Back in December I wrote about a fierce young Marine Corps recruit who was told that she couldn’t have “ATHEIST” on her records and dogtags. I gave her some advice; she fought back, and won.

She recently graduated from Boot Camp in top form. She had a blast despite the USMC’s grueling 13 week training. It’s clear that becoming a Marine is something she is quite proud of. If you’d like to congratulate her, do so in the comments here – I’m certain she’ll see it. This is long, but certainly worth the read.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t all good. There are some shocking details in this otherwise inspirational letter.

Sergeant Griffith,

I did it! I successfully earned the title of Marine and graduated from boot camp yesterday morning. I cannot begin to describe how proud and happy I am to have accomplished my goal. I never broke physically; I had a boot bite for 5 weeks which wasn’t pleasant but once I got new boots my foot healed, and some gnarly blisters after the Crucible that the Corpsman made me go to medical for “just in case” (much to my great annoyance). Since blisters were the worst thing that happened to me, I would say I came out ahead.

Believe it or not, I had a lot of fun during the Crucible; it was amazing to see the women I’d been training with come together and gel as a team to complete the obstacles, and pull each other through. There were 19 heat cases during the Crucible (I heard a rumor it got up to 114 degrees at one point), but all in the male company – our Corpsmen were very happy with us females, as they were tired of giving out silver bullets. Only one female failed to complete the Crucible – she fell badly and broke her hand on the initial hump out, which is unfortunate, but she’ll heal up and will eventually get there, I’m sure.

To give you a quick run down of what an atheist recruit can accomplish at MCRD Parris Island without the supposed help of a deity, I earned:

— High scores on my CFT and PFT, (making me a member of the 285+ club, which goes in my Record Service Book)

— Sharpshooter with my rifle (nicknamed Hiro Protagonist; our PMI said we had to name our rifles, and yes, I’m that nerdy)

— Top 10% of my platoon, ranked 3 of 64 (only the guide and series guide received higher pros/cons), so I received a Meritorious Mast.

— Held the billet of ‘Knowledge Recruit,’ so I worked closely with our Knowledge Hat to help everyone study for all our tests. I gave up most of my free time as a result for the majority of our time at boot camp, but we didn’t drop anyone for failing knowledge!

As far as religion and my training, I did go to church three times, once to Contemporary Christian, once to Traditional Christian, both times to get away from the DIs during the first two weeks of boot camp, and once to Catholic to see a friend who was six weeks ahead of me in training who had just completed her Crucible and earned the title of Marine in order to congratulate her before she enjoyed her Liberty Sunday. The Christian services themselves weren’t bad, just a little too hokey for my comfort at the Contemporary Christian service.

On Young Earth Creationism

and the ‘proper’ role of women

What was annoying were the hour long Religious Education classes (really a long speech given by the same man) given after the Christian services that we had to stay for. I ended up sitting through the same class both times, because apparently the teacher rotates between the two services. The teacher, probably in his late fifties, was a young earth creationist who talked about how there was no evidence for evolution, just lies made up by scientists who couldn’t prove anything, they couldn’t test for evolution (I had a hard time not laughing at a YEC who wanted scientific method type of proof for evolution, but then turned around and talked about feelings as proof of god – the irony, it burns!), which somehow turned into a rant about the proper role of women, which was to not be in combat but to serve their husbands, make babies, etc etc. I couldn’t believe that he could get away with telling Marine Corps recruits that women should never be in combat roles or even close to it – did he know who he was addressing? It made me so angry because not only will that make the males think poorly of the female recruits, which is already a problem both during training and out in the Fleet, but it could make the female recruits begin to doubt themselves, which can really screw you over during training. The whole thing was ridiculous. But whatever – I had my Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to comfort me during the five minutes of Devotions we got each night.

They screwed up my dog tags

I only have two personal complaints regarding religion at boot camp. First – they screwed up my dog tags! It says NO REL PREF, even though my RSB and everything else says ‘ATHEIST.’ I just got my tags the night before graduation, so I couldn’t complain to anyone, so I’ll just try to get new ones made [PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION WITHHELD]. But you know there had to be someone who consciously ‘corrected’ my dog tags for me. Irritating, but not a big deal in the scheme of things.

“Bow your fucking head down, recruit,

and pray with the rest of us!”

Second – and this infuriates me to no end – was the compulsory participation in the prayer at the Eagle, Globe and Anchor ceremony (and also later at graduation, but by that time it was a moot point). A little background first: everyone in my platoon knows I’m an atheist, and I had a lot of really interesting conversations with my fellow recruits about it, all part of my goal to be open but not pushy about my atheism in the hope that I can positively influence people’s perception of atheists while remaining keeping my integrity intact. Anyway…

The second night of the Crucible, after staging all our gear in our hooch, getting a quick hygiene break, we stood on line to learn about and practice what we’d do during the ceremony. The first thing we were told was that we’d be standing at parade rest, and the Chaplain would come out and give an invocation. When he said, “Let us pray,” we all were to snap our heads down so our chins touched our chest. Our heavy hat gave the order, and everyone snapped their heads down — everyone except me. Our heavy screamed, “(NAME/RANK WITHHELD)! You aren’t special, bow your fucking head down, recruit, and pray with the rest of us!” I yelled back, “Ma’am, this recruit is an atheist, she doesn’t pray!” Dead silence. The other recruits looked at me in shock – we all knew I was in for it. Plus, I was one of the good recruits – I never had a bad attitude, I took my ITs like a champion, I was good about sounding off, freezing when told too… In short, talking back like that and challenging the DI at all, let alone in front of the whole platoon, was completely out of character. But I couldn’t just go along without trying to stand up for myself; I told myself I was on the Crucible, for crying out loud! The final test, the one that would make me a Marine – if I didn’t have the courage to say something now, would I ever?

Then the other shoe dropped, as you might imagine. Think “Full Metal Jacket.” The DI started screaming and ranting at me, saying that “Oh my fucking god, recruit, no one is trying to change your religion, this is part of a ceremony that’s been going on since 1775, no one else has ever had a problem with it,” and so on and so forth for what seemed like forever. At one point I started counting the logical fallacies she made just to make sure I didn’t make the mistake of trying to talk over her and explain that I didn’t think the Constitution allowed them to force me to physically conform to their prayer. Finally, she said that I could either bow my head and pray with everyone else, or she would make sure that I didn’t participate in the Eagle, Globe and Anchor ceremony, that I could watch the group on the sidelines while everyone else received their symbol that they were Marines and I could go to the PX and buy myself one on my own during Liberty Sunday.

Knowing that she was deadly serious, I did what seemed like the smart thing at the time, and shut up and bowed my head, at that practices and at the actual ceremony itself (although I refused to say the “So help me god” at the end of the oath administered at the end of the ceremony). There wasn’t an opportunity to talk with our Senior DI before the ceremony to either informally or formally complain and request to not bow my head.

The positive part of this was that the majority of my platoon came up to me over the course of the next day and said that they were really glad that I had stood up for myself like that, that I was really brave, and that they agreed that I shouldn’t have to bow my head, but it wasn’t worth the risk of not being a part of the ceremony. They told me to think of it as a drill movement, but understood when I said I couldn’t just pretend like that, and why it was like a Christian being forced to participate in a ceremony of a different religion.

It’s one thing to go to someone else’s event and sitting silently through a prayer – you chose to go to that event, you have to be nice and not disrupt someone else’s plans. But this was MY ceremony, I had earned it and was going to be damned (hah!) if I was not going to be a part of it.

What can – or should – I do?

I am not sure what to do at this point about the forced prayer, or what I could/should have done before the ceremony itself. Yes, I know that they didn’t force me to pray, but the forced physical participation makes it seem to everyone else that I was praying, which bothers me to no end. I could have refused to bow my head, but I really wanted to participate in the ceremony which marked the culmination of all I’d been training for. I do not think I should have been forced to choose between participation in the ceremony or remaining true to my non-religious beliefs (for lack of a better term). I know I gave up certain rights when I enlisted, but was this really one of them? I don’t think so, but like I said, I didn’t have a chance to find out before the ceremony itself, and now it’s a moot point for me, but maybe not for future recruits. What, if anything, can – or should – I do? A formal complaint seems like overkill (and possibly the death of my career in the Corps before it begins), but I feel like I should somehow let the powers that be know that this is wrong and ask that it be made clear that you cannot force someone to participate in an overtly religious ceremony against their will (the prayer was to “Our Lord of Hosts,” but didn’t mention Jesus at the end), unless my DI was right and they actually can force the physical participation in prayer, in which case I would want to make a formal complaint and fight that practice. What do you think about this? What can – or should – I do?

I’m slowly catching up with the real world, and I have several months of your blog posts to read through, which I’m looking forward to. I hope you and the rest of the online atheist community is doing well, because I know I am happy to be out and about, and a Marine.

Sincerely,

NAME / RANK WITHHELD

(*Extremely minor details have been altered or omitted to obfuscate the Marine’s identity.)