From Chapter 1 - Tears and Cupcakes As  I prepared to take command of Fourth Battalion, the boot camp for brand-new female recruits, I told myself I would have to stop cussing so damned much. I would have to reconstruct my "resting bitch face" into a countenance brimming with sunshine and light. I would work to encourage a culture of compassionate listening, and I would try not to yell. It was, after all, the Marine Corps. I was excited to take over--proud that I had been hand-selected, and eager for a new challenge. In every position I had ever held, I did my best to leave it a better place. I aimed for efficiency and to improve the Marine Corps overall, but I also worked hard to improve the quality of life for Marines under my watch. After years of deployments, the last thing I wanted was a Marine feeling stressed out over recruiting duty or a drill-instructor tour. This job--commanding officer of Fourth Recruit Training Battalion--seemed perfect for me. I hoped to take the lessons I had learned as a Marine--but also as a female Marine--and build up a group of women who understood just how capable they were. I wanted to prepare them to succeed in a Marine Corps that might not always be supportive or understanding of their goals; and I wanted them to come out with a strong vision of themselves and their abilities. I wanted it for my drill instructors. I wanted it for my officers. And I wanted it for my recruits. The Marine Corps had treated me well, and I knew that strong, capable women could only help the service. I found the Marine Corps accidentally after a Navy recruiter rejected me for my math SAT scores, but I was attracted to the Corps from the beginning because I felt that it was a place for me to make my mark. From the start, I knew the Marine Corps was the smallest, most elite branch of the military, with the fewest women and the highest standards. I had always had high expectations for myself, so this resonated with me in a way no other profession or organization had. Plus, without the Marine Corps, I would never have met my husband, Joe. He has saved my life on more than one occasion, including on Parris Island. Over the years, my feelings of affection and loyalty to the Corps increased because it was the one place where I felt I could make a difference. It was where I wanted to believe I belonged. Ultimately, I loved how much I learned with every new mission, and I expected to learn just as much on this tour of duty. I had already established some goals for myself, and some of them were direct results of being a woman. Although some of my challenges may have been enhanced by my wholehearted Marine-ness, I don't think they are far off from what women who haven't served in the military also face. (Before any non-military readers get too far, I suggest you take a look at "Marine-Speak 101," at the back of the book, for an understanding of how Parris Island is structured, and a basic primer on "Marine-Speak.") In my previous command, I had pushed to make good changes for Marines--to make sure they had more time off and less stressful jobs. I wanted to see fewer divorces, fewer drunk-driving cases, and fewer suicide attempts. But to do that, I shoved my curvier peg into the Marines' extraordinarily square hole. I cursed. I yelled. I was extremely strict. Even though we were able to reach our goals and life got better, a lot of the Marines didn't like me much. I constantly fought not to be "other," by acting the way the male Marines acted; but because I was the only female commanding officer, I was never part of the group. And the things I did to fit in? The yelling and cursing? They only made me stick out worse. Even in the Marine Corps, those are not the traits expected of a woman--unless that woman is "mean" or "a bitch." Worse, none of those attributes matched my personal leadership style. So, as I took charge of women's boot camp for the Marine Corps, overseeing some of the world's fiercest drill instructors, I decided to be true to myself. I thought, "How awesome would it be to leave a command at the end of my tour as commanding officer and not have any regrets like, 'Maybe I shouldn't have said this?' or 'Maybe I shouldn't have yelled about that?'" I had served eighteen years in the military, including stints at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center on Twentynine Palms in California and a tour in Iraq, but I had never planned to stay in more than twenty years. My husband, Joe, and I had an agreement that we would launch second careers, and that agreement had allowed me to push hard to Marine Corps standards without worrying about the politics that career service members play to so they can make rank. But even with the yelling, I had always received excellent reviews. I was seen as a straight-shooting go-getter who could get things done. I went to Parris Island thinking, "This is my redemption tour. I'm going to retire after twenty years in the Marine Corps, and this tour is going to allow me to feel good about leaving the service." We all see how that worked out. To say it was a tumultuous year would be like calling the Titanic disaster a "bad day at sea." But despite the significant obstacles I faced, I never lost sight of the feelings of absolute pride I felt in my Marines at Fourth Battalion as they proved women recruits could, in fact and obviously, perform better if they were simply expected to shoot well and run faster. But no matter how we worked to overcome decades of apathy and low standards for performance within my battalion, there were men at the highest levels of command on the recruit depot who expected--even wanted--the women to fail because they didn't want to see women fully integrated into the Corps. And there were women who fell so fully in line with the status quo that it never occurred to them to see what the female recruits could achieve. My job was to oversee a battalion of fourteen officers, one hundred drill instructors, and 3,200 recruits. Parris Island is the only place in the Marine Corps where female Marines are made, and I wanted to ensure that every day of their thirteen weeks of training counted, so they could graduate faster, smarter, tougher, and better shots. But on Parris Island, the women trained separately from the men--which is different from the other services, where men and women train alongside each other. The women at Parris Island train separately simply because of an outdated study suggesting they would perform better that way. That proved to be incorrect in so many ways, but it also proved to be my downfall, along with a history of neglect, no support from my local leadership, and Pentagon-level bosses who saw better statistics as a step closer toward women joining infantry units. They wanted women to serve only in support roles. Going in, I knew that working only with women would be a challenge. Before I arrived at Parris Island, my predecessor warned me, "They're either baking you cupcakes or on your couch in tears." In hindsight, I see that her comment summed it up perfectly and encapsulated the perception of the battalion throughout the depot and the Marine Corps. Everyone had the expectation that Fourth Battalion, my battalion, was incapable. It could achieve enough to get by, but there was not an established tradition of excellence--a stated need to be better and best. Because it was an all-female unit, even the regimental sergeant major called Fourth Battalion the "Fourth Dimension." In other words, it operated in a different world with different expectations from the male recruit battalions. There was always an undercurrent of women being too emotional and cruel--to each other and to the recruits--and, because the expectation existed, that's how some of the women behaved. They shouldn't have. They were strong and capable. I started doing turnover with my predecessor in February 2014 by phone and email, and then I went to visit the battalion in April, before starting in June. During turnover, you learn the ropes of the new position and gain some of the cultural background of a new place. My predecessor could tell me where there might be problems, as well as point out on whom I could rely. That's when she told me the duty was either tears or cupcakes.The problems went deeper than that. Female drill instructors were sleeping with female recruits, and with each other. Drill instructors abused the recruits. Drill instructors abused other drill instructors. In my battalion, I would have to work through inappropriate sexual relationships, screaming as an accepted form of communication, and even fistfights. There were hazing investigations going on in April and a court-martial case later that month. A court-martial is when a military court is called upon to enforce military law. The issues with drill instructors sleeping with recruits were being brushed under the rug. A lot of the issues with recruits being abused? Those were being brushed under the rug, too. It was a big rug. I had to get everyone focused on good order and discipline, and then deal with the gender-related issues. It turned out the two areas of focus were intimately connected. When I finally arrived to take over command at Parris Island in June 2014, I thought, as I always do, "How am I going to make it better?" But as I dug into performance statistics to see how to do that, even obvious improvements met with sometimes violent resistance. We found that women hadn't performed better than men in essentially any category since the records had been kept. That included weapons qualification rates, academic performance, injury rates, and even how well women marched. Gender differences shouldn't have played into academics or marching, so I struggled, at first, to understand why the women would perform worse in those areas. But I also figured that if we could boost up all the numbers, we'd be making the Marine Corps look better, and everybody would be happy. I was naive. The abusive drill instructors didn't want to change, because they felt that new recruits--and new drill instructors--should have to pay their dues, just as they had. They also did not want to be held accountable for bad behavior. The enlisted Marines--the drill instructors--had run the show for so many years that officers--the Marines in charge of the drill instructors--essentially had nothing to do. This was bad for two reasons: They had no control. And they rebelled hard when forced to take control, because it meant more work. My boss didn't want change, because he didn't want to rock the boat. On top of all of that, the culture within Fourth Battalion was often petty and mean, riddled with rumors and false claims. This was reinforced by leadership that encouraged gossip and arbitrarily enforced Marine Corps standards. This led to a miserable climate within the battalion, but it also reinforced the idea within the male battalions that women could not operate without "drama." I was walking into a minefield, but because I had never encountered anything like it, I went in blind. I needed to hold my officers and drill instructors accountable; I needed to reorganize my staff to reward excellence and remove abuse; and I needed to help my Marines and their recruits understand that they were capable of meeting much higher standards. But without senior leadership that supported those changes, the task would impossible. During my first month in South Carolina, my boss invited me to talk about my goals, as well as to give me a rundown of his command philosophy. The colonel didn't seem too interested in what I had to say, but I wrote down the words he emphasized: "I prize harmony among my staff members above all else." In other words, he didn't want to deal with any turbulence. He just wanted everyone to get along. That stuck with me. The same month, I had my first conversation with Brigadier General Loretta Reynolds, who was, at the time, the commanding general of the depot. She was the first woman to fill that position. I wrote down what she said, too: "Go with your gut, and never back down if you think something is right." They gave me two perspectives completely at odds regarding how I should go into this command tour. If I had chosen the first, there would be no story to tell. Excerpted from Fight Like a Girl: The Truth Behind How Female Marines Are Trained by Kate Germano All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.