If I were to venture a guess, I would say that the toughest job in America, next to being a Mom, is that of Marine Corps Drill Instructor.  This is not  a way to craft some superlative about the U.S.M.C., not entirely anyway.  This is merely to say that if you have the chance to see a Drill Instructor, (and only Marines have Drill Instructors), you would be amazed at the size and scope of their job.  In my time on the planet, I have seen no finer professional in any field, and I don’t expect to.  

I entered the Corps in 1984.  We had been admitting niggers in the Corps for decades by then, so the racial element was not a very difficult issue to deal with.  Sorry, perhaps I should not have used that word.  It was after all 1984.  Let’s call us, “coloreds”.  Nah, you’re right.  We don’t say that much either these days.  We were black people in my time.  We certainly were in the time that I was in the Corps.  As a matter of fact, the U.S.M.C. refused to refer to Marines as any color other than green.  The approved euphemism was “light green” or “dark green” depending.  I’ll leave it to you to determine who was which.  Here’s a hint, it is intuitive.  

In my time in the Corps, we went from referring to women Marines as “Waves” to W.M.’s to Marines.  I always felt sorry for any woman on any U.S.M.C. installation.  The numbers were always far from 50/50, and the environment was as though women did not exist.  They certainly didn’t during boot camp, not for us anyway.  We took basic training on the same base, the same piece of real estate, but we never saw the female form, except once, in the 91 days of training that is U.S.M.C. basic training.  Yes, there were Navy Corpsmen (nurses) of the female persuasion in the base clinic when we had to receive inoculations or whatever, but one never looked at anyone but one’s fellow platoon members.  Drill Instructors called it “eye-fucking”, and that was not authorized.  So they could stand next to us, or in front of us for minutes at a time, but there would be no chance to actually see them.  U.S.M.C. recruits just stare ahead with that 1000 yard stare, and you don’t see shit.  We sure as hell never saw those nurses.  

Eventually the term “Wave” was waived off.  “Wave” was a term from WWI or WWII, I dont recall.  There were the old off color jokes about, “how does one tell the temperature of the ocean?  Stick your finger in a Wave.”  Yuk-yuk-yuk.  That sort of behavior will get a Marine an Article 15 proceeding, or a court martial now, and rightly so.  Society decided that this was not appropriate professional behavior for the Marine Corps, so civilian leaders made the mandate, the military hierarchy ordered it, and the Drill Instructors drilled it home.  Incidentally, the notion once held that women were not appropriate for the profession of arms.  And there is no military service like the U.S.M.C. when it comes to arms.  Every Marine is a basic rifleman, in addition to whatever occupational speciality it has.  Rifle marksmanship is drilled heavily.  Wouldn’t you know it, but in very short order, women owned all the course records in Marine Corps training with the rifle.  As it turns out, a lower heart rate is advantageous to precision marksmanship.  Marines learned, and the Drill Instructors drove it home.

In U.S.M.C. basic training, we lived in very close quarters.  Individuality was almost entirely stripped.  It was all part of the process.  We slept in close quarters, showered in one big room, and crapped on toilets with no stalls.  The “head” had a row of about 20 toilets, one next to another, like a row of parking meters.  I don’t think I had defecated in front of another human since I wore a diaper.  This was a change.  There was so much to the privacy of elimination that never really had to be contemplated before.  Wiping oneself seemed quite personal when it became necessary to contemplate doing so in front of 19 of your closest friends.  But wouldn’t you know it, nature calls, the need arises, and one wipes.  No big deal.  

We even shared boxer shorts, socks, and jock straps in U.S.M.C. boot camp.  They were thrown in a pile at the end of the day, washed in loads thru the middle of the night, and redistributed, one per footlocker.  No time was taken to match the jock with the previous wearer.  That sort of individuality was a luxurious waste of time.  One jock per crotch.  That’s all anyone needed to know.  Wouldn’t you know it, we managed.  Just one of those things.  No biggie.  No one took the time to determine whether their jock had been worn by a nigger, er...colored, er......dark green, or whatever.  It didn’t matter.  There was a time when I would not have been allowed in the Corps.  The civilian authority decided to change that.  The military hierarchy gave the orders.  The Drill Instructors applied the law.  

In the time that I was in the Corps, gays and lesbians were officially forbidden.  They asked at the time of enlistment, and one could be removed  if discovered.  I never knew of anyone who was openly gay, secretly gay, or removed.  Never until one evening in Japan when a Sailor in my barrack was pummeled for walking around in make-up and skivies.  This was not advisable in a U.S.M.C. barrack.  The Sailor had to be hospitalized.

Some 6 years later, or so, the new President began pressing for removing the ban on gays and lesbians serving in the military.  I thought it was the right thing to do, but also thought it would not likely work in the Marine Corps.  I knew enough of my own history in this country, and its imperfect view of freedoms with regard to the races, specifically the “dark greens”, to know that this was a straight (no pun intended) freedom issue.  This was no different.  Would some gays and lesbians be subject to some dangerous situations, yeah, probably.  But it seems that is how social change happens in this country.  We’re loud and hard headed.  We seem to not want to do the right thing, until we do.

When Truman desegregated the military, part of what made the change to what we now take for granted was Marine Corps Drill Instructors.  Marine Corps Drill Instructors are dangerous and hard headed.  Change the law, then let a U.S.M.C. Drill Instructor lay down the law.  It will be done.

Today Colin Powell, a former “dark green” from the Army, former Joint Chiefs Chairman, and former Secretary of State in the Bush administration, has gone on record as supporting the repeal of “Dont Ask, Dont Tell”.  Powell, to his credit, has changed his view from the service of gays and lesbians in the military service of the United States.  Desegregating the military services helped to pull the wider society toward what America should be.  The removal of “Dont Ask, Dont Tell” will do the same.