Merry Christmas, Let’s Talk About Hazing

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 naïve 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 – 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 – 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.