The Corps on Trial

The eight-man Marine trial board did not need very long to reach a verdict. After deliberating less than four hours--including a break for dinner --the board last week acquitted Staff Sergeant Harold Bronson of involuntary manslaughter, maltreatment and assault. Bronson, a drill instructor (D.I.), was tried for the death last March of Private Lynn E. ("Bubba") McClure. During a mock bayonet drill supervised by Bronson, other recruits beat McClure, 20, a mental retardate, into a vegetable.

Despite Bronson's acquittal, the episode has helped trigger a trial larger than that of any individual. The defendant is the Marine Corps itself.

The nation's proudest fighting force is the target of a fusillade of criticism --the worst since 1956, when another D.I., Staff Sergeant Matthew McKeon, marched a platoon into a swamp at Parris Island, S.C. Six of the recruits drowned, and McKeon, after a brief prison sentence, was restored to good standing. Bronson's acquittal and the likelihood that charges will be dropped against others involved in McClure's death heighten fears that the corps will not be able to reform itself.

Certainly with respect to the hated D.I., long noted for torturing and abusing recruits in the guise of "building men," reform has been slow in coming --as Bubba McClure learned too late. A born loser and high school dropout from Lufkin, Texas, McClure had been rejected by the Army and Air Force before he somehow passed the Armed Forces Qualification Test in San Antonio, after failing it in Lufkin. Sent last year to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, he was quickly tagged a "problem recruit" and assigned to a "motivation" platoon. When he defied orders to participate in a pugil-stick fight (a simulated bayonet drill in which 12-lb. poles padded on both ends are used as weapons), Bronson ordered other recruits to whale away at McClure, even after the 115-lb. youth fell to the ground screaming for mercy. He died in a hospital after doctors removed half of his crushed skull.

Other abuses have surfaced lately:

P: At Parris Island, a recruit was suspended by his arms from a chinning bar in a mock crucifixion that ended only when his fingertips went numb.

P: A harassed recruit at San Diego was driven to such despair that he threatened suicide. The drill instructor obligingly instructed him on how to slash his wrists. The recruit's wounds, fortunately, were superficial.

P: On the very day that Marine Corps Commandant Louis H. Wilson was discussing such outrages before the House Armed Services Committee, three D.I.s at Parris Island were suspended after one struck a recruit with a blow of such force that it perforated the youth's stomach.

On any given day, there are roughly 1,150 D.I.s on duty. Yet since 1970 alone, no fewer than 1,072 legal actions taken against D.I.s have resulted in convictions or nonjudicial punishment. The figure suggests that many more thousands of abuses go unpunished or even unreported. Admits one Marine colonel: "Since Viet Nam, the situation got away from us." The fact is that long before Viet Nam, Marine D.I.s were legendary for their sadistic cruelty.

The McClure case indicates that the Marines have been forced to lower their standards to sign up the 50,000 recruits needed annually to maintain the corps' authorized strength of 196,000 officers and enlisted personnel. Recruiting slogans proclaim: "We want a few good men," but D.I.s have been encountering more than a few "problem recruits."

The situation is reflected in statistics. The 1975 Marine Corps AWOL rate of 300 per 1,000 personnel was greater than that of the other services combined. The desertion rate of 105 per 1,000 enlisted men was twice that of the other services combined. Bad-conduct discharges were given to 2.3% of the Marines in 1975, compared with .5% for the Army. By increasing the proportion of high school graduates among 1975 recruits from 55% to 67%, the corps has improved on those figures: so far this year, the desertion rate has declined by 31%, the AWOL rate by 29%.

The corps is taking other steps. It is now subjecting prospective drill instructors to psychiatric evaluations. To supervise D.I.s more closely, the corps is assigning 84 additional officers to recruit-training depots. Training days will be reduced from a bruising 16 hours to ten, with one hour of free time each evening and Sundays off. "Motivation platoons" will be eliminated.

But still unanswered is the question posed in a recent study by the Brookings Institution: Is there even a need for a specialized, basically amphibious assault force like the Marine Corps in modern warfare? The Marines argue that a "close support" role will always be required. Rejecting that view, Brookings urges that the corps be reduced by half, or part of it assigned to Army roles.

To generations of Marines trained to disdain Army "dogfaces," that would be an inglorious outcome. It may also be an inevitable direction for the corps that fought so valiantly from Tripoli and Belleau Wood to Corregidor, Korea and Viet Nam.

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