Class 186 Making of a Marine Logo
From Part 1:
OCS puts candidates through the grinder
Pickup: Anticipated, but never appreciated
The Platoon Sgt.: Brings out the Marine
The O Course: A sadist's playground
Field Work: A chance to do the fun stuff
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‘If’ helps candidate get through
By Christian Lowe / Times staff writer
While he was waiting to lead his four-candidate fire team through a field leadership exercise several weeks into Officer Candidates Course, Alex Wilschke turned to me during an interview and told me that if I wanted to know what it takes to make it to commissioning day, I needed to read a certain poem.
“Which one?”
“Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If.’ “
Wilschke, 24, of Saint Joseph, Mich., was an English major before he went to law school at Denver University, so he knows his stuff.
I looked up the poem later that day and found that he was right.
If you want to know what kind of man the Marine Corps wants, or the kind of man that will succeed in OCS and as an officer in the Corps, Kipling’s poem says it all:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man my son!
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