You've graduated from Marine Corps Recruit Depot and Infantry School. You're in the best shape of your life, you've engaged targets at 500 meters, thrown grenades, qualified on fully automatic weapons, and learned hand to hand combatives. You've been living and breathing (barely) between two bullet proof ceramic plates, sleeping with your rifle, and conducting miles and miles of foot patrols. You're a professionally trained killer and you know it. Next stop, the real Marine Corps, where you'll do land nav looking for small white markers intentionally placed in patches of snow. Because fuck you, that's why.
The USMC, otherwise known as the land of check boxes. You might get to train, but it will be to the point of meeting minimum standards and nothing more. If you joined the Marines and demanded to be infantry because you were raised around firearms and loved shooting then this is the place for you -- once a year when it's mandatory that you rifle qual. But at least rifle qualification is a week long exercise. Your command couldn't lock on enough ammo to conduct a by the book rifle qual, with pre-qualification and all of the other bells and whistles? Well, you can have a 10 round BZO before you start shooting for score. Shit, you just got hooked up big time Devil Dog!
It'll get better when you deploy though. You'll get to kick down doors and murder people with a .50 cal from atop the most modern armored fighting vehicles. Or, stand post in a tower made from 30 feet of sewer pipe stood on end. Probably that last one. But by god, when you go outside of the wire you'll be fighting for all that's good and just in the world, liberating your people from the stranglehold of fear inflicted by the forces of evil. Or, you'll escort shit covered jalopy semi trucks driven by Pakistanis and Indians filled with off brand hot pockets from one piece of shit-hole desert to another. A target so worthless that the half-assed farmers turned IED fuckers don't even have to waste their time or resources detonating explosives to disable the convoy. They just send their kids out into the road forcing poor Kumar to slam on the brakes, tearing the three salvaged pieces of duct tape holding the rotor onto the axle.
But then again, maybe your shit bag airwing platoon commander will just throw the lever activating the reserve fuel tank just to see what happens. Maybe that reserve tank was accidentally filled with gasoline instead of diesel fuel because the Marine bulk fuel specialist who gassed your truck up before you left the wire was too busy jamming out to Avril Lavigne on his brand new iPod from the PX to notice that he was gassing up a 37 ton MRAP instead of his SSgt's personal bongo truck. Maybe that mogas hits the diesel engine and kills that shit faster than a fucking JDAM. But by god, your fucktard airwing platoon commander found out what happens when you hit the reserve fuel tank lever for shits and giggles in the middle of a mission.
Maybe your company CO will accidentally discharge his sidearm outside the chow hall at lunch time on one of the largest Marine bases in country. That would probably land your sorry ass company on the Syrian border with nothing to eat but UGREs and Otis Spunkmeyer muffins; standing post in aforementioned sewer pipe. Your CO could sign for the Army kitchen trailer belonging to the unit you replace. But he won't, because he doesn't want that "responsibility." Besides, UGREs are only a little bit worse than MREs. Maybe one of your sentries will observe possible arms smugglers transferring weapons over the Syrian border. Maybe your QRF will get dispatched to fuck their shit up. But it won't, because "that might be dangerous."
At least you'll get to go on foot patrols up there though. You'll probably gather intel from which your airwing Captain American will deduce that "the transactions are happening at the bank!"
"Uh, no fucking shit, sir?"
He'll get relieved of command though, don't worry. But it'll be your fault, "YOU failed HIM!"
"Roger that, SgtMajor..."
You won't be able to take a real shower for seven months. You'll get wet, turn the water off, soap up, turn the water back on, rinse off, OUT! But, when the battalion commander decides he wants to conduct a white glove inspection of your tactical vehicles while in country during the middle of a convoy rotation you'll be encouraged to power wash your vehicles in the middle of a sandstorm for two straight weeks.
The shitty part is that the deployment will be the best year of your five years of service. Which really only goes to show how fucking miserable the other four years were. What's worse? The entire five years will be spent feeling inferior to those around you. Because the guys to your left and right will be the baddest mother fuckers you've ever met. They'll carry your share of the load when you can't. They'll crack jokes when the bullshit gets so frustrating you can't even speak. And, they'll probably never let you know that they feel the same sense of inferiority, because this is the Marine Corps, where everybody is the strongest version of themselves.
You'll succeed in spite of the bullshit. Because fuck them, that's why.
