This article was written by Lt. Co. Ollie North USMC. He is so very eloquent in his explanation of what being a Marine and what the Marine Corps has meant to him.
On a personal level; the Marine Corps changed my life in so many ways they are too vast to remember them all.
Starting back in 1958 when myself and 25 other green horned youngsters for all over the country that joined the Corps for their own personal reasons; not knowing what they had gotten themselves into, were herded off of the bus in Yemassee, South Carolina by some screaming fool with 2 stripes on his sleeve. Who the hell was this raving maniac? Only to find out later that he was one of the more cordial individuals we would have the displeasure of meeting on the island.
From that moment on, for 16 weeks of hell on earth, it was all downhill. The only slack we EVER got was after we qualified at the rifle range when we were short-timers and had made it through the worst parts of our training.
As an example of how the Marine Corps can change a person: I went to Parris Island weighing 150 pounds and after 16 weeks of training, I weighed in at 185 pounds as a lean, mean fighting machine. The rest of my fellow platoon members that made it (about 15% didn’t survive the brutality) had similar circumstances.
Little did I realize at the time; when we were getting beaten down mentally and physically, (it was the Marine Corps way or the highway, with no exceptions) that myself and the rest of the men that made it through bootcamp and graduated, had just received the absolute best training on earth on how to develop a person as a patriot, a weapon, mentally and physically that would serve us and the USMC for the rest of their life, no matter what circumstance we encountered. The Masters of Disaster (DIs’) made sure of that. We all went in boys and came out men.
The USMC is like no other military organization in the USA or possibly on earth. It is a Brotherhood. White, Black, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian; it doesn’t matter. We are all either United States Marines or former Marines; never ex-Marines.
We acknowledge each-other in public everytime we see one of ours wearing the Marine Corps emblem on a ring – shirt our cover (hat).
If the PC/liberal idiots in this country that thrive on discourse would live by the same rules as the Marines do; there would not be any racism or discriminations of any type. We are all Americans. Wake up fools!!!!
I salute Ollie North and all of the other Jar Heads that came before or after me.
Semper Fi to them all.
The Goomba Gazette 
MCRD/PI: The place where Marines are born.