Every Marine knows that the “Old Corps” had it worse. The rocks they slept on were harder; the MREs they ate were (somehow) worse; they did it all with iron sights. You get the idea. All Marines have heard some version of how the Corps used to be — including the Marines who are today the Corps’ top senior enlisted leaders.
Sharing a stage Tuesday at the Modern Day Marine conference in Washington, D.C., five of the Corps’ most senior sergeants major recalled lessons they learned as young Marines that helped them prepare for not just handing the torch to the next generation, but trusting the newcomers, too.
Sgt. Maj. Ryan Gnecco, the senior enlisted leader at Training and Education Command, pointed to some older Marines who periodically look upon the younger generation with concern.
“There’s always going to be somebody you don’t think is ready, (but) in the middle of a firefight, they’re going to show up at your [position] with a bunch of ammo, and you’re going to say, ‘Thanks, glad you made it. Now, get back and get more ammo,” Gnecco said. “And they are ready, they’re willing to take our place.”
A lesson Gnecco said he continually presses on today’s young Marines is one he recalled learning as a lance corporal during a safety brief at the Udairi Range Complex, near Camp Buehring in Kuwait.
“The safety brief started with, ‘if safety was paramount, none of us would be here right now,’” Gnecco said. “That always tracks back in my mind, because we are warfighters. That’s what we do for a living.”
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Sgt. Maj. Jacob Reiff, of Manpower and Reserve Affairs, agreed. When his generation was gearing up for Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiff noted, some of the “old guys” would warn that the rising crop of recruits wasn’t ready for what was ahead. But waiting for the bullets to start flying, he said, was too late to start believing in younger Marines.
“This next generation is going to be just as masterful in whatever fight we put them into,” Reiff said. “But we have to trust them, and it’s our trust that we have to give them. They don’t have to earn anything. It’s given to them.”
The Corps’ top enlisted Marine, Sgt. Maj. of the Corps Carlos Ruiz, ended the panel with a classic leadership dictum: always lead from the front — though his advice also touched on another well-known directive: always look cool.
Ruiz recalled a harrowing early-career PT run led by a master sergeant as a cigarette dangled nonchalantly from his mouth. The image was burned in Ruiz’s mind — not just because an old Jarhead smoking as he “smoked” his Marines is as American as apple pie — but because the master sergeant was undergoing the same grueling run as his troops.
“The master sergeant said, ‘You’re going to go PT,’ and he led you from the front. That’s the point,” Ruiz said, before noting that cigarettes might be a tad dated. “Now, maybe it’s not a cigarette anymore. Maybe it’s a vape … or a Monster (energy drink).”
