Thirty-Six Fighting Holes (Confessions of a Marine Recruiter)

The few. The proud. The Marines. Do you have what it takes…not just to join them, but to talk others into joining? Can you occupy an isolated outpost—a strip mall, a small office, a lonely building on a busy street—and work the phones and set appointments and bring people in? Can you dress up in your sharpest uniform and venture out into the community, to colleges and high schools and even shopping malls, and talk to skeptical young adults about how the Marine Corps can make their dreams come true? And what happens when they hang up on you, or slam doors in your face? When they do it day in and day out? How will you deal with the disappointment when some are medically disqualified, and others conveniently forgot to tell you about, say, their felony conviction for crack possession? Or when young women and girls are eager to set appointments…not for the purposes you’d like, but because they want to hook up with a man in uniform? When some of them are stalkers, and others are still in their mid-teens? Can you do this six days a week, and keep at it long into the night, all while your wife is back at home, wondering what you’re up to? Can you keep at it week after week, month after month, coping with all manner of bureaucratic absurdity, working without any vacations so you can hit your recruitment quotas, flogging yourself to the point where your marriage and your sanity are in jeopardy?

And did we mention there’s a war going on?

That's right, can you do all of the above when three young men from the community—men your predecessors recruited!—have already died in combat? When you’ve seen their pictures and you know their names? When you don’t know if your recruits will meet a similar fate, but you do know that many of their parents are pissed that you’re even talking to them, and willing to take desperate measures to keep their precious young children from heading off to war?

Sergeant Nathan Weidman had to answer all these questions, and more. As a young Marine, he moved to the exotic locale of Southern Illinois in the mid-2000s, with his wife and toddler in tow. What followed was a dizzying tour of duty unlike any you’ve read about, devoid of the dangers of combat, with no risk of life (or even limb) but myriad ways for it to be permanently ruined. (To say nothing of the dozens of other lives that he had the chance to derail—or help redeem.) Hilarious, heartbreaking, nerve-racking, exhilarating, but never boring, it’s a story you’ll never forget, and it’s one you’ll race through...provided you have the courage to try. Do you have what it takes?