jlells01

Hey Guys,

I'm now in college and looking forward (if I get accepted) to go through the Platoon Leaders Class and Officer Candidate School to become an officer in the USMC.

Basically, I'm just looking for your guys opinions...How was your Marine "experience"? Does the Marine Corps live up to all it's hype?

bigtobe

The physical part of boot camp was easy to me.. It's the stuff the drill instructors to you mentally that will break you down. Dont think they wont, cause they will. It was a good experience for me. Many good, and many bad..lol.

shortround

Having had proof of both parents and being able to pour urinary tract excretions out of a boot, I was exempted from the ordeals of sand flea island or hollywood. Instead, I became a rider of those things that are long and black and never comes back.
On a more serious note. Reguardless of what branch you decide, you are going to have troops that you are responsible for. They will look to you for guidance and pulling on the vast amout of career experience you have, you will blow your whistle and order them over the top. BS. Your learning begins AFTER you leave OCS/PLC. It begins when your gunny takes you aside and explains how things will be done. Listen to your NCO's. They are your teachers. Take care of your troops and they will take care of you.
Remember that being a "butter bar" still places you on about the same level as a PFC. Lots of motivation and drive, but real short on experience and how to's. However, if something gets screwed up, you get the blame.
Been there, done that. Still got the teeth marks on my hiney.
Welcome aboard.

fulloffatherlyadviceShortround out

PistolWhipt

I thought I wanted to be a Marine once ... I asked my dad (WW2 Leatherneck) what he thought about that and he told me bluntly ..."You ain't no Marine !!!"

Roger that, dad !!! He knew that there was no way that I could be that regimented and carry that kind of responsibility. So I joined Uncle Sam's Canoe Club instead and made a life of it.

As for the Marines that I have been around ... great bunch of guys. When they are on the ship's security force ... they are ALL BUSINESS.

Like Shortround said ... you can listen to all the leadership training and go to all the schools that are designed to get you ready for running troops, but when those are over ... all you are is book smart. You listen to everything your Gunny tells you and keep his **** covered and you will do fine. He knows the troops and how to motivate them to get the mission accomplished and bring them back home again.

Good luck to you,
PISTOL

04ctd

i'm navy too, and if there's us 3 navy guys on here with vehicles, you can bet there's a bunch of marines hanging around to ride in them:

m - my
a -
r - rides
i - in
n - navy
e - equipment

you'll enjoy the marines if you can focus and stay intent on (boring) stuff for hours.
if not, get a xfer over to the navy side. we drift easily & go home early, so it's got it's trade off's.

and yes, some senior NCO will fix you. i've got me a few butter bars to work with this patrol. they don't understand when i boss them around, and everyone waits on them to do what i say.
joy.

1sttruck

You need to figure out what you expect from your military service. Unfortunately 'good training' is becoming less important with the shift of manufacturing offshore, where the Air Force, Navy air and submarine service, and Marine air wings were once viewed as worthy opportunities if one wasn't pursuing a degree. From what I saw the Army seemed to be the service for those who didn't like other things, like being on a boat, Marine Corps boot camp, or airplanes. At the AFEES (?) station in Okla City in 1975 when they called for the people going into the Army about half of the hundred or so people got up and moved on, when they called for the Navy about 2/3 rds of the remaining got up and left, and when the called for the Air Force almost everyone else left. Four of us going into the Marines were the only ones left :^)

I had worked for awhile, gone to school, and wanted to see what the military was like. Although my dad had retired from the Air Force and an uncle had served in the Navy on a 'pig boat', for me there was no question what 'the military' was, which was the Marine Corps. For many the Marines were the equivalent of the French Foreign Legion in this country, and I also served with a number who were in as the judge said 'four in the pen or four in the Corps' :^) I wanted the military experience and figured that I could endure whatever they expected for at least one hitch. I ended up liking it, submitted a re-enlistment request for an MOS, but got out as it came back on an 'if available basis'. In retrospect I'm glad that I got out when I did, but am also grateful for having served in the Marines. Below is excerpt from one of my favorite books on the Corps. An excellent companion book is 'Enter the Dragon', which about the entry of the Chinese in the Korean war.

BREAKOUT
The Chosin Reservoir Campaign, Korea 1950
by Martin Russ

http://www.fsbassociates.com/fromm/breakout.html

Marines had always been regarded as shock troops, their traditional mission being to capture beachheads and hold them until occupation forces (usually Army troops) arrived. Battalion for battalion, the Marines were the most fearsomely efficient troops on either side of the Second World War--not because they were braver or had God on their side, but because Marine recruits were inspired from the beginning with the conviction that they belonged to a select and elite legion, and because of a tradition of loyalty which meant in practical terms that the individual Marine trusted in and relied on his comrades to an extraordinary degree, and that he himself was trustworthy and reliable.

Most Marines of that day believed it was better to die than to let one's comrades down in combat. The ultimate payoff of this esprit de corps was a headlong aggressiveness that won battles. Ernest Hemingway, who knew something of men at war, wrote, "I would rather have a good Marine, even a ruined one, than anything in the world when there are chips down."

It was the boot camp training these volunteers endured at the recruit depots at Parris Island and San Diego that established the foundation of this proud military attitude. For ten weeks the individual volunteer was hermetically sealed in a hostile environment, every moment calculated to prepare him to function smoothly on the edge of the abyss, subject to such harassment and confusion--very much like combat itself--that it spawned in his homesick heart a desperate yearning for order, and finally a love of that order and a clear understanding that in its symmetry lay his safety and survival.

There was an undeniable mystique about the Marine Corps, a feeling of being vastly superior to the soldiers of the U.S. Army s (Marines never refer to themselves as soldiers) alongside whom they were sometimes required to campaign. By and large, Marines were a resourceful, hardy breed, readier to go in harm's way than the Army's hapless minions. The ghosts of their institutional ancestors--those who fell at Tripoli, in the Halls of Montezuma, at Belleau Wood, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Inchon, and other hallowed sites--haunted every Marine at every base and duty station around the globe, demanding teamwork, discipline, courage, and unswerving dedication to the accomplishment of the mission, even when it required entrance into the maw of hell.

Though they were the most colorful troops in the American armed forces, there was nothing flashy about the Marines. None of their units bore names like Tropic Lightning or Screaming Eagles. The Marine uniform--aside from the "dress blues" worn on ceremonial occasions--was a simple forest green, plain and unadorned in comparison with the Army uniform with its badges, nameplates, patches, flashes, and brass buttons. Captain Michael Capraro, public information officer, 1st Marine Division: "There was a surplus of dirt-common names among the key officers of the day--lots of Browns, Davises, Johnsons, Joneses, Smiths, Williamses, Wilsons, and such. I realize that that is without significance; even so, I always thought the plainness of such names was somehow appropriate to the plainness of the Corps itself."

The division was simply the 1st Marine Division. It was composed of three infantry regiments--1st Marines, 5th Marines, and 7th Marines, each numbering about 3,200 men--and one artillery regiment, 11th Marines. Over twelve thousand strong, these were the men who would do most of the fighting during the Chosin Reservoir campaign. In the rear were ten thousand combat support troops, including the 1st Marine Air Wing.

Captain Capraro: "It was the strongest division in the world. I thought of it as a Doberman, a dangerous hound straining at the leash, wanting nothing more than to sink its fangs into the master's enemy, preferably one with yellow skin.... So many Regular Marine corporals and sergeants and commissioned officers hailed from the South that some folks said the division descended directly from Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Like the Confederates, they were volunteers and loved a good fight."

Many Americans regarded the Marine Corps as a national treasure. It was common knowledge that whenever the trumpet sounded, the Marines could be counted on as ready for action, and they had a remarkable history of winning battles quickly.

PFC Ray Walker, Able Company, 5th Marines, says he cannot recall that any of his fellow Marines resembled the handsome, square-jawed, muscular paragon usually depicted on recruiting posters. "Many of these kids had just started shaving. They were ordinary-looking teenagers, maybe a bit, more hard-bitten than most. Journalists referred to them as men, but if you accompanied them on a Stateside liberty you'd notice they bought more candy and ice cream than beer or whiskey, and they were pretty bashful around girls. They would call the girls' mothers 'Ma'am.' I'm talking about the privates and privates first class [PFCs], of course, the ones who made up most of the Corps and did most of the fighting."

And they tended to strut, these youngsters. The battle record of the Corps gave them that right. But none of this explains why they were so good at what they did, or how they were able to destroy the Chinese formations sent to annihilate them in northeast Korea.

jrs_dodge_diesel

Although I am not a Marine, I am a bonafide Puddle Pirate. Thats right, I am U.S Coast Guard. I respect the Marines. Heck, my little sister even married one. He's a real good guy. The Coast Guard is a good service, much smaller than the other 4 branches. If I didn't join the Coast Guard, I would have went to the Marines.