One of my favorite past clients was a retired USMC sergeant (not sure if he was an E-7 or E-8, we just called him "Sarge") but whatever his rank was, in his last years with the Corps he was put in charge of processing disciplinary reports and spent a number of those years in Okinawa. As he explained it to me, on Monday morning he would arrive at his office and on his desk would be the reports of every fucked up thing some enlisted Marine got up to over the weekend, and a lot of it was absolutely horrific (enough to convince him it was time to retire, anyhow). And so according to him, he basically encouraged all the young, dumb enlisted boys to go out and hit the red light districts because that exponentially decreased the chance that he would see reports on his desk of some 19yo grunt raping some kid or old lady at a park. And I loved how he'd summarized his own philosophy of the Corps:
"MARINES, WE ONLY GOOD FOR ONE THING... AND THAT'S KILLING FOLKS. IF THERE AIN'T NO WAR TO FIGHT AND AIN'T NOBODY TO KILL, WE BE DOIN' SOME FUCKED UP SHIT. SO ME? I PRAY FOR WAR."
I often wonder where I'd be today if I'd never attended that NOVA interview, and instead opted to meet with the Air Force recruiter about OTS. Probably be some douchebag, overweight O-5 riding out my last few years at Hickam AFB taking photos and writing press releases and shitty feature stories and ignoring pissed off calls from an irate German woman in Ramstein demanding tuition money for our damaged, dysfunctional mixed-race kids who because of me now hate Americans AND Japanese. I'd be wrapping up my 20 in just over two years, and then I'd spend the rest of my mobile years sitting at a girly bar in the P.I. with a laser pointer in one hand and mug of shit beer in the other. Maybe NOVA did me a favor.