Sea Control - Sea Control 541 - The Globe and Anchor Men with Dr. Mark Folse

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

Links1. The Globe and Anchor Men: U.S. Marines and American Manhood in the Great War Era, by Mark Ryland Folse, University of Kansas Press, 2024. 2. Sea Control 287 - Small Wars and More with Dr. Mark Folse, CIMSEC, October 24, 2021. 3. Contested Valor: African American Marines in the Age of Power, Protest and Tokenism, by Cameron D. McCoy, University Press of Kansas, October 2023.

Hey folks, it's Jared. Dr. Mark Fulce returns today, and we're going to discuss his own relationship with the Marine Corps, as well as his new book, The Globe and Anchorman, U.S. Marines and American Manhood in the Great War Era. This episode was edited and produced by Jonathan Selling. We are looking once again for more editors for Sea Control, so if you have an interest in maritime security and the willingness to learn a few new skills, please reach out to us at seacontrolatsimsec.org. That's S-E-A-C-O-N-T-R-O-L at simsec.org. Here at SimSec, we aim to further international maritime security through an exchange of ideas and the rigor of critical thought and writing. If you haven't already, please check out simsec.org for new articles

on the most important maritime topics. If you'd like to contribute to the discussion, check out the Write for SimSec tab to learn how you can submit articles for publication. And now, Kimbersman. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Hello, Hashimates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guest today is Dr. Mark Pulse, and we're going to be discussing his book, The Globe and Anchorman, U.S. Marines and American Manhood in the Great War Era. So, Mark, welcome.

Could you start by telling the audience a little bit more about your background? Sure. Jared, thank you for having me. It's been a few years since I've been on this podcast. It's great to be back. I'm from Alabama. I got my PhD from Alabama back in 2018. I studied military and naval history.

And the book that we're talking about today was my dissertation at one point over the last several years. I turned it into a book manuscript, spent some time with the Naval Academy teaching there. That was a lot of fun. And since then, I've been at the U.S. Army Center of Military History researching and writing on the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. So I'm a military and naval historian. And like I said, very happy to be here. Welcome back. As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions expressed today

are our own and not representative of any institution with which you might otherwise be associated. Mark, what's your personal relationship with the Marine Corps and why did you choose this topic? Very good question. A very smart question because I do feel like I have my personal relationship with the Marine Corps. And that begins with my, my father, my father, his name is Glenn. He, um, he was in Vietnam. He was, he was first Marine recon in Vietnam, 1969, 1970. Um, and, uh, growing up, I was his third son, um, growing up, he had a mystique around him. He was this, he was a, to me, he was a very, very interesting person that I really looked up to and idolized. And so growing up in that house, you know,

the Marine Corps was kind of always in the background. He had old, you know, he had camouflage gear and camis and boots and stuff. And he spent some time in the Army National Guard when he was in law school. I remember that pretty distinctly. And I talk a little bit about this in the book. You know, he was a, my interest in the Marine Corps started with him. I just always thought he was just the coolest guy on the block. And not just because he was my dad, I figured he was just cooler than everybody else's dad because he was, he was a Marine. And even when he was in the Army National Guard, you know, I knew that I'd never referred to him as a soldier. To me, he was just, you know, that's my dad, you know, the Marine. He was only, and he was only in the

Marine Corps for like two or three years. Uh, I think he was in, uh, during the, the Nixon administration, uh, when they, when they shrunk enlistments, uh, but it, but it had a profound impact on his life and his career. Uh, and it had a profound impact therefore on me and my two older brothers. Uh, so my interest in the Marine Corps, I've, I've always had an interest in the Marine Corps through him. Uh, so I was so interested in it that once, you know, I, I got done with high school. Towards the end of high school, I was thinking I want to accomplish two things. I want to get a college degree and I want to do some, at least one stint in the military. I wasn't sure in what order I was going to do it in. 9-11 happened my senior year of high school. And when that

happened, there was no, I had no considerations for any other branch of service other than the Marine Corps. My stepdad at the time, not at the time, he's still my stepdad. My stepdad back then really encouraged me to look at the Navy, look at the Army, look at the Air Force to try to learn some sort of vocation like computers or mechanics or something. Learn a trade in the military. I wasn't having it. I wanted the Marine Corps. I wanted infantry. To me, that was the only option And it goes back to how I looked at my dad growing up. And that's what I did. 9-11 happened.

I joined the Marine Corps. I was an amateur man. I deployed on a Mew to Afghanistan in 2004 and Fallujah, Iraq in 2005. I was the 1st Battalion, 6 Marines. I was an 03-11. So I had a deep interest in the Marine Corps growing up. And then I became a Marine. And ever since getting out, I kind of wrestled with questions of, you know, what was the appeal?

Well, you know, what explains the Marines appeal? You know, they're, they're very small branches. They're, they're one of the smallest, the smallest branch of service in the military, in the U.S. military. But they have this kind of weird appeal. And I tried to, you know, they appealed to me. And so this book that I wrote that came from a dissertation, I think in a significant way, became kind of an exploration of not only a historiographical subject, but also kind of an exploration of why I found the Marine Corps so interesting to begin with and why it was so interesting to other people. You know what I mean? So, yeah, that's pretty much my personal connection to the Marine Corps. what's the cultural significance of bellow wood to the marines the cultural significance of bellow wood to the marines is complex the same question could be asked of iwo jima the same question could be asked of of chapultepec or any type of battle that the marine corps really kind of pays a lot

of attention to and emphasizes a lot so bellow wood on one hand bellow wood was the bloodiest most intense singular battle that the marine corps had ever been in up to that point so this was june 1918 late may up through june 1918 um so in that sense and this is this is the marine corps this is the fifth fifth and sixth regiment of marines fighting using uh up-to-date tactics at the time uh and not fighting in trenches they were using uh you know maneuver warfare or at least warfare in the type of way that uh general pershing and uh the american expeditionary force that they were they were fighting the type of war they wanted to bring back to the western front because for the longest time um the western front had stalemated into

trench warfare. Um, so, um, it was significant in that sense. And it gave a lot of Marines and a lot of Marine officers like Johnny Lejeune and Pete Ellis and, um, lots of other company and field grade officers and above experience fighting a large, um, modern, modern as of 1918 war. Uh, this wasn't, uh, it wasn't like in Haiti or the Dominican Republic, it wasn't, um you know chasing gorillas in nicaragua or cuba or anything like that this was um this this was a major major uh what we would call peer conflict so in that sense it was that was significant but one of the things i talk about why it's significant uh you know it's people use when people when talking about warfare people like to make football analogies well you know

who wins and loses what are the points on the board and all that other kind of stuff You know, I don't think military, I think football analogies only go so far because it's not just about wins and losses and how many are killed and captured and whatever. It's what, it's not just that it's a victory in the tactical or strategic senses. What does that victory mean? So I think what Bellowood meant at the time, and I'm not just talking about for the Marine Corps, but like for the American people at the time in 1918, was that, holy crap, our American boys can stand up and defeat this cracked German army that's been fighting for four years. You know, we're probably familiar with a lot of the propaganda that was surrounding the German army. In World War I, you know, they were, at least in Western circles, they were seen as, you know, the rapists of Belgium. And they trampled all over Belgium and they're invading France and they're doing all these terrible things.

And there's a lot of artwork and a lot of propaganda depicting the Germans as these monsters, right? Well, that same type of propaganda is now able to depict Americans as these saviors of civilization. um these American troops had the wherewithal the strength the courage the determination may I say the manliness the manhood to um not just check the German advance but to start rolling it back and so that was a huge boost to American morale gearing up for World War I and uh conscripting millions of Americans and seeing them overseas that was a stressful time for a lot of Americans and there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding you know Americans went over there with confidence But there was also a lot of uncertainty about how they were going to perform.

And Belleau Wood was an indication that, you know, Americans were not only performing well, but they were going to potentially win the war. And the Marines were at the center of that. The Marine Corps was at the center of that. So because of a loophole and censorship rules, the journalists were not allowed to convey any type of information about particular units, unit designations and locations and things like that. But they could designate between Army and Marines. And so Floyd Gibbons was able to send back dispatches to, I believe it was the Chicago Tribune in early June, about what the Marines did at Belleau Wood. And so that just, you know, went all across the United States. And people were very excited to hear about what, not just what Americans were doing, but what Marines were doing. So it was really seen as this testament to not just Marine manliness, but also the character and the manhood of the nation.

It's this idea that these American boys can do like their ancestors in the Civil War or the American Revolution. They can really stand up and fight. So in that sense, it wasn't just about the Marine Corps. It was what the Marine Corps' fighting prowess at that point in time said about the broader American society at the time. So, there's a tactical significance, strategic significance, there's the experience that comes with fighting in those types of wars, there's the, what the battle means, you know, the redemption of American manhood kind of, but also culturally for like for the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps, Belleau Wood embodies what the Marine Corps expects of its troops in combat. the battles like um bellowood iwo jima pellaloo okinawa uh caisson every single one of those battles um are kind of the uh the watermark that's the standard that marines are expected to adhere to no matter where they go or no matter where they are um and you know if you

the crucible in boot camp i haven't it's been uh 22 years since i've been down the crucible but you know the crucible used to have stations where you would you know have stations you know that refer to the battle of bella wood and all that other kind of stuff that refer to all these different battles so so um bella wood really became the kind of a testament to this belief that marines are supposed to behave and you know achieve their objectives in a certain way on the battlefield that became kind of the standard why and how did the marines choose to project the masculine image and how did that differentiate it from the other services so i think to answer that question requires a little bit of context and you know as a military

historian, context is everything for me. A lot of this, a lot of the projection that a lot of this masculine imagery that comes out of the Marine Corps comes from, on one hand, this kind of renaissance in advertising. In the late 1880s, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, advertising just in the United States just boomed. In advertising in magazines, advertising in newspapers, radio advertising, things like that. And what magazine editors and journal editors realized is they can lower the cost of subscriptions by including advertising in their publications. So now these companies are going to pay these journals, these newspapers, or whatever,

to let them advertise in their publications. And so that lowers the cost of all these different publications. And what happens is, is that, you know, all of these different publications like the Saturday Evening Post and you name it, just kind of boom, the sale of these things just boom. And so advertising kicks up. Around this time, the Marine, the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps are going to get in on advertising more often in the Saturday Evening Post, the army navy journal the imagery journal cosmopolitan all these different journals that are out there um also um this is also the time of like yellow journalism and um you know these these beat writers going around and uh looking for stories looking for human interest stories um and one thing that the marines would do marine recruiters particularly in places like chicago and

New York City. They would befriend newspapermen, and also they would be on the lookout for newspapermen that wanted to join the Marine Corps because they wanted that PR. They wanted Marines in the service that had that PR experience to help tell the Marines

story, to help get the word out about the Marines. The Marines were the smallest branch back then. They were even smaller. I think around the Spanish-American War, I think the Marines got up to around 6,000 marines or something like that and right and in the early the double aughts of the 1900s we're talking maybe 10 000 marines uh so very very small and they didn't have this they didn't

have their recruiting reach uh that the army or the navy did so uh what recruiters started to do is they started to befriend uh newspaper journal uh journalists and they would just swap stories and it was kind of a mutually beneficial relationship the uh what the journalists would get stories about what marines were doing overseas and the recruiters would kind of turn them into these human injury stories and uh the marines got publicity out of the thing the whole the the saying marines have landed in the situation is well in hand that came from this late 19th century early 20th century but late 19th century uh early 20th century time frame where Marines are starting to become friends with journalists,

and it's a very mutually beneficial relationship. And so once Marines start advertising more and expanding their recruiting apparatus and it becomes more sophisticated, the advertising and the emphasis on manliness and manhood comes about naturally, almost inherently. It's not, I don't find evidence of anyone sitting down and saying, okay, we're going to sit down and we're going to talk about manliness. This is what we mean by

manliness. But you can look at their recruiting literature and you can look at their imagery and it's there. It's clear that they're trying to emphasize the way Marines look, the way they carry themselves, their jawline, their broad shoulders, that kind of thing. The very image that's on this book, this look right here, the dress blues and the shaved faces and all this kind of stuff these marines look sharp they look crisp and they're and what that is it's a very specific it's a very clean it's a very kind of tailored image of what a man is supposed to look like and the marines are very much advertising a specific form of manliness and in the book i call it a form of martial manliness or military manliness and this this this style of manliness

i argue adheres to a kind of an older more traditional at the time concept of manhood which predates i think our modern conceptions of what masculinity means so all this was taking place uh during a time of changing and evolving notions of what a man was supposed to be so on one hand you have the traditional more conservative view of manliness which is more about character and moral uprightness and integrity and honesty and courage and those types of things uh usually back then when people were talking about masculinity they were only talking about they were usually just talking about male physical attributes um that's what they meant by masculine so i bet so when you have a masculine image you have an image that looks

male but when we're talking about manhood and manliness we're talking more about character and and the manhood and manliness is usually what the marines harped on in their recruiting literature is this this courage this integrity this honesty this idea that the marine corps is going to take this young man and turn them into this honest uh courageous strong um upstanding citizen um and the idea is is that you know the marine corps is good for american manhood essentially how did general lejeune choose to use the concept of manliness and masculinity and you can correct me on the pronunciation of his name by the way i'm not going to correct you in the pronunciation of his name i've heard a couple different ways and i understand it's a

for a subject amongst Marines sometimes yeah uh I've I've become I've since become persuaded that it is in fact Lejeune and the reason why I think that is a really a mentor of mine and that Ammerman who worked at the Marine Corps History Division for a long long time um showed me a video of Lejeune's grandson uh and I think he's he's speaking right like in within earshot of his grandfather the camera's on and he's like hey little boy what do you want to be when you grow up and he goes when i grow up i want to be a marine just like my granddad lejeune and i'm like okay okay it's over i get it uh i still call it camp lejeune though and i still say lejeune it still slips out i've just when i when i grew up in the marine corps it was lejeune so i mean no

i mean no disrespect to the family uh by calling him lejeune but i do understand i do believe that his family called him lejeune and it's possible that smedley butler and everybody else that started with him probably called him lejeune too um so uh when lejeune became commandant in june uh 1920 uh recruiting was his biggest problem or i guess manpower levels was his biggest problem um he had to um congress had funded the marine corps up to a certain size um or at least it had allowed the marine corps a certain amount of numbers but didn't but the um the marine corps couldn't you know match that size they just couldn't get to that size so uh in order the marine corps has always had a just an array of missions i think some people call them mission

sets um whether it's you know serving on board ships or guarding naval yards uh they are also in charge of um studying and being an expeditionary force but they were also in charge of amphibious developing amphibious operational capabilities at the time. So the Marine Corps was stretched pretty thin and it had a small I think the largest the Marine Corps got

on paper was 75,000 Marines in World War I, but I think in actuality, I think they only got to around 65,000 maybe. Come 1920, we're looking I think we shrunk back down to the exact numbers

are in the book it's it's it's escaping my memory it's less than 20,000 less than 20,000 Marines and you know the Marine Corps shrinking that low while their missions are expanding is pretty stressful for a commandant and so he was big on recruiting he was big on getting the word out about who the Marines are and what they do and you know like his predecessors um uh george barnett uh and marines who came before the commandants who came before him when it came to recruiting uh he wanted to emphasize not just the fact that the marine corps was all about fighting and this this that and the other it was about what the marine corps is going to do for the young men who join us um and his uh he wanted to emphasize the physical mental and

moral development that the Marine Corps imparts upon young men. And that probably sounds familiar for anyone who's listening to this, who went to the Naval Academy. Johnny Lejeune went to the Naval Academy. He was a part of an early generation of, I believe it was in the 1880s, early 1890s, was the first time the Naval Academy started commissioning Marines out of the Naval Academy.

And I think it was for Jack Shulerson's book, The Marine Corps Search for a Mission has the exact dates and numbers on this, but I believe it was like 10 or 15 years where the Marines did not accept any commissions outside of the Naval Academy in the 1880s and 1890s. Well, Lejeune was one of these. George Barnett was another one, and so was Russell, and just a bunch of early 20th century commandants came from the Naval Academy. And with them, with that generation of commandants, came this greater emphasis on the moral, mental, and physical development of Marines. And this was all kind of wrapped up in a greater progressive era. Progressives were all about using government and political structures to enhance the lives of people. They were all about moral development, physical development, health, and all that kind of stuff.

And so the Marines were very keen on that, and Lejeune was very, very keen on that. So his predecessor, George Barnett, oversaw the standing of the roving Marines. I talk about roving Marines, I believe, in Chapter 6. Chapter 6 in this book. And the roving Marines were all about showcasing this type of manhood that the Marines emphasized. You had Marines in dress blues up there dancing and playing music and doing lasso shows and boxing and all that other kind of stuff. World War I was over. You know, this type of hyper type of not hyper this wartime manliness was kind of fallen away and they're they're trying to show they're trying to get back to showing people that, you know, the Marine Corps can teach you useful things and we can develop your body and we can you're going to be around good guys and honest people and all that other kind of stuff.

So it wasn't so much John A. Lejeune sitting down with his cabinet saying, OK, we're going to we're going to talk about manhood. But what he did talk about a lot explicitly was mental, physical and moral development, which I argue is how he made gender and how he made manliness kind of a central component of Marine advertising and recruiting. Is there an enduring legacy of the Marine Corps' early 20th century use of manliness to direct people's attention away from the potential costs of being Marine? Yes. So, I mean, while I was doing this book, while I was writing this book, you know, it occurred to me that this is one of the legacies of promoting this type of, this line that, okay, if you join the military, there has to be a kind of a cost benefit analysis. And most of us, whether we think about it or not, apply kind of a cost-benefit analysis to the decisions that we make. This is particularly true of people who decide to join the military by choice. I'm not talking about conscripts or people who are drafted. That's a totally different discussion.

But for people who volunteer, and the Marines have prided themselves on being a mostly volunteer organization, barring the few exceptions where they accepted draftees. They accepted draftees in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Um, uh, but at least in world war one's case, they made the argument that, uh, draftees had to elect or choose to try out for the Marine Corps. And if they failed, they would get shipped back to the army. So they could still kind of say they had voluntary inductees or voluntary draftees is how they kind of, uh, talk their way around that.

But ultimately for me, um, I don't think there's anything insidious. I don't think there's anything dishonest that the Marine Corps was trying to do with saying, okay, look, if you join the Marine Corps, we will make a better man out of you or we will make a more, you make a man out of you. I don't think that was, it wasn't like, you can call it propaganda, but I don't, I don't say, I don't think it was, no one was trying to like be dishonest or cruel or lie. What I think it was is you have to persuade people to join the service. OK, in order to do that, you're going to necessarily try to revert their attention away from the potential costs. And let's talk about the cost for a second in World War One or, you know, if you join the military, particularly the infantry or any type of frontline occupation, the potential costs are high. right um our society today knows that or they should know that all too well with the past 20 years of conflict over in the middle east you know you could use you could lose your life you

could lose your limbs and if you're lucky and you come home like myself and you have and you have all of those things intact uh you're probably going to be uh changed from the experience and not always in a better way and you know we have veterans the literature on veterans coming home from world war ii korea vietnam the gulf war the wars in iraq and afghanistan the literature that we have on veterans trying to adjust back to normal life is it's pretty it's pretty extensive and the the mental and psychological cost of going overseas and coming back is pretty high it's pretty high so how do you get around that well you try to convince young men and women that the Marine Corps is going to benefit you in some sort of way.

You know, over the last 50, 60 years for the all-volunteer force, we have the GI Bill, we have the Marine Corps has, or the military in general will help you pay for education, help you pay for vocational education, help you buy a house. You know, it's got the VA that'll take care of you and those types of things deeper than just the monetary things. there has to be some sort of, they have to sell this type of belief system, this idea that if you put your feet on the yellow footprints, you are making a sacrifice of your time and you're laying

your life on the line. And in doing so, you're going to earn the respect and admiration of your colleagues and your peers and people back home. And that's going to make a better person out of you. You're going to be a better American citizen. The Marine Corps doesn't really make the type of overt um like the marine corps used to have these these signs that say you know a man's game you know they don't do that anymore because they're they're trying to and i think correctly they're trying to recruit and appeal to uh not only men but also women and the marines can probably do that easier than other services because they can they can just focus on what it means to be a Marine as opposed to a soldier or, or whatever. So, um, it's this idea that the benefit of B,

but in the, in the early 20th century and through most of the 20th century, including Korea, Vietnam, World War II, um, it was this idea that the Marine Corps is going to make a man out of you. And what that does is, is that's supposed to get people thinking about thinking more about the benefits, thinking more about what is to gain and what awaits them on the other side of their service, as opposed to the costs, the potential costs and the potential dangers of losing their life or watching their friends die or things like that. Now, the Marine Corps can't always live up to that. And also the literature of veterans coming home and being very, very disenchanted with all of that, cynical. Their experiences were so bad that, you know,

they felt it was entirely naive for them to believe that the military was going to benefit them in either way. That's all out there. All that is real and all that is true to their experiences. But it's still, it's an interesting type of, it's an interesting history. It's an interesting story that in the Marine Corps case, one of the ways in which they tried to get people to think about the benefits of service was, was very gendered. It was through these very highly gendered appeals of, you know, we will make a man out of you. This is what a man is. This is what martial manliness is.

This is the type of manhood that the Marine Corps fosters and grows and develops. And this type of manhood, if you're a man enough to do it, will, will, will benefit you. And of course that becomes very, very interesting. And it changes once women start coming in. And once we have African-Americans join the ranks, there's a, There's a very interesting history behind all of that as well, but this original idea that the Marine Corps will make a man out of you, I think, goes back at least to the late 19th century, early 20th century, the period of time that my book talks about, and you can see the remnants of it today. So let's talk about some of the remnants. Does the Marine Corps' history with race and gender inform the debate surrounding force design 2030? I really think it does. And I haven't really seen many people talking about this. I've got a section on that in my conclusion. And I had a couple of friends of mine encourage me to take that section out and write like maybe an op-ed somewhere, try to put it in the Washington Post or whatever.

But I really wanted to keep it in the book. And I'll say, yes, it does in a few ways. One, if you look at the main voices in the force design debate, the overwhelming majority are white males. And that's the reason why they're white males. A lot of them are older white males. So it seems on the face of it, you have lots of retired general officers and retired field grade officers, all old white dudes.

and them being old white dudes is about, I'm about to explain why that's significant. Arguing against people who are still in with skin in the game, right? And there's this, I think there's this healthy, robust collection of, you know, captains, majors, lieutenant colonels in the Marine Corps that are defending Force Design 2030 admirably. I still have some discomforts with Force Design 2030. I don't like getting rid of tanks,

but i don't think anybody liked getting rid of tanks um it just i felt it was a decision that they that people feel like they had to make but anyway um for the longest time uh women were barred from combat operation from combat mos's in the marine corps also the marine corps is the worst at recruiting and retaining uh minorities and women fact um you can look at people who listening to this can look at the numbers uh and i think the reason why that is is a holdover from the culture that i've just been talking about this this really uh ingrained uh masculine culture that i think is so obvious and so um ingrained in the marine corps culture to be almost unnoticeable by most of the people that are in it you you you things that are just such a normal part of your

life you almost kind of don't even take notice of anymore that's how prevalent a lot of a lot of this stuff is okay so um the marine corps was one of the last to desegregate uh the marine corps was forced to desegregate i mean a lot of the branches were but the marine corps was forced to desegregate in world war ii um for the longest time blacks were not welcome in the marine corps even when it was desegregated uh cameron mccoy just wrote a very interesting book contested valor i highly recommend people listen to this podcast go go read that book he describes much better than i do in my book the challenges uh that black marines faced in world war ii and beyond and he describes what you know why those challenges were there to begin with and what

the implications of their challenges are very interesting book very important book so essentially the upshot is the people with the most credibility in the marine corps are white males because they have cornered i guess combat credibility in the marine corps in order to be a marine with as much credibility with credibility you have to have combat command you're either a fighter pilot or you're an infantry commander in order to be on commandant most of the most commandants of the marine corps were infantry commanders uh they they would they commanded the platoon all the way on up uh i think amos was a pilot um but that's you know that's amos was a pilot correct yes he was the outlier yeah i think he was the only non-infantry guy yeah he's the exception that

proves the rule. You know, so for the longest time, women were barred from combat operations, which essentially means they're not really going to have that much of a voice, because in order to have a voice in the Marine Corps, you have to have combat experience. And two, like I said, the Marine Corps has a hard time retaining Black Marines. The very first four-star general, the Marine Corps' very first four-star general was promoted to four-star, I think, in 2022. I'm blanking on his name. Langley, I believe, is his name. He's the Africa Africa command commander, essentially older white males. That's most of the people involved in this debate. That's one issue. There's no kind of diversity of opinion or diversity of background when it comes to that issue.

So in that sense, the people guiding this debate and the people arguing against force design are very much, they've come from this, they're kind of this homegrown, if you will. They're very much benefactors of the Marine Corps' very strong history of white manhood and white manliness and white masculinity. So they're the ones shaping this debate. Also, the Marines make it easy sometimes to apply a gendered lens to them. And some of these articles, a lot of these older guys are saying things like Force Design 2030 is emasculating the Marine Corps. I've read a couple of those. Some of them are making arguments that, OK, the Marine Corps is a family and we are fighting for the over the life of a child. That's that is straight up paternalism. And in that paternalism, you can go all the way back to Johnny Lejeune with how he would. you know he paternalism was kind of the way he liked to lead troops you know he would say that

the relationship between officers and enlisted was like a teacher and a student or like a father and a son and it was we're we're taking these people under our charge well the problem with paternalism is if you're in this father-like position yeah you're you have them under your charge but also you treat them like children sometimes um and it can be very very demeaning to the people who are not in this paternalistic role um so those types of things are coming into this debate also um it's not just these older uh retired generals who are uh involved in all of this unfortunately politics the the the kind of contentious and often acerbic politics of our day have have become a part of this discussion too uh accusations of woke uh accusations of you know

ruining the marine corps and all that other kind of stuff are all out there and so the marine corps is actively trying to like i said recruit more women recruit and retain more women recruit and retain more ethnic and religious minorities from the united states and the idea is that diversity is a strength so the marine corps has adopted this idea recently and it's very interesting that diversity is a strength the army has done that the navy has done that this is dod wide Diversity is seen as a strength because it's seen as, okay, we can, the more people we have from different backgrounds attacking these problems in creative ways, the better we are going to be able to find solutions to problems, the more lethal we are as a military organization. Well, the Marine Corps has adopted this, which is kind of 180 degrees from where it used to be. It used to be, okay, discipline and unity is what's going to save us.

Now it's diversity, and it's very, very, very, very interesting. It's flipped this longstanding assumption about what makes lethality just on its head. But anyway, lots of people don't like that. Lots of veterans that look like me and are my age, they're 40. They were in the early 2000s, mid-2010s, that kind of thing. They get out, and they see the Marine Corps getting soft. They see the Marine Corps recruiting command on Instagram highlighting Pride Month or Asian Pacific Islander Month, and they are losing their minds on Instagram saying that the Marine Corps has gone soft and all that kind of stuff. What's really at stake for them, I think, is they believe the Marine Corps is all about fighting and killing. That's it. That's the end all be all of what the Marine Corps existence is. I disagree with that because we just don't live in that type of world or strategic environment.

But the problem with that is if fighting and killing is your only thing, then all that matters is who is the infantry, and if you want a lethal infantry, you can't be focused on diversity, you can't be focused on whether or not, you can't allow women into the infantry. If you allow women in, you're essentially taking away the Marine Corps' fighting edge, or at least that's the idea. So you have veterans who are very much against Force Design 2030 because it's been linked to this type of idea that wokeism is ruining the Marine Corps, which is unfortunate. So all of that, there's this strong undercurrent of misogyny among a lot of veterans groups, which is unfortunate that I've witnessed on social media. So there's a lot of misogyny out there. A lot of veterans are against women in the infantry. There's a lot of people against emphasizing diversity and recruiting and infantry platoons and all that other kind of stuff. And so I think all of that gets linked back to this legacy of white manhood that was so strong and so prevalent in the early 20th, through much of the 20th century. And if you look at the Marine Corps demographics today, it's still overwhelmingly white male.

I'm not saying that there's anything necessarily wrong with all of those white males, but I do think it's interesting that so many black Marine officers are taking themselves out of the pool to be promoted. I don't know why that is. I think there needs to be some research done on that. And I don't know why. I have a hunch, but I can't say for certain why it's so hard for the Marine Corps to recruit and retain more women. But I'm not surprised, given what I know about the Marine Corps history and its culture. but I think there could be some very, very interesting and telling research on those types of things. Um, but yeah, I think that's how, uh, the Marine Corps history of race and gender is still relevant today. I think it's still a part of, um, these ongoing debates about the Marine Corps force design, its future and its future roles and missions, uh, in the Pacific

and elsewhere. I just did a little research as you were speaking there, you were a hundred percent correct general langley and uh took over africa so 100 all right all right yes this is the final question then for you uh what's the takeaway for marines who read this book what is the one thing you want them to realize about their history i want marines to realize um the ones that read this book that the notion of gender is a useful way to think about and look at the Marine Corps' history and how the Marine Corps even operates today. Because the Marine Corps is very, very dependent upon good recruiting, good advertising, good publicity. Of course, it has to accomplish all of its missions of course but it's also very much all those other things are important too

uh and the surest way to break the trust and the fidelity if you will between itself and the rest of the american public is to not pay attention to uh ongoing debates about changes in american culture and society and one of the things that's changing all the time it's constantly under evolution is what it means to be a man or a woman and what people's roles are with men and women in our society. Gender today is still very much a hot topic. It's a very contentious subject. It touches many, many aspects of our lives. And if you're going to recruit, if you're going to try to retain people, if you're going to try to create environments and whether it's in platoons or battalions or S-shops or motor pulls that are conducive to getting the mission

accomplished, that are non-toxic, that are effective, that are lethal, you have to foster environments that are based on trust. And the best way to foster environments based on trust is not excluding entire genders of people. It's not excluding entire groups of people based on um you know race or um sexual orientation or whatever um so i would think i think marines hopefully when they read this book one will come away with an understanding of how gender this type of how gender and race really were very or a very very is a very very important part of the marines history uh and to be on the lookout for ways in which race and gender are kind of taken for granted or you know you know be on the lookout for instances where okay is this is what we're

doing here is this um the way i'm treating these marines or the way these marines are treating each other is this really fostering a good command environment or is this kind of a throwback to a way of doing things that's no longer appropriate to our our mission and that could be misogyny that can be sexual assault that can be um making certain groups of marines feel uh untrusted or you know or um sowing division within the ranks or or whatever so this is partly the historian in me talking i think there are there are important historical lessons to be learned from this but also the former marine in me talking i was an infantryman from 2002 to 2006 that world was super masculine uh to the i mean it was a different world i went from that

environment to college and it was very very different the things i learned immediately from from going from the fleet to the university of alabama was just it was it was it was crazy i had to learn very very quickly um so i've seen that world um and i think the things that recruiting, public image, manliness, character, those types of things, and how the Marine Corps has emphasized those types of things. These are things that Marines who read this can pick up on and see how the Marine Corps has emphasized these things. But also it could be used as a cautionary tale when race or gender can be taken too far, or if it's applied in ways that can be toxic. And there are things, I think, in the Marine Corps' culture that can become quite bitter for some people that I don't think necessarily have anything to do with combat effectiveness or trust or unit cohesion.

And if this book gets Marines thinking about those types of things and thinking about Marine Corps history and coming away with a better understanding of the Marine Corps' history and its culture, I think it would have been a very successful book. well unfortunately that's all that we have time for today i'd like to thank my guest dr mark fulce mark where can we find you online and what are you working on next i can be found on twitter or x formerly known as twitter i'm i have a very bland name it's m r f o l s e one because i never felt like going back and changing the name i'm also on linkedin just just just look me up there i uh i'm currently at the u.s army center of military history and i'm working on a very interesting subject i went from being an early 20th century marine and naval historian to a 21st century army historian how weird is that um although i still claim to be a marine corps

historian uh i'm working on the u.s army in afghanistan so operation enduring freedom the first six months of operation enduring freedom i'm i'm writing a very long in-depth study about the first six months of oef for the army right now uh i just finished chapter one uh and it should be finished sometime uh within the next four or five years so that's what i'm working on now it's gonna take uh just as long as it took to fight the war yes yeah it's definitely a lot longer than it took to plan it yes yes but uh thank you again for joining us mark to listeners thanks for tuning in we'll see you next time We'll be right back.

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