Hey John, thanks for the nice note, and congratulations to you and your son. I never made it through OCS, despite going two times (first in June 2007 and again in January 2009). Both times I was injured during training and medically discharged from OCS, so sadly I never commissioned as a lieutenant. I thought about going back a third time, but life happened and I eventually moved on.
I don't know how much he told you about Marine Corps OCS, but the attrition rate is pretty high -- roughly 40-50% of candidates don't make it to graduation for a combination of injuries, illness, poor academic performance, bad leadership scores, integrity violations (candidates caught lying about something), and people who just plain quit (Drop on Request). This was during wartime, too, so I think the instructors were being extra hard to weed out the candidates who were on the margins. In my first OCS class, my platoon started with 55 candidates, and we were already whittled down to about 45 by the time I had my injury: a couple guys got pneumonia, some had heat-related injuries, another broke his ankle on the obstacle course, crap like that. The first time I left OCS it was with a barely-functioning right elbow; the second time I was on crutches. I'm not sure what I could have done to prevent it, so I just call it bad luck.
My older brother is a Marine infantry officer, so I still get to hear about the Corps a lot. I was hoping he would be able to give me the oath of office when I commissioned (if he wasn't on deployment at the time), but obviously that never happened.
But, looking on the bright side: the Marines taught me more about leadership and strength than anything else in my life (except my father's example), so it was still a positive experience for me.
Rick, I'm glad your granddaughter got to go to Governor's School. It was a fantastic time for me, a good precursor to college, and I hope she had the same experience. The best eupher I ever played with was principal at GS East that year, and I was his second chair. We met up again at All-State the following spring. I wouldn't be surprised if he's a member of this forum...Originally Posted by RickF
Thanks to everyone else who chimed in. I'm glad to be welcomed to this group.