My job was to oversee a battalion of fourteen officers, one hundred drill instructors, and 3,200 recruits. Parris Island is the only place in the Marine Corps where female Marines are made, and I wanted to ensure that every day of their thirteen weeks of training counted, so they could graduate faster, smarter, tougher, and better shots. But on Parris Island, the women trained separately from the men—which is different from the other services, where men and women train alongside each other. The women at Parris Island train separately simply because of an outdated study suggesting they would perform better that way. That proved to be incorrect in so many ways, but it also proved to be my downfall, along with a history of neglect, no support from my local leadership, and Pentagon-level bosses who saw better statistics as a step closer toward women joining infantry units. They wanted women to serve only in support roles.
Going in, I knew that working only with women would be a challenge. Before I arrived at Parris Island, my predecessor warned me, “They're either baking you cupcakes or on your couch in tears.”
In hindsight, I see that her comment summed it up perfectly and encapsulated the perception of the battalion throughout the depot and the Marine Corps. Everyone had the expectation that Fourth Battalion, my battalion, was incapable. It could achieve enough to get by, but there was not an established tradition of excellence—a stated need to be better and best. Because it was an all-female unit, even the regimental sergeant major called Fourth Battalion the “Fourth Dimension.” In other words, it operated in a different world with different expectations from the male recruit battalions. There was always an undercurrent of women being too emotional and cruel—to each other and to the recruits—and, because the expectation existed, that's how some of the women behaved.
They shouldn't have. They were strong and capable.
I started doing turnover with my predecessor in February 2014 by phone and email, and then I went to visit the battalion in April, before starting in June. During turnover, you learn the ropes of the new position and gain some of the cultural background of a new place. My predecessor could tell me where there might be problems, as well as point out on whom I could rely. That's when she told me the duty was either tears or cupcakes.
The problems went deeper than that. Female drill instructors were sleeping with female recruits, and with each other. Drill instructors abused the recruits. Drill instructors abused other drill instructors.
In my battalion, I would have to work through inappropriate sexual relationships, screaming as an accepted form of communication, and even fistfights. There were hazing investigations going on in April and a court-martial case later that month. A court-martial is when a military court is called upon to enforce military law. The issues with drill instructors sleeping with recruits were being brushed under the rug. A lot of the issues with recruits being abused? Those were being brushed under the rug, too.
It was a big rug.
I had to get everyone focused on good order and discipline, and then deal with the gender-related issues. It turned out the two areas of focus were intimately connected.
When I finally arrived to take over command at Parris Island in June 2014, I thought, as I always do, “How am I going to make it better?” But as I dug into performance statistics to see how to do that, even obvious improvements met with sometimes violent resistance. We found that women hadn't performed better than men in essentially any category since the records had been kept. That included weapons qualification rates, academic performance, injury rates, and even how well women marched. Gender differences shouldn't have played into academics or marching, so I struggled, at first, to understand why the women would perform worse in those areas. But I also figured that if we could boost up all the numbers, we'd be making the Marine Corps look better, and everybody would be happy. I was naive.
The abusive drill instructors didn't want to change, because they felt that new recruits—and new drill instructors—should have to pay their dues, just as they had. They also did not want to be held accountable for bad behavior.
The enlisted Marines—the drill instructors—had run the show for so many years that officers—the Marines in charge of the drill instructors—essentially had nothing to do. This was bad for two reasons: They had no control. And they rebelled hard when forced to take control, because it meant more work.
My boss didn't want change, because he didn't want to rock the boat.
On top of all of that, the culture within Fourth Battalion was often petty and mean, riddled with rumors and false claims. This was reinforced by leadership that encouraged gossip and arbitrarily enforced Marine Corps standards. This led to a miserable climate within the battalion, but it also reinforced the idea within the male battalions that women could not operate without “drama.”
I was walking into a minefield, but because I had never encountered anything like it, I went in blind. I needed to hold my officers and drill instructors accountable; I needed to reorganize my staff to reward excellence and remove abuse; and I needed to help my Marines and their recruits understand that they were capable of meeting much higher standards. But without senior leadership that supported those changes, the task would impossible.
During my first month in South Carolina, my boss invited me to talk about my goals, as well
