New US Marine
My eldest son, Stephen, took the oath of enlistment into the US Marine Corps this morning. His grandfather, Col (ret.) George Stephens, USAR, administered the oath. My son is en route now to Parris Island,SC, for 13 weeks of boot camp.

Semper Fi!

Update, July 27: There were eight recruits to ship to PI from Nashville. They went by contracted van. The driver stopped at a gas station five miles from PI and everyone got a chance to call home. We thus heard from Stephen last night at 10:20 CST.

He'll have inprocessing of one kind or another through Monday. The first day listed as a training day on the boot camp training schedule is Aug. 3.

BTW, a civilian work year consists of about 2,000 - 2,100 hours on the job, including paid vacation hours (22 days per month average times 8 hours per day).

The training at USMC boot camp consists of 1,518 hours in only 12 training weeks. So in less than one-fourth of the days, the recruits are "on the job" just under three-fourths of the hours they would be with a normal, full-time job back on the block. And civilians get weekends off, recruits don't.

A little perspective: the apotheosis of USMC boot camp is a 54-hour exercise of war simulation called The Crucible. It features high-stress tasks, little sleep, cold chow and not much of it. Once recruits successfully complete it, they are awarded the Eagle, Globe and Anchor insignia; then for the first time they are addressed by the drill instructors as Marines, not recruits.

After reading about the Crucible and talking with active-duty Marines who completed it in their own training, I explained to my son that as challenging as it looks to him now, he will discover that its pace and difficulty will be routine for training with the fleet force, and those exercises will last weeks at a time, not a mere 54 hours.

And actual combat will make the Crucible look like a stroll in the park.

Case in point: close friends of ours have a Marine infantryman son with two years' service, now deployed to Afghanistan. His last letter home explained his unit spends a straight 60 days or so on foot, in the mountains, chasing Taliban and al Qaeda. They come in for awhile to recuperate and refit, then head out again.

It's become a cliche to ask, "Where do we get such men?" Quite honestly, I just stand in awe of them, and I look back at the rigors of my own service and wonder how I did it, too. God bless them all, and see them safely home.

Update 2: South End Grounds posted about this experience with the voice of one who has been there. This part about the Crucible kind of got to me:

And in about 12 1/2 weeks he is going to embark on a 54 hour journey where he will walk 40 miles, run night infiltration courses, complete mentally and physically challenging warrior stations. He will fight his fellow recruits in small rings with pugil sticks. He'll do it all on about 5 hours of sleep and two small meals. Stephen, sweaty and beaten, will look across the bay and see vacationers on a nearby beach and yearn to join them. But he won't because he has a job to do. About 53.9 hours into that Crucible, at the end of a 10 mile force march with blisters screaming from his feet, an empty stomach and heavy eyes, he will turn a corner and see the Iwo Jima Monument and a band will begin to play. With all of the fear and weakness forever gone from his body, his heart will swell and his eyes will moisten. He'll drop his 70 pound pack, stand shoulder to shoulder with his brothers and the Depot Sergeant Major or another senior enlisted man will tell him the story of those 5 Marines and 1 Navy Corpsman who hoisted the flag atop Mt. Suribachi. His Senior Drill Instructor will hand him our emblem and the words he's long to hear will brush by his ears, "Congratulations, you're a United States Marine."

He has joined those heroes from Iwo Island in history's finest fighting force. Does he know what's he's gotten into? It's the greatest brotherhood this side of the stars.