Part 1  |  Part 2  |  Part 3

Part 1: Immersion

In the beginning: OCS puts candidates through the ringer

As Wayne Dunlap stood at rigid attention, jaw clenched in nervous anticipation, his fate hung in the balance. Given his deep desire to be a leader of Marines, standing in this room in front of these officers and enlisted instructors was exactly where he didn’t want to be.
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Pickup

Pickup is intended to be a test of a candidate’s ability to handle the high stress of leading Marines. In the madness of that first day, instructors aim to show the class how tough it can be to think while your senses are overloaded. Try making your bed (a “rack” in Marine-speak) in 10 seconds or less, as the sweat pours off your forehead and you try to make the most of the briefest of explanations of how it’s supposed to look.
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The Platoon Sergeant

Gunnery Sgt. Ruben Velez, the rock-hard, square-jawed chief instructor for Charlie Company’s 4th Platoon leads a team of three staff non-commissioned officers who keep the more than 50 officer candidates in line throughout their 10-week Officer Candidates School course. It’s his job to teach them the intricacies of Marine life, to show them the structure of the Corps and to make sure they stay on track to earn their commission.
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The O Course

Stretching nearly 50 yards down a grassy field here at Officer Candidates School is a hulking monument to physical pain and mental frustration. Some say they have mastered it. Others struggle. But everyone at some point will be humbled by the dreaded obstacle course. It starts with an innocuous waist-high log that gives none of the officer candidates much trouble. Up and over with a plant of the hands and a swing of the legs.
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Field Work

Creeping through the steamy mountain laurel and short pines in the hills off Engineer Road, Dan Boyle looked a little confused. As his small four-man team moved to the objective – a downed helicopter pilot hunkered on a small ridge – Boyle struggled to get a good reading from his compass. His team leader led candidates in a slow creep towards the location where she assumed they’d find the “pilot.” Just as the fire team approached, Capt. Robert Hancock, the candidates’ chief military tactics instructor, yelled: “Fire direct front!”
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Part 2: Mission: Graduate

Walking the razor’s edge

It doesn’t take long for a Marine Corps officer candidate to learn that at Officer Candidates School, everything is graded. Everything. How well they drill. How fast they move through the obstacle course. How they manage a squad of Marines during leadership evaluations. How they behave on weekend liberty. It’s all fair game, and the sergeant instructors are always watching.
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Classroom

Memories of high school history class or college economics lectures conjure up eye-rolling images of monotonous memorization and tedious tutoring. A real drag, right? Try sitting through an hour-long lecture on land navigation after a five-mile run, in a grubby room filled with more than 200 foul-smelling officer candidates.
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SULE

“Roll the drum over, I’ll hold it, and you can move the board out of the way,” said candidate Timothy Dietz, 21, of Baltimore, from his perch on a telephone pole-size log. A confused but still resolute fellow candidate, Dan Knudson, 22, of Plano, Texas, moved to implement Dietz’s suggestion.
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Liberty

You could see the strain on Alex Wilschke’s face, even through the camouflage face paint — smeared with dripping sweat in the mid-summer heat. Two solid weeks of stress and anxiety. The constant shouts of the instructors; the running, the lack of sleep, the shock of new military lifestyle couldn’t be concealed under Wilschke’s streaking green and brown makeup.
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Pugil Sticks

It was not a pretty day for 4th Platoon. In fact, it was a bloodbath. One by one, the candidates went down. A blow to the head took one out; a ramming thrust to the chest dropped another.
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Inspection

They call it the absolute worst part of Officer Candidates Course. “I hate it more than anything else,” says Patrick Amalfi. “It’s by far the worst thing we do here,” remarks Alex Wilschke.
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Graduation

Watching her son march down the parade deck in his crisp camouflage uniform, rifle on his shoulder, Sheila Amalfi knew it might not be long before her son Patrick would be leading young Marines into combat. But that didn’t seem to bother her. In fact, the headstrong mother of two was so enthusiastic about her son becoming a Marine that she threatened to skip the graduation ceremony if he got cold feet and didn’t take his commission.
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Part 3: The Basic School

Every officer a grunt

The Humvee’s engine labored as it climbed the steep dirt road toward a shack just over the crest. From the gun turret, 2nd Lt. Davis Gooding saw something in the shadows. “I see an enemy position near that shack!” Gooding shouted, yanking back the charging handle of his M2.50-caliber machine gun.
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Getting Lost

I think it was my growling stomach that tipped me off. Or maybe it was my sore, sodden feet. It seemed like we’d been walking for a long time. Too long, really, not to have already reached landing zone Martin, just a few hundred yards away and our last checkpoint before lunch.
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Teachers

Walking past the lieutenants as they practiced blocking punches and slowly rolling their opponents to the ground on a clear November day, Capt. Bobby Danzie shook his head, a scowl creeping over his wide, heavy face.
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Mess Night

There he was, Capt. Ryan Gilchrist, a native of Memphis, Tenn., an infantry officer, a Basic School instructor, a platoon commander — and a member of an al-Qaida sleeper cell? A Saddam sympathizer?
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