This will be a slight departure from my normal posts.
As some of my readers might know, I was in the military (Technically, I still am). I progressed from a na¯ve Seaman Recruit to a tired-of-all-the-BS Hospital Corpsman Second Class in a relatively short period of time. I did not always know the right thing to do, and I often made mistakes â especially in the beginning stages of my enlistment. I do not believe that I was ever hazed as a result of those mistakes, or for any other reason. I went through several rites of passage and I was sometimes corrected by my seniors in creative fashion. Outsiders might consider these things hazing. I don’t, and here’s why.
Rites of Passage
When I was frocked to (given the rank, but not the pay of) HM3, I became a noncommissioned officer. At the time, I was in the headquarters company of the Fifth Marine Regiment. Those Marine and Navy noncommissioned officers – those of equal or higher rank – in my unit who wished to do so walked past me and pounded their fists against my new rank insignia, which did not yet have the frogs, or pin backers, attached. In other words, two small metal pins were repeatedly pounded into my chest approximately 3/8 of an inch. When this was done, blood flowed through my undershirt and my uniform blouse.
I did not feel that I had been hazed I felt that I had been welcomed. I saw this as a rite of passage, of being accepted by my new equals and my superiors. When a staff NCO (E-6 and above) saw my blouse, he was nothing short of horrified, for he had taken part. I have no doubt that if I had complained, heads would’ve rolled and I would have no longer been welcomed as an equal. Since I was happier and felt more accomplished on that day than the day I graduated from a university, I was not about to complain.
Creative Corrective Actions
Although I do not have any spectacular examples of corrective actions that were taken because of mistakes made on my part, I sometimes witnessed other junior enlisted being forced to perform repetitive or seemingly mindless tasks due to mistakes they had made. I certainly made many mistakes, but my seniors apparently felt that verbal counseling – with level or raised voices – was enough to correct my behavior. In most cases, I was quietly pulled aside by a Sergeant or Corporal and explained the facts of life. In a few cases, Gunny verbally tore me to little pieces.
In the case of some of my fellow juniors, this was apparently not enough. Being forced to do the same thing over and over, being forced to recite phrases over and over, being forced to exercise to the point of extreme exhaustion I was aware of these things from time to time. When I felt that these actions were being taken improperly which was rare I spoke my mind. This occurred most often when a junior enlisted member was being unfairly blamed for a medical issue that was not their fault (My voice never made a difference, for what it’s worth).
Other than that, these corrective actions were not taken lightly. They were not the result of honest mistakes or miscalculations, of misunderstandings or minor behavioral quirks. They were the result of serious and repeated failures that endangered the lives of other service members. Often, they were welcomed by other junior enlisted members, for their lives were the ones hanging in the balance. I do not make these statements lightly nearly every single day, we were walking or driving the streets of what was at the time the most violent and dangerous city in Iraq, the publicly stated focal point of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
The violence did not reach the levels seen in November of 2004, but we were still losing a Marine every day for too long a period of time in and around Fallujah. As heavily as this fact weighed on me as a Navy Corpsman – I saw its effect on the senior officers and enlisted members in the Regiment, and I cannot overstate how heavy that burden is. In this light, actions take on different meanings.
Hazing
Both rites of passage and corrective actions can quickly become hazing. Surely, some readers are wondering how I make this statement after spending quite a bit of time justifying the existence of both in the modern military. When the intent of a rite of passage is not to welcome, but to harm or demean, it becomes hazing. When corrective actions are carried past the time when their point has been made perfectly clear to the recipient, they become hazing. I realize that these are terribly imprecise definitions. The world is an imprecise place – great trust is placed in the judgment of young noncommissioned officers to make the right decisions about countless other things, and they can also make the right decisions here.
Unfortunately, errors in judgment are too often made. Marines are forced to perform physical exercise until they collapse and die of exhaustion, for example. In other cases, Marines commit suicide after extreme “corrective actions” were taken following their failure to stay awake on watch. While the first example showed extremely poor judgment on the part of the seniors involved, the Marines involved in the second case have been all but convicted in the court of public opinion, while their actions may have been entirely reasonable.
For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, “watch” or “post” is incredibly important in the military. Every service has a variation of the 11 General Orders of a Sentry, and every service member has to memorize every single general order in basic training. Falling asleep on watch is an egregious violation that places the lives of other men and women in jeopardy – even in peacetime – but in a combat zone, this is an absolutely unforgivable offense.
I do not wish for any Marine to die, but the tragedy of a suicide does not even begin to match the tragedy of Marines dying because the man they trusted to keep them safe while they slept thought his own rest was more important than their lives. Falling asleep on watch four times in ten days is simply astounding. For the actions taken by his seniors to have reached the level that they did, they most certainly had attempted other, less serious actions previously. While it probably should have moved to Captain’s Mast, also known as NJP or an article 15, for the Marine who fell asleep on watch, I do not fault the other Marines involved in the least.
I feel sad that Lance Cpl. Harry Lew’s family will never see him again. I am sorry that his mother will never see him marry, and I’m sorry that his father will never bond with him again. I am, however, not sorry that his fellow Marines did what they could to preserve their own lives, as well as Harry’s â and it is not their fault that Harry felt the only way out was to take his own life. The only responsible party in his death is no longer among us. The actions of his senior Marines did not constitute hazing. That their actions are being twisted as racist or discriminatory is the real crime here.
For what it’s worth, Lew’s superiors were going easy on him. What he did is a court martial offense that’s punishable by death (Article 113). And he did it four times. If anything, they were trying to save the kid and turn him around.
I doubt that this would be such a big deal if his Aunt weren’t Judy Chu and if Ms. Chu didn’t have (CA-32) after her name…
During my six years, we had four suicides in my company alone. All were stateside, all but one were guys who had deployed at some point.
At some point, I stopped feeling sorry for them. I believe it’s a product of a weak mind, and the Army (in it’s quarterly required suicide prevention training) has taken up a “blame those left behind” approach.
It certainly doesn’t help that instead of trained psychologists, the military uses chaplains to counsel soldiers.
When I first got in back in 2005, discipline was a lot higher than it is now. I feel like I’ve been forced to watch as the Army was being corrupted from within. I say this at risk of sounding like the guys in this comic strip (http://terminallance.com/2011/10/07/terminal-lance-153-old-corps/) but to me, it really was observable.
It sucks that those soldiers are going to be publicly crucified for doing their job and building discipline. For me, I rarely learned things the hard way (by being “hazed”) but when I did, it stuck.
I tend to follow Robert Heinlein’s footsteps with regards to this sort of thing.
I think that penalizing the military for hazing in this manner is the State Department/Bureaucracy’s way of putting the military in their place, and making sure they don’t get too uppity. Being generally sympathetic to the military, I think this is a shame, but I also don’t think there’s anything you can currently do to stop it.
The day we lose the ability to correct our troops in the field with corporal punishment is the day that our military ceases to be effective and becomes yet another undisciplined group of armed people.
I cannot believe that anyone in the Marine Corps is even taking these accusations seriously enough to court-martial those NCO’s for correcting Lew. Shame on whoever decided that was a good idea.
I hope this incident does not water down the effectiveness of NCO’s in our military over the faults and inability to cope of one lazy marine and his witch hunting aunt.
Corrective actions on Lcpl Lew were definitely NOT HAZING. His failure to maintain watch in a combat zone was unacceptable and needed to be dealt with and it sounds like it was dealt with using a minimum amount of punishment. He should have been court martial-ed! He could have gotten his fellow marines killed due to his inability to perform his duties. I’m disappointed that his aunt is choosing to use her influence to ruin the responsible and honorable marines who were attempting to correct her lazy nephew and PREVENT his death. Shame on her.
Yet another example of the great rift that exists between our nations popular culture of no responsibility and free everything and our military’s culture of personal responsibility and duty. Apparently his aunt doesn’t understand what duty and responsibility are. People like her live in a completely different world, entirely separate from reality.
Doc, you make some great points and the fact you back them up with real life scenarios drives them home harder. I must say before I go on, I have served in combat with Andrew and he was one of the finest Corpsmen we had with us, that being said I am not “siding” with him on these issues, I am simply agreeing with him and his points of view. As a senior NCO in the Marine Corps, I have seen these issues unfold first hand at times, and understand why the Corps has made it policy that certain acts that once were traditions are now hazing….because like you said Doc, time and time again that one turd takes the tradition to the extreme and hurts or kills another Marine. I got my bite marks when I was promoted many times, it hurt sure, but what hurts more is knowing that there are NCOs within our ranks that take that simple act to the point of breaking a collar bone. That is not tradition! Walking the gauntlet was a time honored right of passage. You “made your bones” and earned the rank of Corporal, there was always that one dumb ass who felt it was his duty to practically break your femur in the process. This my friends is why we are loosing our hard edge ways. Politics are allowed to invade our ranks because that one retard out of every hundred NCOs falls short and opens the gap for the politics to come in and take from us the traditions we held dear.
There’s always the one tard that ruins it for everyone. That’s why we [which means every infantry branch everywhere] can’t have nice things.
Bottom line. The military is no place for pussies. If you can’t take it you shouldn’t be there.
Rites of passage allow you to quit at any time. Corrective action is just that, corrective. The SM has the choice between the 1SGT or the CDR, school of the soldier or ART-15. Charlie’s Chicken Farm (AKA CCF) was the harshest of those options but it kept a soldiers record clean.
I have a hard time reconciling suicide with discipline. And it can’t be said that these folks were weak minded. Piss poor NCO actions (and we do have some piss poor NCO’s) can leave a kid feeling there is no way out. At every point in my career where there was corrective action a senior NCO was in charge of junior NCO’s or was very well aware of the actions of his subordinates. That doesn’t appear to be the case in this article, which is just that, a newspaper article. I do have an issue with striking a subordinate. I have had some sadistic “leaders” whose only leadership styles were fear and intimidation. And when those failed, attempted bullying. When that failed the chain of command realized we had some issues. A combat outpost is a poor place to chose corrective action of this type. Falling asleep on watch is horrendous, but my question is why was he alone? Where was his ranger buddy? Where was the Sgt of the Guard? None of this was mentioned in the article but surely came out in the ART 32 hearings.
Point is, there is a difference between rites of passage & hazing. Look at the drastic actions in Canada a few years back with the disbandment of the Airborne Reg.
FYI, I did 26yrs and punched out as an E-9, so I got a little bit of experience with this also.
Sometimes I wonder if this is branch or service specific.
Andrew,
I enjoy your site…as a civilian CRNA I can’t speak to military tradition but I can speak to anatomical structures lurking just below the collar bone….large blood vessels and pleural cavities….you know this I am sure……if a thin recruit bears down in anticipation of the blow he pushes his lungs upward and closer to the skin….is tradition worth a chest tube? I dunno.
I agree with Angelo in regards to the un-official military traditions becomming exaggerated beyond there original intent. I remember listening to some of the older salts recounting how their blood strip earning process usually lead to a bruised limb for a weak, and not a fractured femur as one of my fellow NCO’s had to endure. Because it’s “un-official”, there is no way to regulate any of the shitbirds from taking it too far. Same thing applies to hazing or CA’s.
I’m a strong believer in the “if we cant make you smarter, we’ll make you stronger” approach because humans/grunts will always choose the path of least resistance when feasible. You give them the allusion of choice -do the right thing or join me for a death run, and the clarity in their decision making process is astounding. I don’t know the exact details regarding LCpl Lew’s corrective consequences, but the ending result strongly suggests the actions taken against him clearly breached the line between making a point and sadism.
Every Marine has a different tolerance for pain, and graduating from boot/SOI sets a base level all Marines are expected to endure. LCpl Lew may not have been the strongest Marine, but he WAS a Marine even in the basest sense. The greater failure I see resides with the leadership matrix entrusted to supervise his growth, both as an individual and as an integrated warrior. They failed to assess LCpl Lew’s breaking point, and that negligence had terminal consequences. Good leadership compels you to do the right thing, learn from experience and generally grow as a human being -not fucking kill yourself or endanger those around you. The lessons may be harsh, but rewarding and applicable through out the rest of the young Marine’s life as a productive human being. LCpl Lew won’t experience that, ever.
The incompetent leadership LCpl Lew was forced to endure failed him FOUR times to stress the importance of sentry watch. Instead of investigating/remedying other possible factors for his performance, or rotating duty schedules until a resolution is found, his chain of command kept pushing him to the point where fucking suicide was some how a better option than their “constructive” re-education efforts. This is not a case of the Corps adapting and overcomming an obstacle, nor a thinning of the herd; it’s about one dead Marine and three others that are unfit to be leaders of them (or anything else for that matter).
Angry Mike has the often missed component… You can call it quits anytime. You might catch a little sh!t talking for it once in a while but no one worth a damn will really care. We all have our limits and a true comrade in arms will respect and help his brother though it.
When I had my crow tacked on it hurt like a mother f*cker and I had a hard time moving my arm for a week thereafter. When another guy begged for it to stop, it stopped. We had a laugh and it was a joke in the bars for years, but not one person that served with him considered him less of a man or shipmate.
Lew failed himself, suicide is not an answer for anything but self pity. Dan-O is correct in that Lew’s leadership failed to assess his inability to maintain a position of responsibility and send him to mast for as much.
Sh!tbags and Hippies ruin everything.
It is a tragedy. But the blame is not at the immediate chain of command in my opinion. Lew was not hazed. I don’t think that is part of this incident. He was transferred recently into the unit. What was his record with the previous unit? Was he a poor performer in the previous unit? Did his performance in the previous unit compel his transfer?
The squad leader and team leader had a new member of the squad. He would not stay awake on guard duty. BIG PROBLEM. They chose to use field remedies and in-the-field guidance. They did not take a kid out to the woodline away from the barracks and beat him. According to the reports, they were in the field chasing bad guys. We are at a point when a slap on the helmet is mild treatment.
If Lew could not man up… if he was not able to push past the limits of civilian life and serve…. if he could not stay awake on his fair share of guard duty… then it is up to the commissioned officers to put his ass on the street in civilian clothes. Holding his NCOs responsible for his death because they were trying to motivate him to man up is not an effective way to eliminate the problem.
Much like the rebuke in the Caine Mutiny. When the junior officers are celebrating and the JAG officer points out that if they had supported the CPT when he needed it, none of the bad things would have happened. Or like COL Jessup said, maybe we should train the boy.
why didn’t Judy Chu nominate her own nephew to USNA or any other Service Academy for that matter?
Lew was not hazed. And it is sad that it ended the way it did but what his seniors did was not They were good Marines. And for the most part so was Lew. luckily most of his seniors were let off. And even Lew’s on father agrees that there is a difference between hazing and rights of passage like being pinned. If someone who son killed himself over being “hazed” can see that then why can’t the corps? Like seriously.