Walking the razor’s edge

Those who don’t quit or aren’t booted keep up the fight

By Christian Lowe / Times staff writer

It doesn’t take long to learn that at Officer Candidates School, everything is graded. Everything. How well candidates drill. How fast they move through the obstacle course. How they manage a squad of Marines during leadership evaluations. How they behave on weekend liberty. It’s all fair game, and the sergeant instructors are always watching.

In the ranks of OCS Class 186, many candidates dropped out voluntarily not long into the program. But most others were fighting to keep pace and to win over a team of sergeant instructors who don’t impress easily.

And, in what might seem a nod to reality television — though this has been standard practice at OCS long before the rise of “Survivor” — the candidates are evaluated by their peers, too.

Between the two, the candidates are always walking the razor’s edge. And, with that kind of pressure, graduation day can seem a lot further away than 10 weeks.

At the halfway point in their training, some candidates — run ragged and sucking wind — were staring down the possibility of being kicked out of the program.

Some drop out …

In the fifth week of Officer Candidates Course — and again in the seventh and ninth weeks — each platoon commander sends problem candidates to be judged by a panel of company staff to evaluate whether they should be dropped altogether.

The Marine Corps is under no obligation to keep its officer candidates; those who come to OCS at Quantico, Va., do so knowing that as long as they complete the first four weeks of training, they can leave any time they want. Several did just that during “drop on request” boards held the last week of June.

Instructors rarely try to convince the candidates to stay during these boards. But in some cases, a candidate needs a little reality check to get past the uncertainty of those first shocking weeks.

When a candidate announced June 25, 2004, that he wanted to leave OCS because he was “not sure the military life is for him,” the senior enlisted Marine for Charlie Company, Class 186, gave the would-be dropout her own brand of reality check.

“What do you mean when you say ‘the military life’s not for you?’ Because you’ve never even tried it other than the training company here,” said 1st Sgt. Maria Marty, rattling off her question. “When you speak of the military life, what is it you speak of that’s not for you?”

Despite Marty’s protests, the candidate opted out of OCS.

Asked about his excuse after the board ended, Marty explained her skepticism.

“I just don’t like it when they say ‘military life,’” she said. “What the heck do you know about military life?”

But while candidates can voluntarily drop out at the fourth week, the fifth-week boards — and those held in the seventh and ninth weeks — are a different matter altogether. Here, the company and battalion staffs cull out those they deem unworthy of a commission.

… And others are dropped

In most cases, the candidates recommended to go before drop boards are struggling and just need an extra kick in the butt to let them know they’re on thin ice. But in a few cases, the instructors and staff can already see someone who’s not going to make it in the fleet, or worse, someone who is malingering — shirking his duties or trying to squeak by with minimal effort, making life tougher for his peers in the platoon.

In Class 186, a few were trying to squeak by, in the instructors’ view.

From Day 1, Candidate Jeff Shapiro, 26, of Virginia Beach, Va., was in his instructors’ sights.

Staff Sgt. Susan Anderton, an OCS staff member who supervised the candidates during the first few days of in-processing, thought she saw him report an inaccurate crunch count during the initial physical fitness test conducted a few days before he joined his training platoon.

Shapiro again fell under the instructors’ eyes weeks later, this time on the combat course — a series of obstacles through which a four-person fire team must maneuver while carrying a basic load that includes a rifle, web gear and helmet, among other equipment. In this case, instructors said, they saw what they considered shirking, saying Shapiro set aside his rifle to make negotiating the course’s physical challenges easier.

At company-level drop boards held during the fifth week of training, Marty lectured Shapiro about his actions on the combat course. But rather than drop him, she recommended probation at the company level. But Shapiro still had to face the commander of OCS, Col. Louis Rachal, before he got the final word on his fate.

The meeting would not be a good one.

While Rachal was respectful to most of those he deemed unworthy, he gave Shapiro no quarter.

As a prior-enlisted Marine sergeant, Shapiro should have known better, Rachal reasoned in an interview after the drop board. But instead, Rachal said, Shapiro was just trying to skate by, using his inside knowledge of the Corps not to excel, but to make his time at OCS as easy as possible.

Rachal’s eyes narrowed as he leaned back in his chair during the July 9, 2004, board, a crowd of officers and enlisted staff sitting along the wall of the cool, air-conditioned room waiting for the decision. It was obvious that some senior enlisted Marines in the room were silently rooting for Shapiro, while the officers stared impassively. Several seconds ticked by in silence.

Then Rachal arched forward in his chair, looking squarely at Shapiro standing less than 10 feet in front of him. His tone was icy.

“I’m going to disenroll you, and I am not going to give you the opportunity to reapply.”

And that was that.

In the post-board interview, Rachal explained that he expects more of prior-enlisted Marines. They are a unique asset to the officer corps, as they know the service well and have a special perspective on leadership. They know the rules, and they know what is expected of them.

But in Rachal’s opinion, Shapiro didn’t take advantage of that to be an effective leader.

“Instead of using all of his talents to get through the course, he was cutting corners,” Rachal said. “Am I harder on [prior-enlisted] candidates? Yeah.”

Shapiro said later that it wasn’t cutting corners that led to his difficulties. Rather, he said, it was the timing of his selection to OCS. With his ship date coming less than two months after he got word of his selection, he said he wasn’t ready for the rigors of the course because of other challenges in his life, including preparations for a permanent-change-of-station move. And once in training, an ankle injury two weeks into the course complicated things more.

“I had really bad timing and it caused me to be ill prepared,” he said. “In retrospect, I should maybe have asked to defer to a later class, but I will continue my career as the Marine that the board thought I was when they selected me to go to OCS.”

Of his run-ins with instructors, Shapiro said, “there were a variety of factors that were affecting my performance and I believe some of my instructors may have seen that.”

He added that, as an enlisted Marine, integrity is important to him and that the incidents that brought him before the drop board were not intentional efforts on his part to make the training easier on himself.

Shapiro had re-enlisted for a second term to attend OCS. So after his dismissal, he returned to the enlisted ranks to finish out his career.

“I know I’m not the first prior-enlisted Marine to be dismissed from OCS and I won’t be the last,” he said. “I’ll take the experience and grow from it. I challenge any enlisted Marines who have the opportunity to go to OCS to take it.”

A taste of the field

Not all of OCS is one hellacious PT session after another, nor is it one dreary classroom session after another. While the candidates who make the cut at OCS learn the field-craft and infantry tactics required of every officer at their next training program — The Basic School, a six-month course also taught at Quantico — they get their first taste of field life long before they pin on the gold bars of a second lieutenant.

Much of the OCS field work revolves around learning the basics of small unit movement — offensive and defensive alike — and the fundamentals of land navigation. Most officer candidates find this to be the best part of their training.

It gives them a chance to do what they believe is essentially the core of what it means to be a Marine — living in the field and maneuvering through the woods looking for the enemy. However, they won’t use live ammunition; they carry rifles during OCS, but they’ll only fire blanks.

Between their first experiences with field training and their first opportunity to go on weekend leave — which comes in the third week of training — most candidates begin to hit their stride and start enjoying the course, or at least hating it less.

Soon it becomes merely an endurance test. The candidates realize that only a major screw up is going to get them dropped. Do the things you’re asked to do, and do them the best you can when you’re told, and you’ll be fine — no matter what threats you endure from your instructors.

“It’s not like you can just grade some of these things” like a multiple-choice test, said Candidate Antonio Contreras, 30, of Labadie, Mo. “There’s a lot of subjectivity to it all.”

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