Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit tcml-4

by Tom Clancy

  We have to get "outside of the box" in our thinking. We need to package the the MEU (SOC) with the capability to do the mission we are tasked to do, but do so in the minimum possible space aboard the ships. I mentioned earlier the "digitized Marine" squad leader who can call down accurate killing fire on anybody in a matter of seconds. We have to consider what kind of capability that kind of Marine brings to our warfighting ability. I don't know what the implications are today, but I do know that I had better find the answer if the Marine Corps is going to remain relevant in the 21st century. In my planning guidance I directed the establishment of the Warfighting Lab at Quantico to look at these types of issues. As we develop various concepts of how we should fight or train or equip Marines, they will be tested under a concept called Sea Dragon. Because of new technologies that will be available to the Marines and sailors of the 21st century, in ten years you will see a MAGTF that has much greater capability and can cover more ground than the current MEU (SOC). The size of these units may be dictated more by technology and the capabilities of the individual ships than anything else. The question is just what systems do we really need on the modern battlefield for an expeditionary MAGTF. Do we need an M1 tank or perhaps a more mobile vehicle armed with fire-and-forget anti-armor missiles? Do we need a light tracked vehicle or a derivative of the current wheeled Light Armored Vehicle [LAV]? These are the questions the Warfighting Lab and Sea Dragon will address. We are looking forward into the 2010 time frame and checking into a number of other things — equipment, combat support, all kinds of things. Do you think that the United States Marine Corps will look the same in ten years as it does today? I don't think so!

  As we closed out our chat with the 31st Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Krulak shared some of his visions of the future, both on the roles and missions of the service as well as the ethos of the Corps in general.

  Tom Clancy: Could you talk about the Marine Corps in ten to twenty years in terms of its mission?

  General Krulak: I see us as the premier crisis-response force in the world. And I define crisis response as everything from major regional contingencies to disaster relief. Some military forces are so specialized they are like a window washer who only washes square or round windows. I'm telling you that we do windows! You tell me what you want done, I will configure a force for your needs. We are the most flexible military force in the world today. When you tie us to the capabilities of our sister service, the U.S. Navy, we offer a completely unique set of capabilities.

  Tom Ctancy: Do you feel good about what you see in the Marine Corps today and in the future?

  General Krulak: Absolutely. The capabilities resident in the Marine Corps have been found to be of use and value to the nation. It's interesting that we are not doing things much different today from what we did during the Cold War and before Desert Storm. We are doing it a little more frequently, but we have not changed our philosophy much; and in the future we are going to become even more valuable. The Marine Corps that I inherited has always done just two things for this country. First, we make Marines; and they are a different type of person in their souls and their minds. Secondly, we win battles. We don't necessarily win major wars by ourselves; that is the job of the U.S. Army. We have, however, been the ones winning the early battles. If we ever stop doing either one of those things, we are finished. Therefore, all of my focus is on making Marines and winning battles. The United States of America needs the Marines.

  By the time you read this, General Krulak will be at least halfway through his four-year tour as Commandant of the Marine Corps. His goals and visions will have been scrutinized, the first hard results of his initiatives will have been seen, and his programs will be showing signs of life. Yet, it is perhaps his own persona and character that will be the defining aspect of his commandancy. He has brought the Corps back to its roots, showing a hereditary line back to the qualities that have always made the Marines special to the United States. He truly is a warrior prince of the Marine Corps, and will be an important force as they enter the 21st century. In spite of the shortage of funds and the cutbacks that have been at the core of recent Marine Corps history, there will always be Marines. Trust the son of Brute Krulak to keep that promise.

  Transformation: Making Marines

  Marine human material was not one whit better than that of the

  human society from which it came. But it had been hammered

  into form in a different forge.

  — This Kind of War, T.R. Fehrenbach

  In early 1996 the United States Marines were a small, elite corps of only 195,000 men and women. Every one of these, whether officer or enlisted, shares a common experience as a Marine. They face similar physical and mental challenges, and they must pass the same tests of skill and endurance. Becoming a Marine is an achievement like winning an Olympic medal. No matter what else you may do in life, once you pin on the emblem at the end of Boot Camp, you are a Marine for life. Over the years, the Corps has had its share of members it would like to forget; Lee Harvey Oswald and the idiots who raped a young girl in Okinawa in 1995 come to mind. On the other hand, former Marines such as Art Buchwald, Ed McMahon, Jim Lehrer, and Senator John Glenn exemplify many different kinds of real success.

  What kind of person does the Corps want to recruit? The answer to this question determines the kind of Marines we send around the world as America's representatives and, often, our first warriors in a conflict. Does the Marine leadership want automatons who mindlessly follow the orders of a superior? Or do they want a Corps of restless, intelligent young people, asking questions and exploring new solutions to old problems? Today's recruits have to be both physically fit and mentally agile, able to work well on a team, but also able to stay cool on their own in stressful situations. Just how you find such people every year is the subject of this chapter.

  The Big Green Machine: The Corps Today

  They serve in every country in the world where the United States has diplomatic relations, and probably a few where we don't! Their career specialties include everything from senior managers and leaders to pilots, machinists, and computer technicians. The first thing you notice when you enter their world is that as a group they are physically fit, with the sort of "hard bodies" you might find working out at your local gym. This is a product of training, as well as the yearly requirement for every Marine (including the Commandant) to pass a rigorous physical examination called the Physical Fitness Test (PFT). Composed of a timed three-mile run combined with measured sit-ups and chin-ups on a bar, the PFT is one of the requirements that determines whether someone is still a Marine. Every day, rain or shine, at lunchtime along the riverfront park near the Pentagon, you see men and women in sweat suits running. Running hard. A lot of them are Marines. If you sit in an office all day and live on a diet of donuts and coffee, you won't pass the PFT, and failure to pass it results in an invitation to leave the Corps. This may seem harsh, but it means that Marines are on average the most physically fit personnel in the military services. Every Marine is also required to maintain proficiency with the M16A2 5.56mm combat rifle and other assigned weapons. For staff NCOs and officers this also includes proficiency with the M9 9mm pistol. Failure to maintain weapons qualification is also cause for dismissal. For some 220 years, every Marine has been qualified as a rifleman, and this is not about to change in today's Corps.

  Another striking thing you notice about the Marine Corps is the surprisingly low proportion of officers, compared with other services. Traditionally the Corps has entrusted greater responsibility to enlisted personnel than other services, and it shows in the telling "nose to tail" (officer-to-enlisted-personnel) ratio in each. While the Navy ratio is about 6 to 1, the Army about 5 to 1, and the Air Force a costly 4 to 1, the Marines have some 8.7 enlisted personnel for every officer. Beyond the benefits that such a ratio has on the morale and self-esteem of enlisted personnel, there are other noticeable effects. Person for person, the Marine Corps is remarkably inexpensive to ope
rate and maintain, since enlisted personnel cost less in salary and benefits than an equivalent number of officers. As a result, the Corps assigns many leadership and supervisory responsibilities to non-commissioned officers. This means that enlisted Marines take orders from sergeants who at one time were just like them, raw recruits headed to Boot Camp.

  Marines also have a sense of their personal identity and position in the world. Ask any Marine, and he or she will be able to trace the chain of command all the way from himself or herself right up to the President of the United States. This is not simply a trick, like dogs walking on their hind legs. It is an indication that every Marine is confident of his or her place in the world. And that shows in confident behavior. More important, Marines learn that they are trusted to make good decisions, follow orders, and accomplish tasks in the best way available. If you have worked for a big corporation, with numbing layers of middle management over your head and no sense of personal empowerment, you can appreciate the refreshing clarity that Marines feel about their individual positions and missions.

  In Submarine, Armored Cav, and Fighter Wing, I took you along the career paths of officers. This chapter will be different: It will trace the career path for the real backbone of the Marines, the NCOs (non-commissioned officers). Specifically, you'll see how a young man or woman rises through the ranks to reach the legendary rank of gunnery sergeant, or "gunny." The title harks back to the days of wooden ships, when Marines loaded and fired the Navy's cannon. Today, gunnery sergeants are the institutional "glue" that holds the Corps together, maintaining the traditions and making it clear to new recruits and officers that the gunnies really run the Corps. So follow us on the road to Gunny and learn what a career in the Corps is all about.

  Prospecting for Gold: Recruiting for the Corps

  The raw material for making Marines is provided by your local Marine Corps Recruiting Station. These nondescript little offices, many on the second floors of strip malls across America, are where the Corps puts its own out to find and deliver new Marine recruits for training. To find out more, I spent a Saturday morning at the Recruiting Station in Fairfax County, Virginia. Located just west of Washington, D.C., the station covers much of Northern Virginia. This is a tough place for recruiters. With a median family income of just over $70,000 per year, it is among the most affluent suburban regions in America. That makes recruiting Marines difficult. Very difficult. Running the Fairfax station is Gunnery Sergeant James Hazzard, along with Staff Sergeant Warren Foster and Staff Sergeant Ray Price. Their backgrounds range from artillery operations to helicopter maintenance. Gunny Hazzard also supervises another recruiting annex with two more Staff Sergeants in Sterling, Virginia, covering Loudoun County all the way out to the West Virginia state line. His territory extends from the high-tech headquarters of the U.S. Intelligence community (CIA, NRO, etc.) in Langley and Chantilly to the horse farms and cornfields of Leesburg.

  It is a big territory, with an expanding population and economic base. The demographics combine a solidly white, conservative Protestant majority with a cross-section of almost every imaginable ethnic, racial, and religious group. Something like 70 % of the high school graduates in the area go directly into college after graduation. Such young people are unlikely to see the benefits of an enlisted career in the Marines. Even within the various ethnic communities of the area, recruiting is tough. For example, within the Asian American community, tradition dictates that parents want the oldest son to go to school, return to run the family business, and eventually become the head of the family. An old Confucian proverb says: "Good iron is not used for nails, good men are not used for soldiers." That attitude makes it tough for a recruiter who is looking for a few good men.

  Marine Corps Recruiting Command has set a relatively modest "mission" (the term "quota" is out of favor) of two per month for each recruiter assigned to the Fairfax station. That's 120 recruits a year for two small offices with only five personnel. An office's recruiting mission is based on the number of qualified military applicants (QMAs) historically recruited from an area. The top-scoring Marine recruiter of 1995, based in the small Midwestern town of Quincy, Illinois, averaged 5.5 enlistments per month, so you can see the problems of the Fairfax recruiters.

  How does Gunny Hazard's team recruit enlisted Marines in a place like northern Virginia? Well, for starters, they have the best walking billboards in the world, themselves. As a "brand name," the Marine Corps usually enjoys a strong, positive public image. When you see a story in the media about the Marines these days, it is usually favorable. The rescue of Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady from Bosnia, the evacuation of UN peacekeeping forces from Somalia, and helping liberate Kuwait City from the Iraqis are typical Marines stories seen on the nightly network news. With that in mind, every Marine recruiter is encouraged to wear his or her dress uniform in every possible situation — out on appointments, visiting schools, or just when they are out buying groceries or picking up the dry cleaning. Often, future recruits will just walk up and ask to talk to them about what it is like to be a Marine.

  Another tool is television. While the Marines have the smallest advertising budget per capita of any of the services, they spend it wisely. Their television ads are Peabody Award winners, designed to leave a lasting and positive impression on a carefully targeted audience of high school- and college-age men and women. Each ad is designed to have a useful life of about four years, and it is run in key time slots designed to maximize its visibility. "Do you have the mettle to be a Marine?" was a classic example.

  Much of the recruiting advertising budget is spent on sports broadcasts during football season (early in the school year), and basketball playoffs (during the decision-making period before graduation). A new ad, Transformation, was first aired on October 9th, 1995, during Monday Night Football. Using sophisticated computer animation and "morphing," it symbolized the mental and physical challenges overcome in transforming a young civilian into a Marine.

  In addition to television, the Marines make careful use of magazine, billboard, and print ads, all in the hope of convincing young men and women to take the plunge and talk to someone like Gunny Hazzard. Other key tools of the Marine recruiter are school career day visits, booths at malls and military air shows and exhibitions, and even "cold calling" young people recommended by friends, parents, and school counselors.

  It is tough and sometimes discouraging work. Right after Desert Storm, the U.S. armed forces almost had to turn away applicants, so many young people wanted to be part of a winning team. But times have changed. Just five years after the victory in the Persian Gulf, all of the services are scrambling to keep up the recruit pool required to sustain our forces. And to make matters tougher, the Marines have actually raised the enlistment standards for new recruits. Thus, right now, nine out of every ten applicants fail to qualify and cannot be accepted. The reasons range from problems with the law or drugs to failure to have a high school diploma. With all of the highly technical equipment required to run a modern fighting force, a high school dropout or even a student with a GED certificate simply will not do. This means that while the average Marine Corps recruiter used to have to meet 200 prospects to find one qualified recruit, now that number is over 250 and rising. Gunny Hazzard told me that the number is something between 300 and 400.

  The process of qualifying a recruit involves lots of testing — medical, academic, and psychological. Then there is the candidate's personal situation. Life in the military may be hard, but to a potential recruit it may look like a way to escape an abusive family or a failed relationship. The recruiter must find out the potential recruit's motivation for joining the Corps, and whether the Corps really wants him or her. The Marines are surprisingly tolerant of past troubles with the law (as long as these do not exceed minor convictions, like traffic violations), or past casual use of drugs or alcohol. The recruiter becomes a coach and big brother of sorts, gathering background information to help the Corps waive any minor infractions. Some of the
best Marine recruits come from such "problem situations," and thus are worth the extra effort.

  Now, it should be said that not every person who walks into a recruiting station like that in Fairfax is a troubled kid with problems at home and school. One recruiter I spoke with was quite emphatic about this, and backed it with a recent success story. He was just finishing up a miserable month, without recruiting even one QMA. As he was walking out of the station to his car in the parking lot, on his way to get chewed out by a superior for not making his monthly mission, it happened. He saw a young man approaching the door. He looked like a recruiting poster Marine: hair "high and tight," with every button in place and a hard-body physique. The recruiter, thinking he was looking at a Marine, respectfully asked which unit he was assigned to. To his surprise, the young man told him he was walking in to join the Marines; he had wanted to do that since boyhood! The recruiter thanked God for his good fortune and took the young man inside, finding him to have an excellent school record, not so much as a speeding ticket, and near-perfect scores on the qualification tests. The young man was sworn in and on the bus to Recruit Training the very next day. As might be imagined, the recruiter's superiors forgave him for missing the meeting, and the Corps had another gold nugget to forge into a warrior.

  Assume that a young person has decided to join the Marine Corps and has qualified. There is usually one more obstacle for the recruiter to overcome, and this frequently is the show-stopper. The parents. Despite the generally good image the Marines enjoy, many parents just cannot accept the idea that their son or daughter could join the Corps. Many parents from the generation of the 1960s and 1970s have a deep-seated anti-military bias rooted in the Vietnam War. Others resist the idea that their child is "giving up" on college and going into the military as an enlisted recruit. They see this as a "low class" career choice. Also in the back of every parent's mind is the fear their child may be killed or maimed in a far-away place. In a parent's mind, these are valid reasons to dissuade a child from enlisting. The recruiter thus finds himself in the role of family counselor, having to prove to a parent that the Marine Corps is not just a sump for the scum of American society. Recruiters frequently lose this round in the recruiting game.