Don't know if you've received the latest copy of the Marine Corps Gazette, but when you do, read the article on recruiting. Although toeing the party line, it's pretty well done, and it shows the efforts (some of the efforts) expending in trying to get our "Few Good Men."
The article does not come right out and say, nor does it really allude to the fact that the All Volunteer Force (AVF) is not working. We cannot say that, because the Secretary of Defense says it's working, goddammit, so it's working! But the fact remains that we cannot get enough quality recruits to meet the commitments of our worldwide meddling, so we bullshit the public into thinking that things are fine with the large number of bums we recruit.
The recruiting scandal which came to light in Ohio in 1978 just happens to be an indication of what has been going on all over the recruiting service in every state. The recruiters are more careful now, but given time, they will be forced to fall back into such shady practices in order to maintain our force level.
No one can tell me that the recruiting service does not want and does not try to get "a few good men." But I know the handicaps under which they are working. In the first place, a large percentage of recruiters don't want to be there; they did not volunteer for that duty for a number of reasons, the least of which is not the economic reason of having to live on the civilian economy. They are selected for recruiting duty because of their professionalism. A few shitheads slip by, but damned few. They are given quotas of the numbers of men they are to recruit during a given time frame, and if they don't meet those quotas of the high command, they are on the shitlist. They receive warnings, brow-beatings, and ultimately are relieved of duty with a bad fitness report which generally arrests their careers. The recruiters can't find their prospects until the end of the working/school day, so obviously, they work long and arduous hours, week-ends, half-days, and do this for three, four and five year stretches. Believe me, they earn their pay.
They have to contend with the disfavor into which the military has fallen. They do not find much patriotism in the young. They don't find as much of the spirit of adventure as our young used to have. The kid today is asking, "What's in it for me?" That's a fair question, but when asked in the total void of patriotism and the absence of a desire to do something for the country, the question rings a bit hollow. So the recruiters do what they have to do: They take a lot of garbage just to survive.
To illustrate: To smoke marijuana constitutes the abuse of an illegal substance. Each Marine who is enlisted must sign a statement that he has not used marijuana. The few who admit it are excused by the recruiting officer, legally, if in his best judgement the offense constituted a "one time" type offense. Yet, a recent survey done in this company indicates, conservatively, that 60.3% of the Marines (in this company) smoke pot once daily. I hardly think that number of Marines started smoking after enlistment into the Marine Corps. This seems to indicate that a lot of pot-smokers are getting by the recruiters. Concealed prior service involvement in drug abuse is grounds for discharge for fraudulent enlistment. Of course, we are not discharging them, and not really advertising the fact that such a way out exists for the unhappy and disgruntled ones.
I read recently that the other services are shitcanning up to thirty percent of their troops early in the first enlistment as being recruiters' mistakes.
Believe me, the Marine Corps will point with pride saying that we obviously have a higher quality of recruit, since we are shitcanning only seventeen percent. What the Marine Corps will not tell the public is that if we peasants on the lower levels o command who work with and try to salvage the garbage had our way, we'd get rid of a whole lot more than seventeen percent. But the rarified air of higher command dictates that they look at the cases with "more compassion." This means, of course, that they note the climbing statistics and determine that the percentage is going up, so the tell us to keep this bum and give him "another chance." This "another chance" often stretches out to several "another chances" and he serves out his enlistment, bilking the taxpayers out of his pay while doing nothing, repeat, nothing to earn it.
In San Diego at the recruit depot a few years age it was discovered that they were discharging up to thirty-eight percent of the recruits! They were ordered to stop. It would seem that tightening up of standards, or increasing the recruiting force would have alleviated the problem, but that sensible step was not taken. Our percentage of dropouts from boot camp dropped considerably, and did so just from an order from on high. Some time later a recruit by the name of McClure died of injuries received in training as the drill instructors tried to make the system work. The Marine Corps still has a blackeye from that recruiter's mistake.
During the past two weeks, I have processed and recommended seven Marines from this unit for administrative discharges because they are bums, trouble-makers. They are unproductive scum who do nothing but stir up trouble, invoke their "rights", request mast, and goof-off. It is interesting to note that the average time-in-service of these seven "Children of Society" is - are you ready for this - thirty two and one-half months! A review of their records shows that they have always been bums.
Yet, it is 32-1/2 months later, and I have no confidence that they will be discharged. A couple of them may be booted out, but surely I will be second-guessed by the higher authority of others.
Let me tell you about one of these maggots. This young private stole a car in late 1976, wrecked it and injured his leg. No charges were ever filed for the car theft due to, I suppose, the outpouring of compassion and sympathy for his injury. The injury was such that a determination was made a few months later that surgery was required. In the meantime, this bum walks around with a cane, unable to do any work, missing the medical appointments, failing to do the self-treatment as directed, and stretching out his disability for one full year. The only way I ever got that idiot to the hospital was to have a Staff NCO take him there. The surgery has been performed, he has been granted a free, thirty-day convalescent leave, has returned, and is being processed by the Navy for a physical disability retirement! This means that this maggot will draw a monthly pension for the rest of his life! I have, however, processed him for the administrative discharge, and if I win the race with the Navy medical folks, we'll save the taxpayers a lot of money.
My first experience with recruiting was during my tour as an Inspector-Instructor for the reserves in Memphis, Tennessee, during the seventies. I had to maintain liaison with the downtown recruiters, as they were involved in recruiting reserves (off and on), and I had to interview all seventeen-year-olds who wanted to join the regular Marine Corps. This interview had to be conducted by a field grade officer, and it's purpose was to determine whether or not the seventeen-year-old was suitable material for the Marine Corps.
One day one of the recruiters brought in a black kid for interview. I talked with him and determined that he was marginally qualified, noted such on the interview sheet, and walked him out to the outer office. I gave the paper to the recruiter, and said I felt he would make it. I then turned to the kid and offered my hand along with a "Good luck." He looked at my hand and did not offer his in return. I said something like, "When a man offers his hand, you are supposed to shake hands with him." This bum gave me a hostile stare and said, "I don't shake hands with white people."
I then snatched the paper out of the recruiter's hand, went back to the typewriter and noted that he was not qualified because he was a racial bigot and would cause no end of racial trouble in the Marine Corps. The recruiter was most unhappy, and he forwarded my interview comments to some dip-shit major in the recruiter's chain of command who overruled me and accepted that idiot: I've often wondered if he (the kid) was present as some of the more newsworthy racial conflict festivals we've had in the Marine Corps.
The NCO-in-Charge of the Memphis recruiting sub-station was a short, fat Staff NCO whose name mercifully escapes me. This pompous ass had done a great deal of recruiting (about four tours), and he was the typical professional recruiter: An egotistical primadonna, demanding, condescending, and not at all above shady dealings. I had been there only couple of weeks when he came to have a conference with me. He walked in, introduced himself (cigar in mouth), and pointed out to me that my flags were in reverse order (they were not). He then stated that he felt that he had better talk with me and point out "what we are going to do about recruiting."
Well, Tom, you know me well enough that you probably can predict what my reaction was. Right! I told that pompous ass in short order that (1) he didn't dictate anything to me, and (2) to get the hell out of my office and come back when he was wearing a brain of a professional Staff NCO.
I was never cut out for such duty, and that confrontation marked the beginning of a long relationship which was less than cordial. Had that fat clown been endowed with any brains, I could have handled him in a far less harsh manner. But his lack of such virtue caused me to be merciful in many of my dealings with him.
My predecessor at Memphis told me the story of the two instructors from a community college in northern Mississippi who came to Memphis with the draft breathing down their necks. They had decided to join the Marine Corps Reserve because they felt it was better to do six months active duty rather than two years required by the draft (to say nothing of avoiding the Viet Nam tour). Their motivation was real, so they did their best. There was a little nit-shit test which was given to all applicants to determine if they had sense enough to come in out of the rain, and so help me Christ, they both flunked it college instructors! I expressed disbelief to my predecessor. He dug through the files and showed me the results of the tests. He then gave me a blank answer sheet and no test booklet, with instructions to randomly mark the answers. I did, and I scored higher than the two instructors who had the advantage of the test booklet... or maybe, in their cases, it was a disadvantage.
Of course, by the time I reported to Memphis, the draft was dead. With it died the motivation of the "Citizen Solder" to join the reserves. Almost all of the non-prior service recruits in the reserves joined as an alternative to the draft and the trip to Viet Nam. They were pretty sure that the reserves would not be mobilized for Viet Nam, and they were willing to gamble on that in order to do six months active duty vice two years. In effect, they were draft-dodgers; socially acceptable draft-dodgers.
We had other members of the reserves who were prior service types. They were the good men - some of them. The reserve officers fit somewhere between the above described enlisted categories.
Most of them had been on active duty with the Regular Marines as lieutenants, and had applied for augmentation into the Regular Marines as Regular Officers, but were refused because they weren't up to standard, at least in past performance and compared to their competitors. So, they joined the active reserves (Class II) and were subject to recall at the whim of the President.
One of these jewels was strutting his stuff on drill weekends until Tet of 1968 suddenly caused Viet Nam to look grim for a few weeks. He "unexpectedly" had to make the "difficult decision" that business pressures were such he would have to drop out and become a Class III Reservist, not so quick to be recalled. After the smoke cleared from Tet, and after he was again sure the President would not call up the reserves, he managed to allow his business pressures to subside to the extent that he again became active and went on to become the unit commanding officer, a term he dearly loved. Tennessee, the Volunteer State ... my ass!
That three-year tour with the reserves was such that it should probably be a book it's self, so I won' say much more about it now. Before I leave this topic, however, let me say that we had one hell of time getting people to enlist into the reserves. We took garbage; acceptable by written standards, but still garbage. Many of them I wouldn't want anywhere near me in a hot firefight.
As professional as most recruiters are, I think it takes a special mentality to be a recruiter. Who can go out and speak the truth to today's American youngster and get recruits?
Picture this recruiting speech: "Kid, you have the qualifications to join the Marine Corps, but I want you to go into it with your eyes wide open. We can promise you anything except an opportunity to serve with some of the finest men in the United States. We have a lot of bums in the Marine Corps but then we have a hell of a lot more fine Americans. You'll have the chance to form friendships and memories which will last you a lifetime. You'll gain a lot of self-confidence. You'll become a man, eventually, if you try. You'll be physically miserable a lot of times. You'll sleep in the mud, and when you aren't in the mud, you'll be in old barracks where the heat often fails on the coldest nights. We're building new barracks, but they aren't worth a damn and aren't really that important anyway. We'll give you a job which will be in line with your abilities as our measuring sticks size up those abilities. It may not be the job you want, but it will be a worthwhile one; one you can be trained to do. You'll spend a lot of time doing things you don't want to do; things which you can't always see the reasons for, but things which have to be done anyway. You'll get promoted, but it will be slow. Your duty stations will be determined with your desires in mind, but the needs of the Marine Corps will be the overriding factor, so don't expect embassy duty or drill instructor duty. You may be considered for such duty when and if you decide to reenlist. Forget about Recon - very few Marines are in Recon units, and they are nuts anyway. You won't be a general's driver, and you probably won't get out of the Marine Corps with any hard skills taught to you by the Corps. But, kid, you'll have a ball, if you want to. You'll feel good wearing that uniform, if you want to. You'll be able to tell the world, "I was a Marine." And most important, you'll have done something for your country.
A recruiter who tried that speech in 1979 would be shitcanned within two weeks.