Co-ed Boot Camp

Marines are made at a recruit depot located amid the swamps of Parris Island, tethered to the rest of the Carolina coast by a single causeway, and at another such depot in California, jammed onto a scrubby patch of ground between the San Diego International Airport and Interstate 5.

Grim as these locations might seem to the casual observer — or, let's be honest, as grim as they in fact are — these installations are sacred to Marines. A great deal of ink has been devoted to the work that is done in these places, and as one who has witnessed busloads of frightened, disconcertingly normal-looking young Americans arrive, only to depart a few months later as bona fide Marines, I can attest that the drill instructors and their officers know what they are doing.

That's what most Americans assume, too — but not what Ray Mabus, the secretary of the Navy, believes. For months now Marines have been at the vindictive mercies of Mabus, who was evidently greatly annoyed by the Corps's stubborn resistance to integrating women into its ground combat arms jobs. (See "Ray Mabus Can't Handle the Truth," September 28, 2015, in these pages.) He all but called his own officers liars late last year, when Marines promoted a study that questioned the wisdom of making the infantry co-ed. Mabus then effectively won the day, as Secretary of Defense Ash Carter decided in favor of allowing women in ground combat units.