Military Recruitment

Oct 17, 2023
  • Of course, maintaining one of the world’s largest militaries entirely with volunteers has never been easy, and this is not the first time in the 49 years since the United States ended the draft that recruitment has fallen short.
  • That pattern has made the armed forces something of a family business, and led to some communities, many of them in the Southeast, supplying a disproportionate share of recruits. But even in those kinds of communities, recruiting has been tough this year.
  • Addressing the U.S. Military Recruiting Crisis
  • How bad is the recruiting crisis? During the last fiscal year, the Army missed its recruiting goal by 15,000 active-duty soldiers, or 25 percent of its target.
  • Army officials project that active end strength could shrink by as much as 20,000 soldiers by September, down to 445,000. That means that the nation’s primary land force could plummet by as much as 7 percent in only two years — at a time when its missions are increasing in Europe and even in the Pacific, where the Army provides many of the critical wartime theater enablers without which the other services cannot function. 
  • The other services barely met their active-duty recruiting goals last year, but it will be harder for them to do so in 2023
  • They all accelerated their delayed entry applicants at the end of the last fiscal year, leaving them with a far shallower pool to draw from this year.
  • The Marine Corps may be able to compensate for this problem because its outstanding retention rates last year enabled it to lower its recruiting goal. It may be able to do so again this year. 
  • But the Navy and the Air Force face greater recruiting headwinds. Both started with deeper holes in their pool of delayed entry applicants, offered extensive financial bonuses, and took a wide range of other one-time measures — such as the Navy increasing the maximum enlistment age from 39 to 41.
  •  Furthermore, Navy and Air Force recruiters took advantage of the release of Top Gun: Maverick, which, like its 1986 predecessor, was the highest-grossing film of the year. A recent analysis showed that the original Top Gun boosted recruiting by 8 percent.
  • To the extent that the sequel helped boost Navy and Air Force enlistments in 2022, their recruiting holes could be even deeper in 2023. Indeed, the Air Force just announced that will likely fail to meet its recruiting goals across all three of its components.
  • For the first time in almost 20 years, American troops are no longer fighting abroad to keep insurgents and terrorists at bay.
  • Unemployment is low, which always makes it harder to recruit — and the tight labor market has also forced many companies to increase wages and offer compelling incentives to attract the best talent. But two other sets of factors are interacting in complex ways that make it almost impossible to determine which are having the greatest effect. 
  • First, the number of young people who are eligible to serve in the military dropped precipitously last year — from an already low figure of 29 percent to a shocking 23 percent — largely due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. 
  •  Levels of depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions exploded among young Americans (and many not-so-young Americans), who faced sometimes extreme levels of social isolation. 
  • School closures and remote instruction have caused test scores to decline dramatically throughout the country (and the world), and scores on the ASVAB, the military’s standardized test for potential recruits, declined by as much as 9 percent. Shuttered schools also made it extremely difficult for recruiters to meet with young people and develop the personal relationships that are so essential for their jobs. And youth obesity rates — which have long been one of the biggest reasons for military ineligibility — increased from 19 percent to 22 percent during the pandemic. Few of these statistics will rebound quickly — and some may never recover to their pre-pandemic levels.
  • Though improving eligibility is extremely important, as we discuss below, it alone cannot solve the recruiting crisis. 
  • Only 13 percent of young Americans said they would consider military service before the pandemic, and that already paltry figure shrank to just 9 percent last year. That number is simply not high enough to ensure the stable flow of recruits upon which the all-volunteer force relies. Two sets of survey data help explain why propensity may be declining.
    • To be clear, American confidence in almost all major U.S. institutions has declined, with data from Gallup showing that it reached an all-time average low of just 27 percent in 2022. Compared to that dismal statistic, the fact that 64 percent of survey respondents expressed confidence in the military last year is a strong endorsement indeed. Yet that figure was 72 percent in 2020 and 69 percent in 2021 — marking an 8 percentage point drop in only two years. More disturbingly, the Reagan National Defense Survey found even steeper declines, with confidence in the U.S. military dropping from 70 percent in 2018 to just 45 percent in 2021 (before rebounding slightly to 48 percent in 2022).
    • Second, there are some early indications that fewer people in and around the military are willing to recommend military service to young people. 
      •  In 2019, almost 75 percent of military families said they would recommend military service to someone they care about.
      • Yet that figure dropped to just under 63 percent in 2021, another sharp decline in just two years. Since 80 percent of the young people who join the military today have a family member in the military — and 25–30 percent have a parent in the military — it may well be that more military families are steering their children away from uniformed service toward civilian careers.
      • The chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is almost certainly one of the reasons, as most Americans disapproved of the way in which the Biden administration executed the withdrawal (including many who generally supported the decision to withdraw). Another is the increasing perception that U.S. military leaders are becoming too involved in politics, partly due to several controversies surrounding Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley.
      • And the ever-increasing rates of sexual assault in the military became far more widely known after the tragic disappearance and death of Specialist Vanessa Guillen in 2020, and the subsequent disciplining of 14 Army officials at Fort Hood. 
      • Indeed, in a fall 2021 survey, 30 percent of Americans aged 16 to 24 said that the possibility of sexual harassment or assault was one of the main reasons why they would not consider joining the U.S. military.
      • Furthermore, partisans on both sides of the political divide are publicly highlighting different problems facing the military, which may deter their followers (and their followers’ children) from considering military service. 
      • Addressing these complicated and multifold challenges will not be simple or swift. There are no magic solutions that will suddenly make more young people eligible to serve, or easily reverse the increasingly skeptical youth attitudes toward the military.
      • Here are several actions the military services — and the nation as a whole — should be undertaking now to help reverse these trends. 
      • One of the most successful efforts to expand recruit eligibility has been an Army program called the Future Soldier Preparatory Course.
        • Eliminate the Rule Against Permitting Recruits with Dependents 
          • The U.S. military currently prevents any unmarried young man or woman who has a legal dependent — usually, though not always, a child — from serving on active duty.
          • Perversely, this prohibition ends when initial entry training is complete, usually a few months later. Anyone who gains a dependent after that time may continue serving — and, according to the latest data, almost 4 percent of active-duty service members are single parents. Disqualifying single parents entirely from joining the military (or incentivizing costly legal acrobatics to qualify) makes no sense in the world in which we live today — and doesn’t reflect the sensible and supportive rules for single troops with dependents already in uniform.
          •  In fact, cadets at the service academies are now allowed to continue their studies if they become parents, as long as they grant temporary guardianship to someone else. 
        • Allow People with Treatable Mental Health Conditions to Serve 
          • Mental health issues among young people have been increasing for a long time, and that trend escalated greatly during the pandemic. However, many people who suffer from depression, anxiety, and other disorders can be effectively treated with commonly prescribed medications. 
          • According to the American Psychiatric Association, for example, 55–65 percent of diagnosed children and adolescents respond well to initial treatment with antidepressant medication.
          • The U.S. military has long allowed those in uniform to continue serving while taking such medications — but it inexplicably continues to bar people on those medications from joining the force. 
          • The U.S. military should not reject otherwise qualified applicants from serving based on outdated stereotypes of mental health treatments. 
            • And, frankly, it can no longer afford to do so when such treatments are increasingly common across every segment of the U.S. population.
        • Eliminate the Blanket Prohibition Against the Past Use of Marijuana While Continuing Drug Testing During the Recruiting Process and Beyond 
          • Societal attitudes toward
          • Societal attitudes toward marijuana use have changed rapidly over the past decade. Today, recreational marijuana has been legalized in 21 states, Washington D.C., and Guam — which together account for more than 47 percent of Americans aged 15 to 24.
          • This means that almost half of the target recruiting population lives in places where the drug is legal under state law, and many young people may not understand — or care — that it remains illegal under federal law. The U.S. military has long prided itself on being a relatively drug-free force, and it should remain so — but it makes little sense to automatically exclude otherwise eligible recruits because they have used marijuana in the past. 
        • As noted above, the young people who are most likely to enlist in the U.S. military today are those who know it the best — those who have a relative, especially a parent, who is already serving. 
          • But that pool is far from large enough to support the long-term health of the force — and Americans all around the country deserve to see and touch the remarkable military their tax dollars pay for. Most Americans are deeply ignorant about the U.S. military, so expanding their personal connections with those in uniform is an important first step toward increasing propensity.
          • Doing so will require the U.S. military to actively reach out to populations in ways that it simply has not done before. The Army, for example, recently started a program that partners combat divisions with recruiting brigades in a number of large cities around the country to help more Americans meet people in uniform and see the capabilities of such units.

          U.S. Military faces a recruiting crisis; service member offers solutions to change that 

          00:03 : đź“ŚClip: News footage talking about Gen Z military shortage and exactly how many recruits short each branch is 

          00:27 : đź“ŚClip: Book about why younger Americans aren't tempted to join the army 

          01:17 : đź“ŚClip: Reading an excerpt from the book talking about differences in gen z and former generations 

          02:07 : đź“ŚClip: "We are the first generation that came into elementary school with social media, phones, etc. so as a generation we're struggling to find our identity 

          03:05 : đź“ŚAuthor and Marine Corps intelligence officer talking about his ideas for solutions to solve the recruitment issue 

          Marines recruiting surges while other services struggle

          • Not long ago, Marine Col. Jennifer Nash, a combat engineer with war deployments under her belt, made a vow to fellow officers as they headed to a dinner in Atlanta: She would get two new recruiting contacts by the end of the evening.
            • She admits recruiting is not the job that she or other Marines had in mind when they enlisted.
            • But after stints as a recruiter and senior officer at the Eastern recruiting command, she has become emblematic of the Corps’ tradition of putting its best, battle-tested Marines on enlistment duty. They get results.
          • Marine leaders say they will make their recruiting goal this year, while the active-duty Army, Navy and Air Force all expect to fall short. 
          • On that night, Nash achieved her own goal. She had gotten the valet at the hotel and the hostess at the restaurant to provide their phone numbers and to consider a Marine career.
            • Nash’s boss, Brig. Gen. Walker Field, who head the Eastern recruiting region, says the Corps has historically put an emphasis on selecting top-performing Marines to fill recruiting jobs. He says that has been a key to the Marines’ recruiting success, along with efforts to increase the number of recruiters, extend those who do well and speed their return to high schools, where in-person recruiting stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic.
              • He said his recruiters — who cover the territory between Canada and Puerto Rico and as far west as Mississippi — will meet their mission and expect to have 30% of their 2024 goal when they start the next fiscal year, Oct. 1. More broadly, Marine officials say they expect the Corps to achieve its recruiting target of more than 33,000.
              • Last year, the Navy, Air Force and Marines had to eat into their pools of delayed entry applicants in order to make their goals. The Marines will avoid that this year.
                • “That would be a great ending,” said Field, speaking to The Associated Press on a recent steamy day at South Carolina’s Parris Island, along the Atlantic Coast. “I’m bearish for not only concluding FY23 on a strong footing, but also how we set the conditions for FY24.”
                • The Marine Corps may get some help from its small size. The Army, for example, has a recruiting goal of 65,000 this year, which is nearly double the Corps’, and expects to fall substantially short of that. Air Force and Navy officials say they will also miss their goals, although the Space Force, which is the smallest service and does its recruiting within Air Force stations, is expected to meet its goal of about 500 recruits.
              • Sitting in the shadow of Parris Island’s replica of the Iwo Jima monument, Field said his biggest challenge is that a number of Marine hopefuls cannot pass the military’s academic test, known as the Armed Services Voluntary Aptitude Battery.
                • That is a
                • That is a widespread problem, but the Army recently set up a program that targets recruits who score below 30 on the test and provides schooling for several weeks to help them pass. Already more than 8,800 recruits have successfully gone through the classes, raised their scores and moved on to basic training.
              • The Navy is taking another route with a pilot program that allows up to 20% of their recruits to score below 30 on the test, as long as they meet specific standards for their chosen naval job. Marine leaders, however, do not take those lowest scoring recruits, and so far have no plans for any type of formal improvement program such as the Army’s.
                • Field said the Marines are repositioning recruiting stations, moving them around based on where population totals have increased in the latest census. 
                • More important, he said, the Corps maintains its focus on choosing the right recruiters, encouraging successful ones to stay in the job and increasing the number of Marine reservists tapped for recruit duties from the current 31 to 96 by the end of next year.
              • Nash, who until last month was assistant chief of staff for the Eastern region, said Marines are hand-selected for recruiting command jobs. Many three- and four-star Marines, including former Defense Secretary James Mattis, will cite their years doing enlistment duty.
                • “We put our best and brightest in those positions,” said Nash, adding that those chosen for recruiting posts have a proven track record of success in previous assignments and have demonstrated critical leadership skills. “That’s why they got selected, because they were above their peers.”
                • She acknowledged that the first time she was picked for a recruiting job she was “voluntold.” But now, recounting her sales pitch in Atlanta, her rapid fire pitch comes without taking a breath.
              • The Marines have resisted increasing bonuses to attract recruits — something the other services have found helpful.
                • Gen. Eric Smith, the acting Marine Corps commandant, got some ribbing for his response when he was asked about bonuses during a naval conference in February.
                • “Your bonus is you get to call yourself a Marine,” he said. “That’s your bonus, right? There’s no dollar amount that goes with that.”
              • Field, Nash and others also say the Corps prefers to give a lot of recruits a few thousand dollars, rather than increasing the amount and giving money to far fewer people.
                • Field said that getting Marine recruiters in uniform back into high schools this year, after several years of COVID-19 restrictions, has been a key driver. There, young people line up to compete in pull-up contests, vying for a free T-shirt if they can do 20. And recruiters say many are drawn to the cache of being a Marine.
              • “If you told me you’ll give me $10 million worth of advertising and I can do something with it, or you’ll give me 10 great-looking Marines in a Marine uniform — what’s going to get the most value? Give me those 10 Marines and give me a day,” Nash said. “We’ll go out and we’ll get more out of that, I think, than $10 million in advertising.”

              US Army debuts new ad campaign as it struggles to hit recruitment goals

              • The US Army on Wednesday launched a years-in-the-making rebrand, including two new recruiting commercials, as it aims to increase enlistment numbers after failing to meet its recruiting goals last year.
                • “The Army at the end of the day is here to fight and win the nation’s wars, and we wanted to reflect the Army that does that. And that’s the Army that I see when I go out and visit installations, whether it’s here or whether it’s overseas,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told CNN on Tuesday. “These commercials were really based on the market research we’ve been doing about, what do people think about the Army, what do they think they know, what don’t they know, and how do we start telling that story through these ads?”
                • That mission couldn’t come at a more important time for the Army, as the service has kicked itself into high gear hoping to address its 2022 recruiting shortfalls – which saw the Army 15,000 recruits short of its goal – and get more young Americans into uniform.
              • At least part of the Army’s effort now includes the brand refresh, and the new recruiting commercials released Wednesday, which Wormuth said were originally expected to debut in August but are being released earlier because the “recruiting situation is as serious as it is.”
                • The rebrand is centered around a classic Army slogan, “Be All You Can Be,” which was first introduced in the 1980s. Narrated by actor Jonathan Majors from “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “Creed III,” one of the new spots titled “Overcoming Obstacles” takes the viewer through each generation of the Army.
                • “If you see obstacles ahead of you,” he says near the end of the commercial, “take a closer look at this force that’s been overcoming them for almost 250 years. Where you can draw strength from those beside you and make your history.”
                • The second video, titled “Pushing Tomorrow” focuses in on non-combat opportunities, highlighting careers in the science and technology field.
              • Wormuth said those videos – along with a teaser video that was released on Monday – seek to also display a diverse Army that reflects the America it serves. Previous attempts to do so have been branded as “woke” by some conservative media and Republican lawmakers, but Wormuth said the service’s market research has shown that young Americans don’t believe they or people they know are “the kind of people that join the Army.”
                • “You’re going to see lots of different people doing lots of different roles,” Wormuth said of the videos. “You’re going to see men and women, you’re going to see people of color, and part of that is important because one of the things we found in our market research is that a lot of young people admire the Army, but they don’t think there are people like them in the Army.”
              • “We’re not going back to ‘Be All You Can Be,’ because in the 1980s, the country exuded a sense of optimism. Think about the bright shining light on the hill. And the ‘Be All You Can Be’ of the 1980s reflected how youth felt about their future. That’s not the same feeling that youth have about their future today,” Fink said. “They worry about being the first generation not to outpace their parents. So as we introduce ‘Be All You Can Be’ in 2023, to a new generation, we’re trying to reposition the army in their minds around the possibilities. It’s less about being all you can be already, and more about becoming all you can be.”
                • The younger generation also worries about the negative impacts of service. Wormuth told CNN that when young Americans are asked what is stopping them from joining, they say a fear of death or injury, and things that fall under “psychological harm,” which she said includes concerns over issues things like suicide and sexual assault and harassment.
                • Those are real concerns; the suicide rate among active duty service members has steadily increased over the last decade. Reports and incidents of sexual assault in the military have also increased.
              • And while she is under no impression two short commercials will fix the problem, she hopes they show America the possibilities that exist within the service — while the Army works to address them internally.

               One Recruiting Environment, Two Different Outcomes for Army and Marine Corps

              • As the military services compete for an ever-shrinking pool of eligible recruits, some are faring better than others.
              • The Army and Marine Corps are set to fall on opposite sides of what has become a recruiting crisis as enlistment estimates roll in this week and the fiscal year comes to a close on Oct. 1.
                • The Army is expected to end up roughly 10,000 recruits short of its goal to bring in 65,000 new active-duty soldiers, according to a service official with direct knowledge of the situation.
                • Meanwhile, the Marine Corps has met its recruitment goals for fiscal year 2023, Gen. Eric Smith, the service's newly confirmed commandant, announced Thursday.
              • [no section title]
              • "It's a difficult environment right now," Maj. Gen. Johnny Davis, commander of the Army Recruiting Command, told Military.com in August. "I feel good about going into 2024; we're seeing some positive momentum. Everyone is also competing for these young men and women. We want the very best to serve; we're competing for them."
                • The services are facing one of the toughest recruiting times in many years, caused partly by high employment rates and a shrinking pool of eligible Americans. Roughly 23% of 17- to 24-year-olds are eligible to serve, and that issue has gotten more dire due to rising obesity and falling academic scores.
              • The Army is not alone in its floundering. Military.com reported earlier this month that the Air Force will fall about 10% short of its intended goal; the last time the air service fell short of its enlistment target was 1999. The Navy also expects to fall short by 6,000 sailors.
                • While the Army did not meet its active-duty recruiting goals this year, it fared better than last year when it missed a recruiting goal of 60,000 new soldiers by 15,000.
                • Some of that can be attributed to the service's new Future Soldier Preparatory Course, which takes applicants who do not meet academic or body fat standards for the Army. About 10,000 soldiers who otherwise would be not eligible to serve have completed the course and moved on to boot camp since August 2022.
                  • Davis said recruiters have been back in public schools after the pandemic shut them out, providing valuable access to young Americans as other recruiting areas, mostly shopping malls, have become less relevant.
              • The Army also offered historically high enlistment bonuses of up to $50,000 for jobs that are becoming especially difficult to fill, such as Special Forces, tankers and medics, according to service data reviewed by Military.com.
              • [marines]
              • Meanwhile, as the Army and other branches struggle with recruiting, the Marine Corps successfully hit its enlisted, officer, active and reserve accessions this year, though not without significant effort.
                • "I'm mindful of how challenging an environment this is and want to publicly give credit to our professional recruiters and all our Marines who uphold our rigorous standards 24/7. They are setting the example," Smith, commandant of the Marine Corps, said Thursday in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
                • In January, the Marine Corps announced thousands in cash bonuses to encourage recruiters to extend three-year duty assignments by up to 12 months amid the recruiting uncertainty.
              • Last year, the service only made its recruitment goal by eight Marines. It also tapped into its delayed entry program, a system that allows the Corps to stack its shipment of recruits in an efficient way and better forecast shortfalls.
                • The service is holding off on announcing the number of recruits, according to one senior Marine Corps official. Some recruits who ship out may not make it through boot camp, affecting the final count.

              The Marine Corps is not struggling with recruiting and this may be due to its unique nature

              • Military recruiting is facing a crisis with most branches failing to make their recruiting goals in 2022 or having to tap into their pools of delayed-entry applicants to do so.
                • Yet, somehow for the 2023 fiscal year that ends in October, whereas most services still struggle, the Marine Corps seems to have easily attracted enough recruits.
              • [no section title]
              • Many reasons are to blame for declining recruit numbers in the military. 
                • First, alternative career paths have become more enticing for young men and women due to significant pay increases across the economy and the ability to work remotely. To attract recruits, some services have returned to offering bonuses to potential recruits – although the bonuses are nothing like they were during the GWOT.
                • Second, perceptions of the military are becoming worse, with young people increasingly believing that serving in the military will cause them physical or emotional damage.
                • Third, fewer applicants can meet the military’s standards nowadays. Physical standards have become tougher to meet with reportedly more applicants being disqualified due to obesity and other factors.
                • Additionally, recruits must have a clean mental health slate, which sounds great, but we are way more aware of mental illnesses these days, so we do have more diagnoses but the military still acts like it’s the 1970s in terms of dealing with mental illness. Make no mistake, certain mental health conditions should disqualify recruits, but many applicants are disqualified for fairly mundane conditions. 
                • The educational standards are also proving tough to meet. COVID shutdowns set kids back educationally to a very real degree and applicants are passing the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) at lower levels than ever before.
                  • Highlighting these difficulties, in May 2022, then Army Chief of Staff General James McConville testified before Congress saying that only 23% of Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 would be qualified to serve in the military today.
              • To tackle these recruiting challenges, the Army has launched programs to help potential recruits meet ASVAB and physical fitness scores and the Navy has created exceptions to certain ASVAB failures. 
              • [ marines]
              • The Marine Corps states that it only picks the best and the brightest Marines to be recruiters. 
                • They pick enterprising young Marines for the role and train them well. At the same time, the Marine Corps needs fewer people to meet its recruiting goal. For comparison, in 2023, the Corps needed 33,000 recruits, while the Army needed over 65,000 – although the Corps also had about half the number of recruiters than the Army.
              • Yet, it’s more than that. Joining the American military is an emotional decision as much as it is a logical one. Joining a branch creates a sense of pride and accomplishment and a feeling of belonging. Each branch offers a diverse career field and numerous benefits and there are many reasons why someone would pick a branch over the others. I can’t say why people join the other branches, but I might be able to guess why they join the Marines.
                • The Marine Corps takes great pride in its history, its battles won, and its culture. Being a Marine is the reason you join the Marines. People who join the Marine Corps hear that the Marine boot camp is the hardest, and in their minds, they can’t ever purposefully take the easier road. Many recruits aren’t joining for what the Marine Corps offers: they are joining to become a Marine. 
                  • The Marine Corps has never been heavy on bonuses, and General Eric Smith, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, summed it up well by saying, “Your bonus is that you get to call yourself a Marine. That’s your bonus… there’s no dollar amount that goes with that.”
              • This is also reflected in the way the Marine Corps advertises compared to the other branches. The other branches seem to advertise themselves as career fields not too unlike the average civilian job: they appeal to the need to serve as well as to acquire job skills and education. They often tailor their campaigns to the modern world, as much as possible, and show that everyone has a place in their specific branch. 
                • The Marine Corps doesn’t do that. The Marine Corps is not promising you anything.
              • Marine Corps commercials are easily the coolest. They never make it about the individual but about the Marine Corps as a whole. Who you are doesn’t matter: it’s what you can be that matters, and what you can be is a Marine.
                • The Corps’ Full Circle recruiting commercial, which came out last year, shows that even after you’re out of the service, you’re a still a Marine.
              • The Battle to Belong commercial, likewise from 2022, shows that the Marines offer you purpose and a place. It also shows very clearly what the Marine Corps is all about, which is winning battles and killing the enemies of the United States. That doesn’t appeal to everyone as a career field, but it appeals to the people the Marine Corps wants to recruit. 
                • No one knows where a fighting spirit comes from, why some have it, and some don’t, but the Marine Corps chases the people who possess such a spirit and who already have that inkling to do something greater than themselves. 
              • The joint publication Noncommissioned Officer and Petty Officer of the United States Armed Forces describes the various forces of the U.S. military, their purpose, and capabilities. When talking about the Marine Corps it starts by saying that “Marines are different.” 
                • That’s why the Marine Corps can find enough recruits: it is different. People have tried to sell me things my entire life, and I’m betting that’s the same for most younger folks these days. The Marine Corps didn’t try to sell me anything. They offered me an opportunity to prove myself to them and to become something more. That’s what the Marine Corps offers, and there are plenty of young people out there who want to take that offer.

Jake Tran

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