Letters to the Editor

This letter is associated with the following article:
A new Marine recruitment strategy reaches out to the female population.
  • I know there are different physical fitness tests for men and women...

    ...but all of them are required to go through basic training. Even the ones who never have and probably will never see anything closer to combat than playing in the Marine Corps band or guarding the Tomb of the Unknown have to go through the same basic training. The idea is that any of them will be ready to fight if called upon (even though, for all practical purposes, we all know some of them never will).

    Heck, the recruiter at my high school was trying to get me to work for Armed Forces Radio because of my experience in broadcasting--but I still would have had to go through basic. (I wasn't tempted to join the military, but I probably would have been rejected anyway, due to deformed knees and bad hearing that didn't keep me from successfully working in radio but would have made me difficult to communicate with under fire on a battlefield.)