ponytails were not allowed. In order to control long thin strands, wiry frizz, relentless curls, or other forms of unruliness, pins, bands, or other hair-taming devices were allowed but had to be completely invisible to the human eye once inserted. I had arrived at a place where the defense of the nation and America’s Next Top Model intersected. Women’s hair in the Corps was nothing short of a styling miracle, and though it sounded ludicrous, it was a very serious matter.
I hadn’t thought twice about cutting my hair short. Much to my surprise, the majority of women in my platoon arrived at OCS with long hair, and willingly sacrificed the few hours of sleep we had each night to wake up an extra hour early to painstakingly primp, press, braid, mousse, gel, and pin their hair into Marine Corps–approved hairstyles. I would never understand why someone would choose to sacrifice sleep in this crazy place. (I empathized when news broke fifteen years later about the military’s hair regulations discriminating against Black women—many hairstyles like cornrows and dreadlocks were banned by the military, even though this placed an unfair burden on Black women to adopt white hairstyles. Still, the whole fuss of women’s hair regulations made me wonder why any of us were allowed to grow out our hair in the first place.)
One day, as we stood at attention before our racks, our DIs laid into us, proclaiming again that we were all a bunch of nasty females. Our collective lack of femininity was making them hysterical. One of my platoon mates, Riley, a remarkable outlier who’d arrived at OCS with a PhD, had provoked this latest outrage. For a woman, she had a lot of hair on her arms and legs. We had all noticed, but what did we care? We were too busy surviving OCS.
Perhaps the DIs realized they couldn’t single Riley out. We were all ordered to shave our legs at OCS from that day onward. This decision was well grounded in Marine Corps tradition. Beauty 101 lessons were part of the Corps’ long history with regulating women’s appearance. I found out later on that drill instructors subjected previous generations of women in the Marines to strict makeup lessons, including the proper application of lipstick. I was apparently living through an era of progress in the Corps.
• • •
Occasionally, someone or something would challenge my understanding of what mattered in this place, and what mattered most to me. Biel was a hyperintelligent candidate with flaming red hair like Baughman, but without any physical presence. She was bony and pale, with the posture of a jellyfish. To top it off, she had a high squeaky voice that was driving the DIs nuts.
Biel’s voice was all wrong for the Corps. She could not possibly command troops sounding like a cat toy. Baughman and Reyes took arms against Biel’s DNA and made it their mission to transform her wobbly soprano into a firm baritone. This morning, our platoon stood for ages, witnessing an attempt at a medical miracle.
“Get some goddang stinkin’ bass in your voice, Biel!” Reyes bellowed.
They had her reciting everything from the four weapons-handling rules to the “Marines’ Hymn” at the top of her mousey lungs. Biel belted out Marine Corps 101, trying to roar. She was no lion.
Despite her gelatinous slouching, Biel refused to flinch. Eventually, the DIs got tired of yelling, their vocal cords straining after weeks of shaming us into order. Three weeks later, Biel graduated OCS.
Biel’s trial planted a question in my mind about what might actually constitute presence, beyond the muscle mass, height, and deep voices of our male peers. My limited view—and the Marine Corps’—was based on patriarchal notions of toughness. This skinny, squeaking woman became an officer of Marines twice her size. Biel had verve, and she knew it.
I still wasn’t so sure about myself.
• • •
I hardly received any mail while I was at OCS, but about halfway through I got a letter from my father. It was handwritten in almost indecipherable professor script with the black felt-tip pens that were his trademark tool over decades of writing near-perfect lectures from scratch. I was not expecting his letter. It was a confession. An apology.
I fear I am the reason you joined the Marines.
Emotions began to rumble through me. I was in no mood to dive into them, least of all here. And besides, something had already changed inside me. Dad’s letter was too little, too late.
• • •
Despite our DI’s best efforts to reform me, after several weeks at OCS I still hadn’t picked up the rhythm of the place. I was one of the last two pariahs left on the Got to Go board. All the other rejects had quit or been kicked out of OCS. I was halfway between here and my former life, and the struggle was obvious to everyone around me. I spoke like some by-product of the ivory tower. Keeping up with all of these customs, without knowing why things were the way they were, was a commitment they wanted me to make on faith alone. I resisted, however subtly.
In the seventh week of training, we were all given an opportunity to drop on request. I gave it some serious thought, but I couldn’t bring myself to quit. What would I have returned to? I could picture Mom and Dad, delirious with self-satisfaction, making my next plans for me. Of course they didn’t accept you. You don’t belong there. The scenario made Baughman and the Corps look like a benevolent escape plan.
One Sunday I attended church services on base with Jules, a candidate from Los Angeles with a knack for push-ups. Time with God was one of the few moments in which we were allowed to exist without DIs. I didn�
��t believe in either God or religion, but I needed a break from the barracks, so I went.
Jules was Korean American and barely five feet tall. When First Platoon hiked through the woods, she ran the whole way to keep up, half of her body invisible beneath her enormous pack.
The military chaplain interspersed an otherwise typical sermon with anecdotes about the responsibilities of leadership. I didn’t know what I was doing here. In church. In Quantico. In this camouflage uniform. I began crying, and then, realizing I was crying, I could barely stop.
Without saying anything, Jules reached for my hand and held it for the rest of the service. I looked over at her, my face wet with tears, and she nodded quietly. It was the only act of human connection I remember from those weeks. It was the most un-Marine-like thing anyone had ever done here.
A week before graduation, my status was still unclear. Baughman took me aside one morning on the parade deck while the company was practicing sword drill. I was the only one having trouble remembering basic moves.
“Bhagwati,” she said, almost whispering. “Not everyone is meant to be a Marine. Do you understand?” She looked up at me, and it suddenly hit me that despite her demonic presence, she was shorter than I was. We made eye contact. I stopped breathing.
“Yes, Sergeant Instructor.”
This new tack, gentle and deadly, got to me more than all Baughman’s hysterics combined.
A few days later, I was called before the school commander, who would determine whether or not I was fit to be a Marine Corps officer. Lieutenant Colonel George Flynn was a Naval Academy graduate, and like most commanders of major Marine training facilities, an infantry officer. He sat at his desk like a monarch on his throne, flanked by two beefy young captains who commanded two of the all-male platoons. They glared at me as though I’d better not make an ass out of myself.
“Good morning, Sir. Candidate Bhagwati reporting as ordered, Sir.”
I stood at attention, stiffly, till he told me to stand at ease. I separated my feet and placed one hand over the other on my lower back.
Flynn looked at me curiously, like he didn’t know where to begin.
“Candidate Bhagwati. I’m trying to assess if you’re Marine officer material. You haven’t done much to prove to me that you deserve this honor.”
He looked at me expectantly. I stayed quiet, my hands glued to my back.
“Just look at these grades. Do you even study?”
Flynn’s question was rhetorical. I can’t tell you if my mediocre grades were the result of the shell shock of being at OCS, or if I was unconsciously rebelling against the Corps. It may have been my way of saying I am so much better than you, why should I even bother? No amount of studying Marine manuals was going to make me ace those bizarre multiple-choice exams, where human experience and the entire history of the world were reduced to Marine sacrifices and victories on the battlefield. The Marine Corps wanted me to suspend all reason. It was causing some kind of short-circuit in my brain.
But none of that mattered now. The colonel was already shifting his tone and flipping through files.
“Candidate, when you were team leader at the Crucible and you were tasked with coming up with a plan, you let someone else on your team take charge.”III
It was true. “Sir, that candidate had a good idea. This candidate didn’t want to ignore her, Sir.”
This response was Marine blasphemy. All folks seemed to say around here was that leading Marines was about asserting oneself, all the time. But I didn’t care if someone else was stealing my thunder. Her idea was a good one. I didn’t realize that the entire concept of joint leadership, something I would associate years later with women’s willingness to work together and share rather than dictate and take credit, was not something the Corps appreciated.
Flynn seemed thrown by this. He looked at me silently. Something about my expression, which I hoped was still blank, must have triggered disdain in him, because he suddenly changed his tone.
“Your drill instructors say you’re still having trouble adapting. And do you know why, Candidate?” He was speaking like Baughman now, accusing me.
I really wished I knew why.
“Because you’re lazy, Candidate.”
I was used to being insulted at Quantico. It was the price of being slow to adapt to Marine culture. But something deep inside me began to rumble. It was one thing to pick on me for not getting the Corps, its inane rituals, adherence to centuries-old traditions, and the psychotic earnestness with which Marines talked, walked, and did just about everything.
But lazy? Please. All I’d known since I was born was to work my ass off. And before I knew it, this one-way reaming session had turned into a two-way conversation. From somewhere beyond the Corps, I responded, with more than a little gall.
“No, Sir, this candidate is not lazy.”
Flynn’s eyes widened.
“Ex-cuse me?”
“This candidate”—I said, not skipping a beat—“is not lazy. Sir.”
The pause this generated was infinitesimal. I felt the colonel’s eyes boring into me as I stood still, steadily, with nothing to lose, eyes looking forward, over Flynn’s head.
I was not backing down. I knew where I came from. And I knew who I was. I suspected whatever game Flynn was playing, he knew this, too. I’d finally found my voice.
“You’re dismissed, Candidate.”
I about-faced and got the hell out of there.
That day I volunteered to lead our platoon on its run through the woods, calling cadence while we ran far too slow for my comfort. I was desperately connecting colors of the rainbow to everything Marine, hollering as loud as I could. If these maniacs were going to kick me out of here, I was gonna go down fighting. My platoon hollered right back.
“Back in 1775 . . . my Marine Corps came alive! . . . First there was the color red . . . to show the world the blood we shed! . . . Then there was the color gold . . . to show the world that we are bold! . . . Then there was the color green . . . to show the world that we are mean! . . . Oorah . . . Gimme some!”
That evening, Staff Sergeant Baughman took me aside. She told me enthusiastically that Flynn was letting me stay. Baughman was no longer reprimanding me. She was proud.
On the verge of our commissioning, our DIs summoned us for a platoon photo. Marines didn’t smile in official photos. If we bared our teeth it was only to bite your head off. Nonetheless, I stood in the back row, the only candidate with a grin on my face.
* * *
I. Officially, the Coast Guard belongs to the Department of Homeland Security, while the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines belong to the Department of Defense.
II. A gunnery sergeant is a senior enlisted Marine at the rank of E-7, with about fifteen years of service, generally in charge of keeping logistics running smoothly in a unit and known to have the fewest fucks to give about anything.
III. The Crucible is a grueling team-building training exercise at the end of recruit training and OCS that takes place over several days, on very little food and sleep.
CHAPTER 4
Womanizing the Corps
Colonel John Allen was my introduction to the Marine Corps’ living legends, men whose tactical greatness on the battlefield was superseded only by their flair for the theatrical.I
Allen commanded the school for the Marine Corps’ newest lieutenants with the personality of a messiah summoning his troops to victory. He fancied himself a scholar-warrior and spoke to us about the realities of the Corps with a thundering voice that caused most of us to quiver. He recited Rudyard Kipling’s “If—” as if our lives depended on poetry. I couldn’t stand Kipling’s racist colonial musings about my savage Brown ancestors. But none of that mattered here.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too . . .
&
nbsp; Allen himself became Kipling, and his final words, you’ll be a Man, my son!, landed with confusing resonance, making me wonder if either Allen or the creator of Mowgli, Baloo, and Bagheera had intended any inspiration for me or the other women in our company.
The Basic School (TBS), or The Big Suck as we quickly came to call it, was where officers spent six months learning the fundamentals of Marine Corps infantry, so in the event that any of us—attorneys, adjutants, artillery officers, etc.—were required to take over a provisional rifle platoon, we knew what to do. It was intensely physical, with agonizing hours that turned any natural rhythms we might have had left after OCS completely upside down for good.
We were now lieutenants. Enlisted Marines saluted us, and we were expected to act the part of officers, even if we knew little about what that meant. TBS was the first environment where male and female officers were fully integrated. One woman was mixed in with twelve men in each squad. We lived in the same barracks as the men, though I shared a room with three other women.
Gender integration was a rude awakening for everyone involved. I was told about a recent scandal at TBS in which a male instructor had had sexual relationships with female lieutenants. I didn’t know the details, but the young captains who supervised us now were on their toes.
At TBS we learned to work as a unit while cultivating special contempt for one another. Each member of a squad of thirteen Marines had to regularly rate all the other members, causing the term “squad peer evaluations” to morph to “spear evaluations,” or just “spearevals.” We ranked one another ruthlessly, and the men in my squad often listed me toward the bottom. I got used to this after a while. I even expected it.
My big mouth was not helping. One day a guest instructor was sharing war stories from the Balkans. He’d been talking about joint operations with the other branches of service and must have said something about the Navy’s submarine program, because when he finished his lecture and opened up the floor to questions, I stood up and projected my voice across three hundred bodies toward the front of the room, saying, “Lieutenant Bhagwati, Sir. I was wondering when submarines were going to be integrated with women.”
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