HARD CORPS : Marines Take a Few Good Teen-Agers and Make Them Better
You wouldn’t think a little yelling would scare the hell out of teen-age boys. But when the yelling is coming from a tough-looking Marine who is going to be in charge of your life for the next 10 days, a little apprehension is only natural.
About 300 14- to 17-year-old boys were in that unenviable position a week and a half ago, when they arrived at Camp Pendleton to begin the Devil Pups Youth-Citizenship Development Program--which bears an uncanny resemblance to a boot camp without weapons.
By Friday, when they graduated, the transformation of those who made it was remarkable.
Not all of them stuck it out. Of the 309 boys who began the program, 292 finished. Most of those who didn’t make it were sent home because of minor injuries, but a couple were sent home because of “attitudinal problems.”
When the boys got off the buses on the first day of camp, most of them appeared confused and frightened by the constant yelling of their Marine leaders--”escorts,” as they are called.
First and Last Words: ‘Sir!’
“The first and the last words out of your mouth is, ‘Sir!’ ” Gunnery Sgt. John James told a group of Devil Pups. The boys quickly learned to comply or they found themselves counting off repeated push-ups: “Sir ONE sir; sir TWO sir; sir THREE sir! . . .”
Jeff O’Bannon, 16, of Whittier, weighed 250 pounds at the beginning of the program. The man in charge of the Devil Pups, retired Lt. Col. Ed Daniel, told O’Bannon on the first day of camp that he should not have been admitted to the program because he was overweight. Daniel said he doubted that O’Bannon would make it through the program.
O’Bannon proved him wrong. Ten days later, the youth had lost 17 pounds and gained self-confidence.
When O’Bannon arrived at Camp Pendleton, “I was really scared. I was afraid I’d have to do a lot of push-ups,” he said.
But by the end, his outlook had changed. “I wish I could stay longer, or go through it again,” he said.
O’Bannon, who will start his senior year in high school in September, still must lose quite a bit of weight before he can join the armed services, but he plans to join the Navy when he graduates from high school.
The Devil Pups program was founded in 1954 by a group of Los Angeles business executives who “saw a need to teach kids some values,” said Daniel, who served in the Corps for nearly 25 years.
The youths are expected to live up to the Devil Pup Creed: “Devil Pups believe that a normal boy can be as rough and tough as any situation and yet remain a mannerly gentleman, physically and mentally clean, who has respect for himself, for others, for constituted authority and our Flag.”
The rhetoric seems a bit corny, but the changes the boys undergo can be striking.
“The first thing out of their parents’ mouths when they see them 10 days later is that they look taller because they stand up straight,” said Sgt. James.
James and the other escorts are regular Marines, not drill instructors, who volunteered for the Devil Pups program. The Marine Corps sponsors the program, but funding comes exclusively from donations; the pups don’t have to pay for going to camp.
The pups do, however, have to win acceptance to the program. There are two camps each summer, each with about 300 boys. About 4,000 youths apply each year, Daniel said. As publicity about the program--and the popularity of the armed forces--have increased, the number of applicants has gone up.
Attitudes Screened
Boys who apply are interviewed by Marines or retired Marines “to be sure the attitudinal situation is correct,” Daniel said. Applicants’ police records are sometimes checked to make sure they are “non-delinquent.”
Daniel and others are quick to point out that the Devil Pups program is not supposed to be a recruiting tool for the Marines or any other branch of the armed services. And to dispel fears that the Devil Pups is a paramilitary training program, the camp has become less “military” in recent years.
“They really aren’t teaching that; they’re teaching you coordination, teamwork,” said Aaron Haskins, 16, of Ventura.
“And discipline,” interjected James Rickabaugh, 14, of Santa Monica.
One example of how the program has become less militaristic is that the boys no longer go through an infiltration course--crawling over and under logs and scrambling under barbed wire--as machine gun fire (blanks, not bullets) rings out.
The pups do see some weapons demonstrations, but they don’t touch a weapon while in camp.
‘Not Training Little Nazis’
“We don’t want people to think we’re training little Nazis here, and some people get that impression,” said Gunnery Sgt. John Farrell, a spokesman for Camp Pendleton.
“A lot of the stuff is parallel to what we do in boot camp . . . (but) it definitely wouldn’t be as extreme.”
The way the escorts treat the pups is also less severe than what real Marines face, although the yelling on the first day is withering and constant.
“This is a day when you’ve got to reach out and grab them and show them who’s boss. We’re not yelling at them 24 hours a day,” said Cpl. Michael Hargrove, an escort. “I wouldn’t call it intimidation.
One of the first things the pups had to submit to was sitting still in a chair while a barber shaved off nearly all their hair.
“It feels weird. It feels like there’s a beard on top of your head, starting to grow,” said Marc Mix, 14, of Torrance. In addition to having their heads shaved nearly bald, the pups had to start getting up at 5:30 a.m., obeying orders all day long and going to bed at 10 p.m.
A Worthwhile Ordeal
In the end, O’Bannon and other pups said, the ordeal was worthwhile. “I came on my own to lose weight and get a better outlook on life,” O’Bannon said, and he succeeded.
His only setback was when the boys were supposed to jump off a 35-foot tower into a pool of water. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, but he finally was coaxed off a 25-foot tower.
O’Bannon had other rough moments in the program, but the escorts “wouldn’t let me give up. I was about to on the obstacle course, but they kept encouraging me, and I made it.”