Of course, it didn't stop with the footprints.
But separation allowed standards to slip. Training regulations stipulated that the men and women were required to complete the same training events. But because of a lack of supervision at Fourth Battalion, from the regiment to the series officers and staff, all of the hikes were too short, including the Crucible hike itself. I measured it: We were hiking seven miles instead of nine. Again, there was zero company-commander supervision when I arrived, and the previous battalion commander rarely attended training events except for when she met the recruits at the halfway point of the Crucible hike. Yeah…at the halfway point.
When I got to Parris Island, the men and women conducted all of their hikes separately—they rarely even saw each other. They graduated in the same class, but they rarely trained together. They never tested together. For decades, the Marine Corps has considered a company of male recruits standing in their own formation next to a female recruit formation as boot-camp integration.
I will never forget the first time I hiked with the female recruits. It was a five-mile hike—slow as hell. We're talking three miles per hour or less. I mean, city girls do that in three-inch heels, but these women were dropping like they'd been training for a beer-chugging competition rather than combat. They started out with way less than the standard combat load in their packs, because it was supposed to build up their strength, but we still had women dropping out.
We also had women break their hips. The male leadership assumed it was because of a physiological limitation, rather than a combination of a lack of fitness, their poorly fitted packs, and recruits running during the hikes rather than taking short, choppy steps.
Just like everything else at boot camp, hikes were part head game, part physical fitness. A lack of mental preparedness could make five miles seems like a marathon. But some of it was due to a lack of attention by the drill instructors and staff. The hip-injury rate at Fourth Battalion had me wondering if I was training teenagers or octogenarians.
A lot of the problem had to do with how the women wore their packs. They wore their packs too far down, so the hip belts hit the wrong place. So, as they added weight, they hurt themselves. As it turns out, at one time, our athletic trainer had conducted a class with the drill instructors to train them on how to fit the packs for the recruits. But she had given the class to the battalion the year prior, so the new Marines and recruits hadn't gotten the training. Broken hips were the result of a problem that could have been remedied with a simple solution. No one had shown the recruits how to adjust their packs properly.
Literally adding insult to injury, the Marine Corps used that data—the hip-injury rate—as justification for why women should be excluded from ground-combat jobs.
Funny thing about women and their injuries: Research shows that the better shape they're in, the fewer lower-extremity injuries they have. And, as both men and women become more fit, the difference in the injury rate shrinks. In other words, as both groups train, their injury rates equal out.
It has everything to do with fitness and little to do with gender.
The prevailing view by Marine leaders was that by their gender, women were too frail to compete with their male counterparts, which affected how training was conducted at Fourth Battalion. And before they ever got to their permanent duty stations after training, recruits learned that they aren't expected to be as capable with basic Marine skills—and the men learned it, too.
For example, during the Crucible, the culminating event at boot camp a week before graduation, all of the recruits gathered on Page Field for a seventy-two-hour exercise involving a lot of running and problem-solving stations, and little food or sleep. Page Field used to be an airfield, and it still looks like one: Weeds pierce cracked concrete in the shape of a cross with trees and swamp on all sides. Alligators, snakes, and sand fleas love it.
The brainchild of Marine Corps Commandant Victor Krulak in the 1990s, the Crucible was meant to test the mettle of recruits, to make sure that they had the honor, courage, and commitment, as well as the necessary mental and physical wherewithal to be Marines.
Throughout the Crucible, the recruits are always on the move, running from problem-solving station to problem-solving station. There is a night-movement course simulating the combat conditions and a night hike, followed the next night by a 2:00 a.m. wake-up call for the final nine-mile hike back to the parade deck. The recruits are essentially up all night for three days straight.
But, in the Marine Corps tradition of separate-but-not-equal, men performed their tasks on one end of Page Field, and the women went through the motions on the other end. They saw each other in passing, but they didn't work together. They didn't push each other to succeed or see each other being pushed beyond their perceived physical and mental limits.
The women body-sparred; they did martial arts; they went through an obstacle course in a tactical manner—you know, with weapons and looking for potential shooters. They had problem stations they'd visit. So, as a recruit, you got a piece of gear and dummy, and you had to figure out how to get the dummy over an obstacle without hitting booby traps or mines. At each spot, one of the recruits had to take charge, and she was then evaluated on her leadership.
Some of the women did a great job. Some of the women sort of half-assed it. No one, from a leadership perspective, seemed to care how they performed. And they should have, because many, if not most, of the women would graduate and be assigned to units heading to Iraq or Afghanistan. Other than screaming at the recruits to get through the specific problem or
