Back to the Future: Why I Would Restore the Draft

"There Is Something About a Soldier."  Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis

July, 1983

Ed Palm Photo

[My introduction here is dated.  I wrote this essay in response to the surge in Iraq.  But, with General McChristal calling for more troops in Afghanistan, I think my concerns are still valid, and I stand by my argument.]

If any good comes out of the war in Iraq—and, the surge notwithstanding, I doubt that any will—I hope the proverbial silver lining will be a thoroughgoing reconsideration of our reliance on an all-volunteer military. 

            I say that for a number of reasons.  It’s obviously proving too small for our current commitments.  It’s patently unfair to ask so much of so few.  Moreover, the nature of the threat we now face, it seems to me, demands a return to our Cold War posture.  We need a large military widely dispersed at numerous bases throughout the United States and ready to respond to an attack or natural disaster at a moment’s notice. 

But, as a former enlisted Marine and a career Marine office turned academic, my main reason in advocating that we go back to the future is because the military was always the best reform school we had going. 

            Picture it:  Parris Island, the summer of 1965.  Marine Boot Camp has long been legendary for physical and psychological abuse.  The opening scenes of Full Metal Jacket convey some sense of what it could be like. But worse than the physical abuse, in my view, was the psychological torment—not the least of which was a strictly enforced code of silence.  For the entire eight weeks, we never got to talk to one another, or to anyone except our drill instructor, and then only when spoken to. 

            It was, therefore, a supreme relief about halfway through the program when our platoon went on mess duty and I found myself and one other recruit alone in the pot shack out back of the mess hall.   Our mission—and we were not given any choice about accepting it—was to scrub spotlessly clean a seemingly endless supply of dirty pots large enough to cook missionaries in.  But at least we could relax and talk to one another like normal, free human beings. 

            My fellow pot-scrubber, I found out, was from a broken family in Arkansas.  His was a common story in those days.  He had dropped out of high school to join the Marine Corps.  But what really floored me was when he said he would be “out of here” by this time the following week.  We still had at least four weeks to go on “the island.” 

            He was only 16, he explained.  (Legally, you had to be at least 17 to join, and even then you needed a parent’s signature.)   He went on to admit that he had gotten in so much trouble in high school that his mother, at her wit’s end, agreed to lie about his age and to sign the papers so he could enlist.  After four or five weeks at Parris Island, however, he was seeing things from a different point of view.  He was especially happy that he would be out in time to rejoin his high school class. 

            “You know,” I remember his saying, while leaning in almost to the bottom of a huge pot, “I used to think school was the worst thing that ever happened to me.  But, when I get back in that classroom, they’re going to have to beat me out with a stick!”

            I wish I had written down that recruit’s name and had kept track of him.  Here, he was almost a high school dropout, and I would bet that he went on to become a doctor, lawyer, or successful businessman.  At the very least, he was able to write one hell of an essay on the perennial topic of “how I spent my summer vacation.” 

            I too have come a long way since then.  I went on to become a Marine officer and an academic with a Ph.D.  A lot of people along the way helped me get there, but whatever success I’ve had I owe mostly to those guys wearing Smokey the Bear hats back there at Parris Island.  From them, in no uncertain terms, I leaned to accept responsibility, to persist in the face of adversity, and to respect authority.  But, most of all, what they taught me was that self-esteem can’t be bestowed; it has to be earned.  Our public schools don’t seem to be doing a very good job teaching these life lessons anymore.  Maybe it’s time to let the military have a shot at it again.  --EFP

Terence's Story: A Marine Recruiting Saga

[This is a commentary I almost got to record for NPR's "All Things Considered."  In the end, however, a short-sighted producer killed it because the story couldn't be fact-checked.  I humbly submit that he missed the point.  To borrow a line from A.E. Housman's "Terence, this is stupid stuff," "I tell the tale that I heard told."  That's all.  I have revised the opening and have changed the name--just in case it is indeed true.   --EFP]

As a former enlisted Marine and a retired Marine officer, I am not surprised that the All-volunteer Force has to depend so heavily on the Guard and reserves.  The military has been hard-pressed to meet its recruiting quotas and has been forced to lower its enlistment standards and to offer mercenary-like incentives to get people to sign up in the first place, much less reenlist.  (Would that we had been paid as well in my day!)  It stands to reason that, after years of two inconclusive and increasingly unpopular wars, fewer and fewer people are willing to volunteer. What I am surprised about—and pleasantly so--is that we are not seeing a surge in reports of recruiter misconduct or malfeasance. 

Throughout my career, the two most feared assignments in the Marine Corps, combat duty notwithstanding, were drill instructor and recruiting duty.  Both assignments were fraught with peril—drill instructor duty because of the peer pressure to perpetuate the illegal forms of hazing that made Marine Boot Camp infamous, and recruiting duty because a recruiter’s quota is his or her “mission.”  What this means is that failure to make quota generally resulted in a bad fitness report that could put a period to an otherwise good Marine’s career.  Many a senior noncommissioned officer has put in a hurried leave request upon learning that the interview team charged with selecting D.I.s or recruiters was coming to his or her base. 

            A lot of “sea stories” recounting the horrors of D.I. and recruiting duty live on in popular Marine Corps legend and lore.  But the best one I ever heard probably dates back to that previous 25-year low point--the story of “poor Terence.” 

            Somewhere in a Northeastern city, at a time when we were not even at war, a Marine recruiter was becoming increasingly panicked at the thought that the month was almost up and he had not made his quota.  On that very day, the mother of a developmentally disabled and intellectually challenged young man named “Terence” sent him to the office of some social service agency to buttress their claim for assistance. 

            Unfortunately, the Marine recruiter’s office happened to be on the same floor in the same building as the social service agency Terence was to visit. 

            As I heard the story, Terence’s disabilities were plain to see.  His speech was slurred and limited, and he dragged one foot behind him.  These problems, however, did not deter this hard-pressed recruiter.  That same day, Terence found himself on a bus to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island. 

            The Marine I heard the story from claimed to have been the incredulous series officer, who about a week into the program, was contacted by a social service agency on behalf of Terence’s mother.  When he called the D.I. in whose platoon Terence was listed and asked if he had a recruit fitting his description, the answer was classic:  “Yes sir, Captain, you ought to come down and see this guy.  He’s really weird!” 

            I don’t mean to imply, of course, that abuses of this magnitude happen all the time.  Terence’s story is the extreme, and admittedly, I don’t know how much was true and how much was the sort of exaggeration common to the sea-story genre.  But I don’t doubt that stranger things have happened.  Every one in the Marine Corps is acutely conscious of the fact that, if we don’t have people standing on those yellow footprints painted in front of the Receiving Barracks at Parris Island and San Diego, we won’t have a Marine Corps.  And no one feels that pressure more acutely than the Marines charged with finding the young people to stand on those yellow footprints. 

            I am sure that Army recruiters are just as hard-pressed, and desperate people do sometimes resort to desperate measures.  Hence, should abuses come to light—and there will probably be some—try not to judge the recruiters too harshly.  Most of them, in my experience, would rather be fighting a war than trying to sell it.  

--Edward F. Palm