Kathy Dobie profiles 3 former Marines in an article titled "The Few. The Proud. The Broken" for GQ Magazine. Thanks Vicky for sharing.
"When you earn the title Marine, the expectations of toughness are inherited," Matt says. "As soon as you put the uniform on, you're expected to be a Marine, and Marines are not weak—physically or mentally. The culture doesn't allow it." A broken Marine is not only useless, he's morally suspect—a malingerer, a nonhacker, a shitbird, a broke dick, a 10-percenter, a light-duty commando, one of the sick, lame, and lazy. As Gamal puts it: "You have a mental illness? Get a straw and suck it up."
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In the Corps, when a Marine gets in trouble, "we hammer the snot out of the guy," Vokey said. "That's just the way we are. We just hammer 'em, hammer 'em, hammer 'em." Good discipline and order? Of course, that's necessary in a fighting force, he said, but something's very wrong with a system that kicks mentally injured Marines to the curb. "And that's based on the fact that they were fine when they went to Iraq and Afghanistan. We broke them. This is what combat did to them, and I think we should feel some responsibility for what happens to them in the long run."
Read more here.
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