Interlude, with Marines

I was at the US Embassy today. Had a few minutes to kill, and so got to chatting with one of the Marine guards.

We all know that US Embassies are guarded by Marines, yes? But I, for one, never gave much thought to the details.

It turns out there are a lot of details.

-- If you want to be a career Marine, you pretty much have to spend three years in "special duty". This is not an absolute, formal requirement, but apparently your career won't get too far without it. (And also, a career Marine can be called for "special duty" at any time anyhow, so you might as well volunteer.)

-- "Special duty" comes in three flavors: embassy guard, recruiter, and drill sergeant. All of them last for three years.

-- Embassy guard is considered rather comfy, but boring. I mean, it's being a guard. You have to be constantly ready, but -- probably -- nothing will ever happen.

To keep it somewhat interesting, the Marines will send you to three different embassies, one year each. The system is set up so that you will probably go to one nasty place and two okay ones. But stuff does happen, so there are no guarantees; you might do your three tours in Canada, France, and Ireland, or you might go to Afghanistan, East Timor and Congo. You're a Marine, so you go.

-- Recruiting was never popular, and it's even less so now. You're sitting all day in a little office in a strip mall between the Chinese restaurant and the Geico franchise. Once in a while you go to the local community college job fair. And there are quotas -- you're supposed to generate X number of recruits per month. Not easy any time, harder still with a war on. It's boring /and/ stressful. Hardly anybody volunteers for this.

-- Drill instructor carries the most cachet. Former Marine drill instructors get a certain extra increment of respect. But there aren't a lot of volunteers for this job, either.

Why? Well, because it's really freaking hard. First you go through drill instructor school, which is sort of like boot camp but much more so. You have to learn the answers to all the questions, stupid and clever. You have to learn how to deal with every sort of problem a bunch of stressed-out green recruits can come up with: disciplinary problems, psychological problems, health problems. You have to re-learn all the drills and the reasons behind the drills.

Then you go to boot camp and take over a bunch of recruits. Boot camp is thirteen weeks, so for thirteen weeks you stick to those boys and girls like glue. They may hate you for waking them at 5:00 in the morning, but of course you're waking up at 4:30. It's like thirteen weeks of nonstop yelling at people.

Then after thirteen weeks, if everything goes right, you get two weeks off.

Then you go back and do it again.

And again. And again.

For three years.

Yeah, I'd give some extra respect for that.

Anyway. It sometimes makes me sad that my country's embassies are all fortresses. I'm just old enough to remember when that wasn't the case. I wish it could be otherwise.

But if we must have fortified embassies, I'm glad the Marines are there.

Comments

[sgazzetti]

When I was in the army, c. Bush the Elder, recruiters were known as "body snatchers". Probably a less pejorative term is used now.

Even when you're in boot camp and *hating* the drill instructors, you are fully aware that they are working WAY harder than you are, and than the government can possibly be paying them adequately for.

If our diplomatic outposts have to be maintained as fortified compounds, I'm with you: the marines seem to to do it well.

[Noel Maurer]

Sgazzetti: you may know, intellectually, that the drill sergeants are working harder than you are ... but I'm pretty sure that not a whole lot of Army recruits really understood that in their guts, where it counts.

Part of the job is making it look easy, right?

The Army has quite explicitly and deliberately made boot camp less stressful and easier in the last few years. I'm not giving a "in my day they shot you right in the head if you made a wrong step in D&C" kind of blather. This is very explicit Army policy. What I'd be curious to see is if there is any evidence, adjusting for the recruit's pre-boot camp characteristics, that easier training has affected performance any.

Ironically, the Army first reacted to the fact that Gulf War 2 was resolutely refusing to end on schedule by making boot camp quite a bit harder. It then reversed course in late 2005 as the recruiting shortfalls became more acute.

http://forums.military.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/2681962206/m/2040069150001

Anyone know anything about how the change is playing out? I tend to think it's a positive move, but I have no evidence.

[Bernard Guerrero]

Anyone know anything about how the change is playing out? I tend to think it's a positive move, but I have no evidence.

Hmmnn. I was going to say that I wouldn't be surprised, given that the soldiering skill-set has changed so much, but on second thought I don't think that's what you're getting at. I haven't spoken to anybody from my old unit in a bit, though, and their only deployment during the recent unpleasantries has been to Guantanamo, so the newbies won't have been put through their paces. So to speak.

[Joseph Eros]

A couple of comments:

A bunch of the guys I knew in the Army who had been deployed in Kosovo had become somehow convinced that being a Marine embassy guard was the best military job in the world: a nonstop party, complete with copious alcohol and loose women. I tended to doubt this, but said nothing since I was unwilling to seem to be defending the jarheads. Cowardly, I know.

In the course of my own basic training (late 2001), I think most of the guys eventually did come to realize how difficult the drill sergeants' jobs were. But not for at least 6 weeks, I'd say.

I agree with Noel that it would be nice to see if there's any data on if (and/or how) the changes in training have affected performance.

[Andrew Reeves]

*Ahem*The Army has drill sergeants. The Marine Corps has Drill Instructors.

[Bernard Guerrero]

The Army has drill sergeants. The Marine Corps has Drill Instructors.

And you call them "sir", which no self-respecting Army drill would ever let pass without a cliched "Sir? I work for a &#%%$%@ living! Down!" :^)

[Carlos]

JE, I've known people who, in far lands, dated American embassy guards. I'm not saying more. I wasn't there.

[Bernard Guerrero]

Well, jeez, Carlos, you weren't in Ming China, either, and I've seen you comment on _that_. Besides, we live in a quantum universe. Spooky action-at-a-distance and all that. In a sense, you _were_ there. So talk.