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Once again, Corps plans to ax Recruit Wrap

’Tis the season of giving, but after this Christmas, officials at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., are ending the decades-old tradition of allowing recruits to take a break from boot camp so they can buy gifts for family and friends back home.

The event is known as “Recruit Wrap.” During the holidays, the recruits are driven platoon by platoon to the base exchange and allowed a half-hour to an hour to buy their gifts. Volunteers in the surrounding community then wrap the presents and get them ready to ship.

It’s been this way, on and off, since 1965, when the event was started as a recruit training regiment initiative. A similar event was once held at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego — minus the community volunteers — but was canceled at least three years ago.

Recruit Wrap is meant to be a relaxing time when recruits can sing Christmas carols and enjoy hot cocoa and cookies. But officials at Parris Island don’t think that fits in well with the otherwise arduous curriculum that defines boot camp.

“Breaking that training focus for even a few days is a backward step against progress,” said depot spokesman 1st Lt. Josiah Nicely. There’s no time built into the schedule for “special events such as these,” so including it means removing something else.

Capt. Regina Carbonari, Parris Island’s staff secretary, remembers her initial reaction to Recruit Wrap when she was a junior drill instructor in the late 1990s.

“It just seemed so out of sync with what we did on a daily basis,” Carbonari said. “… Your mission as a ‘green belt’ is to train those recruits. You’re very firm. You’re very demanding.”

But when she became a senior drill instructor, Carbonari realized there is a way to balance boot camp’s unyielding training schedule with a light-hearted event such as Recruit Wrap. In fact, she began to view it as an opportunity to explain to recruits that part of being a Marine means you’re not always going to make it home for the holidays.

“If you’re smart as a senior,” she said, “you can really tie it into training.”

Along with the 30- to 60-minute time limit for shopping during Recruit Wrap, recruits are given a $150 spending limit. They’re not required to go to the exchange, and those who do aren’t required to buy gifts. Many simply purchase toys and drop them in the Toys for Tots box.

The event was last suspended from 1999 to 2006, and it didn’t sit well with the hundreds of volunteers who turn out for it each year. When Recruit Wrap was reborn two years ago, it was taken over by the depot’s Marine Corps Community Services.

Now, the same arguments that have put the wrap on Recruit Wrap in the past have won again. And, there’s another issue — there’s not a similar event for the depot’s drill instructors, skill instructors and other staff.

Technically, Nicely pointed out, recruits haven’t even “earned the title Marine” yet.

This year, depot personnel will be allowed one day to join in on Recruit Wrap, and officials at Parris Island plan to work with local community organizations to come up with an annual event for the depot’s permanent personnel.

“The whole event has good points and bad points,” Carbonari said. “Most people love it or hate it.

“The reality,” she added, “is that they are recruits. … They came here knowing that they would spend Christmas at recruit training, so they shouldn’t have any expectation of anything other than that.”