"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they have ever made a difference in the world. The Marines don't have that problem."
- President Ronald Reagan
Marines know their history. Every Marine has learned the heroic accomplishments of those who have gone before and feels compelled not to let their brethren down. Rich in tradition, every Marine enters battle at the very tip of the spear, with the weight and reputation of being the most feared shock troops on the planet.
To be a Marine is to be a part of something that represents the best of our Nation. It is to accept a way of life that embodies selfless service - to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to thrive in the hardship and sacrifice expected of an elite warrior class, to march to the sound of the guns, and to ably shoulder the heritage created by those who have gone before.
Marines never quit. They persevere and thrive on adversity. The Nation expects them to be physically harder and mentally stronger than our enemies and the other armed forces. If knocked down, they will get back up, every time. They will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to accomplish their mission and win our Nation's battles. They are never out of the fight.
The Marine Corps is the only service that routinely combines land, sea, and air operations, and so has a better understanding of the environment in which the other services do their jobs. However, the Marines operate on the sea and in the air with just one purpose in mind, that of supporting the all-important riflemen on the ground. This isn't the way the Air Force, Navy, or even the Army looks at life.
An old Pentagon joke hints at the different perspectives of the services: Each service is told to "secure" a building. The Marine Corps wants to destroy it, the Army wants to establish a defensive perimeter, the Navy wants to paint it, and the Air Force wants to lease it for five years.
Ask an American soldier to identify himself, and he probably will say he is "in the Army." By contrast, A Marine is likely to say, "I'm a Marine." The small linguistic difference is significant: The first is a matter of membership or occupation; the second speaks to identity. One belongs to the Army (or, sometimes, to a branch of the Army: infantry, artillery, armor, Special Forces, and so on). But one is a Marine and to be a Marine is sufficient. Army officers wear "U.S." on their "Class A" uniform lapels. Marine officers wear the eagle, globe and anchor emblem of their service. And while Army officers wear name tags on their uniforms, Marine officers don't. That's partly because it is enough to simply be recognized as a Marine. To be in the Corps is to be in a state of mind that dictates one's relationship to the rest of the world.
The Marines are distinct within the separate world of the U.S. military. Theirs is a culture apart. The Air Force has its planes, the Navy its ships, the Army its obsessively written and obeyed "doctrine" that dictates how to act. Culture, the values and assumptions that shape its members - is all the Marines have. It is what holds them together. They are the smallest of the U.S. military services, and in many ways the most interesting. Theirs is the richest culture: formalist, insular, elitist, with a deep anchor in their own history and mythology. To Marines, the things that count are mud and blood and leading men in combat; fondness for less gritty pursuits bespeaks a character flaw.
Much more than the other branches, they place pride and responsibility at the lowest levels of the organization. The Marines have one officer for approximately every 10 enlisted Marines. That is a wider ratio than in any other service - the Air Force, at the other end of the spectrum, has one officer for approximately every 3 enlisted airmen. Over 25 percent of new Marine officers are drawn from the enlisted ranks - compared to just 9 percent in the Army. The Corps believes that it is almost always easier to do the job for a boss who has been there.
Alone among the U.S. military services, the Marines have bestowed their name on their enlisted ranks. The Army has Army officers and soldiers, the Navy has naval officers and sailors, the Air Force has Air Force officers and airmen - but the Marines have officers and Marines. "Every Marine a rifleman," states one key Corps motto. It means that the essence of the organization resides with the lowest of the low, the grunt in the trenches. That's especially significant because approximately 50 percent of Marines are in the service three lowest ranks (that is, E-3 and below). That's roughly twice the percentage in the other three services.
Arguably, there is a deep distinction within each of three larger services. In the Navy there is an exquisite sense of rationalized pecking order of a least eight clear levels: At the top, carrier-based aviators, carrying within it a sub hierarchy of fighter pilots, attack pilots, and antisubmarine pilots; then submariners, with attack sub types over the "boomers," or nuclear missile boats; finally, surface ships, with surface combatants at the top, followed by amphibious warfare ships (that carry and support Marines), and, dwelling at the bottom, mine warfare. In the Army, there are perceived extensive distinctions between infantry, armor, artillery, and support services, with clubs, tiers, and exclusive inner circles within each branch. In the Air Force, there are two tiers with great separation: pilots and everyone else, with a rowdy rivalry among pilots - the notorious competition between the bomber boys and the fighter mafia.
To be a Marine is enough. That sufficiency in identity is reinforced by the Marine uniform, which is devoid not only of the Boy Scout-like badges that festoon today's Army uniform, but lacks even a name tag and the basic unit patches such as "First Division." Force Recon types are resented by some in the Corps just for the small scuba and parachute emblems they wear, signifying to suspicious eyes the badge of an elite within the elite. To hold out one's group as better than the Marines is tantamount to heresy.
But the driving core of Marine culture, even more than a sense of the past, is its sense of future vulnerability. Every Marine is taught that the very existence of the Marines is always in danger. Nine presidents have tried to put the Marines out of business. To date, there have been at least fifteen attempts to abolish the Corps.
Because of that sense of being endangered, the Corps long has sought to justify its existence to the American public. In "The Short-Timers," the painful little Vietnam War novel by Gustav Hasford on which the movie "Full Metal Jacket" is based, a Marine Captain unabashedly links the Marine knack for publicity to its fighting prowess. "The lesser services like to joke about how every Marine platoon goes into battle accompanied by a platoon of Marine Corps photographers," he says. "That's affirmative. Marines fight harder because Marines have bigger legends to live up to."
Today's Marines maintain that aggressive posture. In 1996, the Corps virtually ran away with the hit movie "Independence Day," in which the Air Force is nowhere in sight, while the hero is a Marine aviator and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is also a Marine.
Envious Army public affairs officers sometime joke that it takes three Marines to screw in a light bulb - one to do it and two to issue the press release. But that joke misses the lesson the Corps conveys to all its officers and to most of its enlisted personnel, that every single one of them must promote the institution. Even second lieutenants at the Basic School are imbued with the importance of public relations: A reporter walking around the campus at Quantico is greeted consistently with lines such as, "Glad to have you here to tell the Marine story."
This abiding sense of vulnerability, and the consequent requirement to excel to ensure the survival of the institution, is the central fact of Marine culture. So, rather than sweep faults and weaknesses under the rug, the Marines tend to zero in on them as possible threats to the institution. The Corps also has a kind of "steadfastness," and focus on the mission: What gets it done is good, what gets in the way is bad.
Although the Marines and the Army both have infantry units (Divisions, Regiments, Battalions, Companies, Platoons, etc.) - they do not deploy and fight in the same way. The Army follows the doctrine of "Attrition Warefare" while the Marines practice "Maneuver Warfare." The difference is very distinct. The goal of Attrition Warfare is to destroy an enemy by the cumulative annihilation of the enemy's human and material assets through superior firepower. In Attrition Warfare, technical proficiency, especially with the application of fire from weapons, is more important than cunning or creativity. Success depends most on overall superiority - both your ability to give and take numerical attrition. Marines practice a form of warfare known as "Maneuver Warfare." Maneuver Warfare attempts to bypass an enemy's defense to penetrate the enemy's system. Rather than destroying him physically, the aim of Maneuver Warfare is to "shatter his moral, mental, and physical cohesion" through a series of "rapid, focused, and unexpected actions that create a deteriorating environment with which he cannot cope." Modern Marine Corps strategy is built on stealth, maneuver, and deception. Maneuver Warfare is often fought at a relentless pace and conducted with razor precision intended to strike the enemy at his weakest point, to cripple his ability - and especially his will - to fight.
The Marine Corps also puts an emphasis on frugality. The Corps prides itself on making do, using hand-me-downs, and surviving on only 6 percent of the Pentagon budget. Regardless of this fact, the Marines have the mission to get in first, hit the enemy hard, and pave the way for others to follow. They operate in a perpetual state of readiness. The Marine Corps is America's only forward-deployed expeditionary force. In less than 96 hours, they can deploy the most powerful military might in the history of time almost anywhere in the world. They are America's "911 Emergency Force." When the United States needs to respond quickly to a threat, nothing is more reassuring than to hear that the "Marines have landed and the situation is well in hand."
In terms of cold mechanical logic, the United States does not need a Marine Corps. However, for good reasons that completely transcend cold logic, the United States wants a Marine Corps.
Source: The text on this page includes excerpts from Thomas E. Ricks' book "Making The Corps".
