J.D. Vance, a former Marine Corporal, is the first military veteran on a major Presidential ticket since John McCain in 2008 and the first former enlisted vet on the ballot since Al Gore in 2000. Vance served a four-year enlistment in the Marines from 2003 to 2007 as a combat correspondent, deploying to Iraq for six months in late 2005. Donald Trump confirmed Monday that Vance is his pick as a Vice Presidential candidate.
If Vance were to ever ascend to the top office, he would be the first former Marine and just the second former enlisted veteran to be President (President James Buchanan was a private in the Pennsylvania milita during the War of 1812). The last President to serve in the military was George W. Bush, who left office in 2008.
In his book Hillbilly Elegy, which catapulted Vance to fame in 2016 and launched his political career, he credited the Marine Corps as a defining chapter of his life, turning a smalltown kid from Ohio with little sense of personal responsibility into a driven young man with goals and a sense of purpose.
In the end, he writes, “the Marine Corps taught me how to live like an adult.”
A four-year enlistment
Vance was a Combat Correspondent in the Marines for four years, according to his service record provided to Task & Purpose by the Pentagon. He served with the 2nd Marine Aircraft In Wing, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, N.C. His awards included several decorations that would be typical of a Marine with a clean service record and time in service similar to Vance, including the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal and Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal.
In Elegy, Vance tells a story from recruit training when he first began to understand a ‘give it your all’ ethos that the Marines imparted in him. Never a runner before boot camp, he recalled finishing a three-mile fitness test run in 25 minutes, only to be met by an enraged Drill Instructor. The DI screamed at Recruit Vance: “If you’re not puking, you’re lazy! Stop being f****** lazy!”
“He then ordered me to sprint between him and a tree repeatedly,” Vance recalls. “Just as I felt I might pass out, he relented. I was heaving, barely able to catch my breath. ‘That’s how you should feel at the end of every run!’
“In the Marines, giving it your all was a way of life.”
Vance’s single chapter on his time in the Marines is peppered with similiar stories of moral and personal growth.
“When I joined the Marine Corps, I did so in part because I wasn’t ready for adulthood,” Vance writes. “I didn’t know how to balance a checkbook, much less how to complete the financial aid forms for college. Now I knew exactly what I wanted out of my life and how to get there.”
No combat but moments of truth
In the Marines, Vance was known as James D. Hamel, his second legal name of three he has had. Vance was born James Donal Bowman, named after his biological father. His parents divorced and his mother renamed him when she subsequently married a man named Hamel. Vance took his third name as an adult, long after the Marines. When he married his wife, they both changed their names to Vance, the name of his maternal grandparents, according to the New York Times.
As Cpl. Hamel, at least four of his photos are still online in a Pentagon archive from his 2005 deployment.
As a U.S. Senator from Ohio, Vance’s military stances include a skeptical eye on Ukraine aid and a call for the U.S. military to be more involved in drug interdiction.
As a Marine, Vance wrote, he never saw direct combat, but he would accompany other Marines in hostile areas, including one civil affairs mission that left a strong impression.
“On our particular mission, senior marines met with local school officials while the rest of us provided security or hung out with the schoolkids,” Vance writes “One very shy boy approached me and held out his hand. When I gave him a small eraser, his face briefly lit up with joy before he ran away to his family, holding his two-cent prize aloft in triumph. I have never seen such excitement on a child’s face.”
The moment stuck with Vance.
“As I stood and surveyed the mass of children of a war-torn nation, their school without running water, and the overjoyed boy, I began to appreciate how lucky I was: born in the greatest country on earth, every modern convenience at my fingertips, supported by two loving hillbillies, and part of a family that, for all its quirks, loved me unconditionally,” Vance wrote. “At that moment, I resolved to be the type of man who would smile when someone gave him an eraser.”
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