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    Making the Corps
    Making the Corps
    Making the Corps
    Ebook404 pages6 hours

    Making the Corps

    By Thomas E. Ricks

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The bestselling, compelling insider’s account of the Marine Corps from the lives of the men of Platoon 3086—their training at Parris Island, their fierce camaraderie, and the unique code of honor that defines them.

    The United States Marine Corps, with its proud tradition of excellence in combat, its hallowed rituals, and its unbending code of honor, is part of the fabric of American myth. Making the Corps visits the front lines of boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina. Here, old values are stripped away and new Marine Corps values are forged. Bestselling author Thomas E. Ricks follows these men from their hometowns, through boot camp, and into their first year as Marines. As three fierce drill instructors fight a battle for the hearts and minds of this unforgettable group of young men, a larger picture emerges, brilliantly painted, of the growing gulf that divides the military from the rest of America.

    Included in this edition is an all-new afterword from the author that examines the war in Iraq through the lens of the Marines from Platoon 3086, giving readers an on-the-ground view of the conflict from those who know it best.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribner
    Release dateJul 31, 2007
    ISBN9781416559740
    Author

    Thomas E. Ricks

    Thomas E. Ricks is The Washington Post's senior Pentagon correspondent. A member of two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams for national reporting, he has reported on U.S. military activities in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq and A Soldier's Duty.

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    4/5

    91 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      "Making the Corps" is a great story of transformation. It covers the 13-week transformation of young males into Marines. Ricks does an excellent job of not just portraying the transformation of these young men, but how that transformation reflects the Marine way of life as a whole. The book doesn't focus a lot of time on the physical aspects (although it is covered pretty well), but on the mental and emotional changes that occur and how the Marines facilitate that change. For example, Ricks explains why Marine drill instructors are so hard on their recruits and how this changes as the recruits start to internalize the beliefs of their drill instructors. He shows, for example, how recruits' language change from "I" to "this recruit" and discusses what that means.Ricks also discusses the unique situation of the Marines as a culture within the military and the larger society. The Marines are a distinct culture that works to maintain that culture in direct criticism of the ordinary society and in suspicion of other Army branches. This is both a good thing (Marines are a specially-trained and unique force) and a bad thing (Marines don't like to play with other branches' ineptness so well). No where is this more evident in the last chapter in which Ricks compares and contrasts the Army training base and the Marines training base. Overall, this was a great book to read in learning more about the culture of the Marines rather than the experience of boot camp. I enjoyed learning more about how the Marines view their world in comparison to their history and continued legacy. The book is a bit older, so their is talk of Nintendo and video games along with Bill Clinton, but the point of transformation through the Marines bootcamp is timeless.
    • 5/5
      Thomas E. Ricks's MAKING THE CORPS has sat in my bookcase for more than three years but I finally got around to reading it, and now I wonder what took me so long. Because this snail's eye view of a Marine platoon going through boot camp on Parris Island in the mid-1990s is a starkly revealing and absolutely absorbing read from cover to cover, as it follows these young men from being confused and aimless civilians to confident and proud Marines. Ricks's look at the process is a balanced and fair one. He doesn't ignore the fact that many of the initial group will not make it through, and he makes the reader privy to the reasons for falling by the wayside and washing out. I was particularly surprised to learn that the DI's of Parris Island are now prohibited from using profanity or intimidating the recruits entrusted to them. Nevertheless, the DI's have their ways of getting the complete and undivided attention of their charges and, in the end, gaining their respect. More than once, however, I flashed back to my own Army BCT days, more than thirty years before Marine Platoon 3086, and how all my waking hours were lived in a near-constant state of mortal terror of my Drill Sergeants, who had no such prohibitions, so I learned a whole new vocabulary during those eight intimidating and terror-filled weeks. I also thought of an obscure and now nearly forgotten film I saw back in the seventies called BABY BLUE MARINE (starring Jan-Michael Vincent), about a recruit who washed out of a particularly brutal boot camp, in the days before it became a bit 'gentler,' and more 'civilized.'My own BCT, back in 1962, was a lot more like the Marine boot camp documented here in MAKING THE CORPS, but with lots of profanity, intimidation and beau coups terror.But perhaps what is most impressive in the Marine Corps Ricks shows us here is the way the Corps is actually a 'family,' and how boot camp instills 'family values' that many recruits had never learned. Wastrels and purposeless 'corner boys drinking their forties' are remade into upstanding young men who learn to respect themselves. In fact, when they return home on their first post-training leave, they find they have little in common with their old companions.What is most disturbing in Ricks's account of the Marine culture and brotherhood is how Marines - and our professional, all-volunteer military in general - have become alienated from the civilian populace it is tasked with defending, particularly with the political and elite. He wonders how long this can go on, and even poses a remote possibility of an eventual military coup, and he makes a valid argument. This book was originally published in 1997, and I read the ten-year anniversary edition, and this separation of the military and civilian has only become more exacerbated in the intervening eighteen years.This is simply a damn good book - well-written, thought provoking and fascinating. Made me appreciate the Marines a hell of a lot more. If you want to know more about our all-volunteer military, especially the 'few and the proud,' read this book. Highly recommended.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Great overview of Marine training and culture.
    • 5/5
      I bought this book as a gift for a Marine friend and ended up reading it myself. This book is a eye-opening introduction to the uninitiated and does a wonderful job of showing how modern Marines are molded during training. Ricks does a masterful job explaining the complex process of shaping disparate young men into a cohesive fighting unit. I highly recommend this book if you have Marine friends and want to gain some insight into their attitudes and values.
    • 3/5
      Intelligent exploration of the past and current state of the USMC. Still keeping up a strong tradition of membership and team over the individual, it is also fighting for a place in the modern world and dealing with a very decaying society, that gap from which continues to increase.

    Book preview

    Making the Corps - Thomas E. Ricks

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