Second, for decades, women had underperformed, and no one had ever questioned why or demanded improvement.
And, third, when I worked to improve our standards, I got pushback from some of my peers and from within my battalion: They said I was being too hard on my Marines and recruits because I was trying to make them stronger, to hold them to something above the lowest standard required for women.
In my mind, women were serving in almost every job and every unit within the Marine Corps in some capacity. If we held them to lower standards and continued to allow them to barely pass fitness-test standards or to half-assedly perform training events, it would make the rest of the Marine Corps weaker.
“They already meet the standards,” I was told. “What's your problem?”
At Parris Island, if you draw attention to a problem, the problem becomes you.
And the Marine Corps believed women would never be equals anyway, because they would never be strong enough to be in the ground-combat units. So why change anything?
This cult behavior perpetuates sexism and negative stereotypes: Why would we change the way we train Marines? They're awesome! It's the best service! But we're the ones with the Marines United scandal. We have extreme misogyny and extreme hypermasculinity, and we allow Fourth Battalion to be seen as the crazy Fourth Dimension.
My predecessor recognized all of this. She did not try to fix anything. The place was run by the enlisted population, with officers serving as tokens. She didn't want to change anything, because she feared her Marines would turn on her.
These women made fraternity hazing cases seem tame. They did not allow the new drill instructors to drink water. They forced the new DIs to use the recruit head, rather than using the drill-instructor bathroom. (That's bad for two reasons: First, as a drill instructor, it's best not to be in a vulnerable position with recruits. And, second, when you have sixty recruits using one bathroom, disease runs rampant.) They called them “NICs”—New In Command—and didn't allow them to wear their drill-instructor covers (in the military, “cover” means “hat”), even though they had earned them after completing Drill Instructor School and it was a big deal to wear one.
Before I got there, some drill instructors forced a new drill instructor to stand duty for several months straight—every day, at the depot, without a single break. There was such a vacuum in leadership that she was essentially tortured, and no one picked up on it. She didn't get a full night's sleep for months, other than between training cycles. This woman sent her daughter away to live with relatives because, as a single parent, she couldn't stand duty every night and take care of her little girl. By the time I got there, she was a mean, mean woman, and she dealt with that abuse by abusing others.
We've also found that drill instructors who abuse recruits are more likely to have been abused themselves. There's a whole host of issues that need to be dealt with there—from self-esteem problems to a tendency not to respect authority to poor self-care concerns—in addition to providing a safe place for our recruits.
When I arrived at Fourth Battalion, officers and staff noncommissioned officers weren't doing the right things, like periodically walking through the squad bays unannounced at night or reviewing the nightly recruit-inspection results to ensure that sick recruits were seen by Medical. Because we were so isolated and there was no accountability, things were allowed to slide. DIs were sleeping with other DIs, as well as with recruits, so we had both fraternization and abuse of authority.
The pressures of work were so bad that some of the drill instructors were beyond depressed and tired. Empathy was in short supply at Fourth Battalion.
The month that I arrived, there had been a court-martial, and a regimental nonjudicial punishment for two former Fourth Battalion drill instructors who were accused of abusing recruits and other DIs. Nonjudicial punishments allow commanders to punish offenders by lowering their paychecks, giving them extra duty, or reducing their rank without going through an actual court-martial.
Two drill instructors from November Company, one of the three training companies that together compose the Fourth Battalion, were in trouble because they had been cruel to the recruits.
They intentionally tried to make the recruits pee their pants through intimidation, and had told the recruits things like, “I wish you were never born” or “Your mother should have had an abortion.” They called them derogatory names—terrible, abusive things.
Training should never be personal.
But this was in a company where the first sergeant referred to her drill instructors as “bitches.” She had been hazed, and so she allowed her DIs and her recruits to be hazed.
November Company's DIs would get their recruits up in the middle of the night and make them do push-ups and stupid stuff in the squad bays. Yes, that was common in the old days, but now we know that training during the day is much more effective if recruits are awake for it. DIs made the recruits drink so much water that they'd throw up. Or, after making them drink water, they'd make them run laps if they requested to use the bathroom. Request again? Run more laps.
If a recruit didn't respond quickly enough to screamed demands, the DIs would egg on the other recruits to take out their frustrations on them. It was like a blanket party with words. And the more seasoned drill instructors made the lives of the junior drill instructors hell. You would think that all drill instructors would be created equal and be welcomed into the club…not so
