Some have never forgotten the sound of Sgt. Maj. Ronald Green's voice since hearing it bellow from under the classic smokey cover as they made the transition from civilian to Marine.
Mack Hall was an 18-year-old recruit at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, in 1991 when then-Sgt. Maj. Ronald Green, recently named 18th sergeant major of the Marine Corps, was a senior drill instructor.
Green wasn't Hall's DI, but was still considered a bit of a celebrity to Hall and his platoon-mates. The thing was, Hall was in another platoon and Green wasn't his DI.Nonetheless, Green was a bit of a celebrity to Hall and his platoon-mates. When Green and his platoon would run by singing cadence, the recruits would pause for a second just to listen.
"The recruits in my platoon would kind of slide over to the window so we could hear him," Hall said. "We would always listen for his cadence. His voice, his tone, it had a great rhythm to it. Us recruits were like, 'Wow, I wish he would drill us.'"
Then Sgt. Ronald Green served the role of a mentor as a senior drill instructor at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., in the early 1990s.
Photo Credit: Courtesy
Green, who will assume the post of the Corps' top senior enlisted Marine Feb. 20, was even more legendary among his own recruits.
Edwin Dario Pena, who also was a Parris Island recruit in 1991, recalled a ditty he and his fellow recruits had sung in honor of their DI:
"Float like a butterfly sting like a bee/my senior drill instructor taught me to be/a lean, mean fighting machine, rough, tough, can't get enough/ … Who are we? Our senior drill instructor Staff Sergeant gt. Green, Platoon 1118! Oorah!"
Pena, now 41, said Green was always squared away down to his crisp uniform blouse.
"It was just coolness," he said. "Jjust having it exactly together. He was physically fit, as a drill master. Everything you would want to look up to."
Like all recruits, Pena also encountered the famous Marine Corps DI treatment at the hands of Green. The senior DI would mock Pena's strong New York accent and rip him for not being "intense enough," Pena remembered.
Green's example inspired Pena's early dream to become a drill instructor and eventually a sergeant major. But when his requests to go to the drill field were repeatedly denied, he fell back on another plan Green had encouraged — getting commissioned as a Marine Corps officer.
Pena would received his commission in 2001, and retired as a captain in 2011.
Shaun Yancey also stood on the famous yellow footprints in 1991, and he remembered Green's style of discipline as very different from his two fellow DIs. He wasn't any less tough, but he was the one who would spend time with the recruits after a whirlwind and exhausting day of training. As the senior DI, Green served as the recruits' mentor.
"When Sergeant gt. Green was on deck, time seemed to have slowed down," Yancey said. "You could finally breathe."
Green would sit on a makeshift throne-chair built out of footlockers and get a little personal with his recruits.
"He would sit in [the chair] as we all sat around him as if we were about to have the story of our lives told to us," Yancey said. "He would hand out mail, ask questions about our home life, what we plan on doing in the Marine Corps, teach us cool cadences, and had a genuine interest in our progress throughout basic training."
Though those boot camp days feel like a lifetime ago, said Yancey said he still has a visual reminder: the faces of Green, the other DIs, and his fellow recruits look out from a framed photo on display at his dad's house.
"Glad to see a familiar face from then," he said.
Twenty years after Hall was at boot camp, listening for Green's cadence, he ran into the former DI at a social event — a West Coast reunion for E-9s attended by Hall's wife, a Marine master gunnery sergeant.
The two men chatted and laughed about their Parris Island memories.
"He was one of those people that you meet and you always remember," Hall, now a master sergeant stationed in Okinawa, said. "Definitely, from his character and what I know of him, we're definitely in good hands."
