white, conservative Protestant majority with a cross-section of almost every imaginable ethnic, racial, and religious group. Something like 70 % of the high school graduates in the area go directly into college after graduation. Such young people are unlikely to see the benefits of an enlisted career in the Marines. Even within the various ethnic communities of the area, recruiting is tough. For example, within the Asian American community, tradition dictates that parents want the oldest son to go to school, return to run the family business, and eventually become the head of the family. An old Confucian proverb says: 'Good iron is not used for nails, good men are not used for soldiers.' That attitude makes it tough for a recruiter who is looking for a few good men.
Marine Corps Recruiting Command has set a relatively modest 'mission' (the term 'quota' is out of favor) of two per month for each recruiter assigned to the Fairfax station. That's 120 recruits a year for two small offices with only five personnel. An office's recruiting mission is based on the number of qualified military applicants (QMAs) historically recruited from an area. The top-scoring Marine recruiter of 1995, based in the small Midwestern town of Quincy, Illinois, averaged 5.5 enlistments per month, so you can see the problems of the Fairfax recruiters.
How does Gunny Hazard's team recruit enlisted Marines in a place like northern Virginia? Well, for starters, they have the best walking billboards in the world, themselves. As a 'brand name,' the Marine Corps usually enjoys a strong, positive public image. When you see a story in the media about the Marines these days, it is usually favorable. The rescue of Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady from Bosnia, the evacuation of UN peacekeeping forces from Somalia, and helping liberate Kuwait City from the Iraqis are typical Marines stories seen on the nightly network news. With that in mind, every Marine recruiter is encouraged to wear his or her dress uniform in every possible situation — out on appointments, visiting schools, or just when they are out buying groceries or picking up the dry cleaning. Often, future recruits will just walk up and ask to talk to them about what it is like to be a Marine.
Another tool is television. While the Marines have the smallest advertising budget per capita of any of the services, they spend it wisely. Their television ads are Peabody Award winners, designed to leave a lasting and positive impression on a carefully targeted audience of high school- and college-age men and women. Each ad is designed to have a useful life of about four years, and it is run in key time slots designed to maximize its visibility. 'Do you have the mettle to be a Marine?' was a classic example.
Much of the recruiting advertising budget is spent on sports broadcasts during football season (early in the school year), and basketball playoffs (during the decision-making period before graduation). A new ad,
In addition to television, the Marines make careful use of magazine, billboard, and print ads, all in the hope of convincing young men and women to take the plunge and talk to someone like Gunny Hazzard. Other key tools of the Marine recruiter are school career day visits, booths at malls and military air shows and exhibitions, and even 'cold calling' young people recommended by friends, parents, and school counselors.
It is tough and sometimes discouraging work. Right after Desert Storm, the U.S. armed forces almost had to turn away applicants, so many young people wanted to be part of a winning team. But times have changed. Just five years after the victory in the Persian Gulf, all of the services are scrambling to keep up the recruit pool required to sustain our forces. And to make matters tougher, the Marines have actually raised the enlistment standards for new recruits. Thus, right now, nine out of every ten applicants fail to qualify and cannot be accepted. The reasons range from problems with the law or drugs to failure to have a high school diploma. With all of the highly technical equipment required to run a modern fighting force, a high school dropout or even a student with a GED certificate simply will not do. This means that while the average Marine Corps recruiter used to have to meet 200 prospects to find one qualified recruit, now that number is over 250 and rising. Gunny Hazzard told me that the number is something between 300 and 400.
The process of qualifying a recruit involves lots of testing — medical, academic, and psychological. Then there is the candidate's personal situation. Life in the military may be hard, but to a potential recruit it may look like a way to escape an abusive family or a failed relationship. The recruiter must find out the potential recruit's motivation for joining the Corps, and whether the Corps really wants him or her. The Marines are surprisingly tolerant of past troubles with the law (as long as these do not exceed minor convictions, like traffic violations), or past casual use of drugs or alcohol. The recruiter becomes a coach and big brother of sorts, gathering background information to help the Corps waive any minor infractions. Some of the best Marine recruits come from such 'problem situations,' and thus are worth the extra effort.
Now, it should be said that not every person who walks into a recruiting station like that in Fairfax is a troubled kid with problems at home and school. One recruiter I spoke with was quite emphatic about this, and backed it with a recent success story. He was just finishing up a miserable month, without recruiting even one QMA. As he was walking out of the station to his car in the parking lot, on his way to get chewed out by a superior for not making his monthly mission, it happened. He saw a young man approaching the door. He looked like a recruiting poster Marine: hair 'high and tight,' with every button in place and a hard-body physique. The recruiter, thinking he was looking at a Marine, respectfully asked which unit he was assigned to. To his surprise, the young man told him he was walking in to join the Marines; he had wanted to do that since boyhood! The recruiter thanked God for his good fortune and took the young man inside, finding him to have an excellent school record, not so much as a speeding ticket, and near-perfect scores on the qualification tests. The young man was sworn in and on the bus to Recruit Training the very next day. As might be imagined, the recruiter's superiors forgave him for missing the meeting, and the Corps had another gold nugget to forge into a warrior.
Assume that a young person has decided to join the Marine Corps and has qualified. There is usually one more obstacle for the recruiter to overcome, and this frequently is the show-stopper. The parents. Despite the generally good image the Marines enjoy, many parents just cannot accept the idea that their son or daughter could join the Corps. Many parents from the generation of the 1960s and 1970s have a deep-seated anti-military bias rooted in the Vietnam War. Others resist the idea that their child is 'giving up' on college and going into the military as an enlisted recruit. They see this as a 'low class' career choice. Also in the back of every parent's mind is the fear their child may be killed or maimed in a far-away place. In a parent's mind, these are valid reasons to dissuade a child from enlisting. The recruiter thus finds himself in the role of family counselor, having to prove to a parent that the Marine Corps is not just a sump for the scum of American society. Recruiters frequently lose this round in the recruiting game.
Despite all these problems, Gunny Hazzard and his team do 'win' their share. The week before our visit, they had enlisted three female QMAs, a real prize for any recruiting office. The following week, their office would swear in four more male recruits. Gunny Hazzard was quite candid when he told me that not every month went so well. Like salesmen, each month Marine recruiters start at zero and are judged on current, not past, performance.
When a candidate has been qualified, and all the paperwork is complete, the next step is to schedule a time to report for processing and transportation to one of the two Marine Corps Recruit Depots (MCRDs). MCRD San Diego, near Point Loma in the harbor district of San Diego, California, provides Recruit Training for all male recruits west of the Mississippi River, including Alaska, Hawaii, and the Pacific (Guam, Samoa, etc.). Folks in the Corps like to call the recruits trained there 'Hollywood Marines' because of its proximity to that entertainment capital. The other MCRD, at Parris Island, South Carolina, handles Recruit Training for male recruits east of the Mississippi, as well as all of the Corps' female recruits.
The wait for a reservation at Recruit Training is short these days — unless you are a female recruit, as there is only one female recruit battalion at Parris Island, with a limited number of openings each year. When the time comes for the new recruit to report for training, he or she is transported to a Military Enlistment Processing Station (MEPS), and then to the MCRD. In the mid-Atlantic region, the MEPS is located in Baltimore, and recruits are accompanied by the recruiter. After an entry physical, they are sworn in and driven to the airport for the flight to Charleston, South Carolina. From there, they are bused to their new home for the next three months or so, the MCRD at Parris Island. Let's visit this gateway to the Corps, and see what makes it such a special place in the hearts of Marines.
The Island: Parris Island and Recruit Training
