I remember decades ago when I was in boot camp just outside San Diego. In the Marine Corps, boot camp was three months long. That is, unless you arrived overweight. If you arrived overweight, you weren’t assigned your permanent platoon. You were assigned a special platoon for “fat bodies,” as they were called. This special, temporary platoon focused exclusively on physical conditioning in order to get the recruit down to acceptable weight levels. Only then, once his target weight was attained, did the recruit join a permanent platoon and begin Week One of boot camp.
The official name of this temporary platoon was the Physical Conditioning Platoon (PCP), but it had long been nicknamed the Pork Chop Platoon. And if it took you two weeks to achieve weight standards, then your boot camp lasted two weeks and three months. If it took you nine weeks to achieve weight standards, then your boot camp lasted nine weeks and three months. I knew a recruit who was in the Pork Chop Platoon for over a year before reaching the weight standard and starting “normal” boot camp.
Oh well. Sucked to be them. There were standards, and those standards were strictly adhered to. Back then, we had the privilege to not suffer under the "leadership" of Milley or Austin or Vindman or Levine. Our leaders actually cared about us, and their priority was conditioning us to survive and win in battle, not a fifth trip to the buffet line.
Once a Pork Chop recruit made it to a permanent platoon, they never again exceeded their weight limit. During my time in the Marine Corps, I only knew of one Marine who gained enough weight post-boot camp to the point he was out of compliance. I’m not going to say his real name, but he was given the nickname Corporal Dumplin’ and, despite being given months to get himself back in shape (with several Marines using their own personal time to exercise with him), he was unwilling to do so.
Not unable. Unwilling. There’s a difference. Soon thereafter, he was given a medical discharge and took the walk of shame.
That was in the late '90s. Fast forward to a military having been intentionally degraded for twelve years by Obama, Biden, and their Deep State careerist lackeys in the general officer corps. A recent study by the American Security Project found that 68% of our nation’s reserve and National Guard forces are overweight. A 2023 study by the same group found that nearly the same percentage of active duty personnel are also overweight.
Enter Pete Hegseth, stage right.
He has implemented a policy he calls “No More Walking On Eggshells” in response to the pitifully lax standards our former “leaders” have allowed. He posted on X soon thereafter, "Completely unacceptable. This is what happens when standards are IGNORED — and this is what we are changing. REAL fitness & weight standards are here. We will be FIT, not FAT.”
Thankfully, this isn’t the only change he is implementing in basic training. He is considering a reverse of the military ban on both “shark attacks” and “bay tossing” in basic training. A “shark attack” is when multiple drill instructors swarm a recruit and begin screaming at him in all directions. “Bay tossing” is when all the recruits’ belongings, bedding, supplies, etc. are tossed into the middle of the squad bay, and then the recruits are given a ridiculously short amount of time to (silently) sort out their belongings and put their personal space back in military order.
Why the ban was ever implemented is beyond me. I wasn’t even aware it was. My assumption is that Milley, Austin, and Co. wanted a kinder, gentler military where two-spirit, non-binary unicorns could feel “safe” and never have to experience a moment of adversity. That’s fine for the university campus coloring rooms, but it doesn’t make for good warfighting. Which is why the greatest military in history lost to a gaggle of illiterate goat herds with fertilizer.
Hegseth is getting assistance from the Trump administration, which has barred both the armed services and military academies from relying on “any preference based on race or sex” when fulfilling quotas, objectives, or goals. Good. I can honestly say that my time in the military was less “racist” than any other company or institution I’ve ever experienced. Almost everyone who had attained rank had done so through merit alone. It was truly a colorblind military, and everyone had each other’s backs, regardless of “race or sex.” The shift away from this was done intentionally by leftists looking to degrade the natural camaraderie and esprit de corps that such a meritocracy fosters. The Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth are correct to reverse this.
Another overdue reform that Hegseth is implementing is a reduction of general officers. The current ratio of generals to troops is 1:1400. In World War II, that ratio was 1:6000. As we used to say in a room with lots of staff sergeants and few lance corporals, there are too many chiefs and too few Indians.
The military can handle a top-heavy enlisted class, as even the master sergeants only get so far from the troops. But the general officer staff are the furthest removed from the trenches. Yet they make the most consequential decisions. There is no reason we need so many generals, certainly not in peacetime, other than to sustain a cadre of useless careerists beholden to maintaining a useless bureaucracy for its own useless sake.
“We’re going to shift resources from bloated headquarters elements to our warfighters,” Hegseth announced, perhaps using the word “bloated” in more ways than one. More on that below.
To drive home the seriousness of these policy changes, Hegseth delivered his coup de grace this past week. He assembled all the generals into a single room in Quantico and reminded them of their purpose. He reminded them that they’re supposed to fight wars to win. He reminded them that we can’t beat an enemy using suffocating rules of engagement designed not to win wars but to placate the Davos crowd. He reminded them that fitness standards won’t be lowered to make weaker people feel better about themselves, but will be raised because war is a matter of life and death. He reminded them about the importance of grooming standards, and that our troops shouldn’t be mistaken for a hippie commune.
He informed them that the woke DEI days of military “leadership” are over. "No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction, or gender delusions," he said. "As I've said before, and I'll say again, we are done with that s---."
But best of all, he told this, ahem, “top heavy” room that they, too, will be expected to adhere to the physical fitness standards that are applied to raw recruits on day one. They, too, will be expected to step out of the air-conditioned Pentagon to do some basic PT. They, too, will be expected to meet the height and weight requirements expected of everyone below them.
They, too, will be expected to lead by example.
Officers like Alexander Vindman are a disgrace, and this is not even factoring in for his blatant treason. He’s a disgrace because he’s not a warrior. He’s not a leader. He’s the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in a uniform he should have never been allowed to wear. He represents the double standards and hypocrisy that bedevil any bloated bureaucracy, and have for decades infected our military brass.
Lead by example. If there was one overriding quality out of the many I learned in the military, it was lead by example. Never ask your people to do anything you yourself wouldn’t or couldn’t do. If these generals need some external motivation in order to adhere to standards, there’s always the Pork Chop Platoon.
If they don’t like it, don't let the door hit you on the way out. There’s an Old Country Buffet down the street.
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