Fight Like a Girl

waltky · Mar 26, 2018

Based on a true story...

In 'Fight Like a Girl', Former Recruit Commander Tells Her Own Story
26 Mar 2018 - In July 2015, while working as a reporter for Marine Corps Times, I received a hot tip from a colleague: The commander of the only battalion training female Marine recruits at boot camp had just been fired from her post. I dropped what I was doing and picked up the phone.

Over the next day or two, the astounding details of the story began to unfold: Lt. Col. Kate Germano, commander of 4th Recruit Training Battalion at Marine Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, had been relieved due to lack of trust and confidence by Recruit Training Regiment Commander Col. Daniel Haas, despite dramatic improvements to recruit range qualification scores that were made during her tenure. I requested the scores from Parris Island. Sure enough, rifle qualification rates for the battalion shot up from 79 percent to 91 percent under Germano. It surfaced that there was an investigation into Germano's leadership style and command climate that provided the groundwork for her firing. I requested that, too, from the Marine Corps -- and got it so quickly it made my head spin.

Typically, when I make a Freedom of Information Act request for a command investigation, it takes weeks or months for officials to complete the process of locating the documents, redacting them, and sending them back. In this case, I got a call from the office of the commandant of the Marine Corps, recommending I ask for expedited processing. It was unusual that the office of then-commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford would reach out to me at all regarding the firing of a lieutenant colonel at Parris Island, and stranger still when I received the documents less than 24 hours later. I heard a rumor that someone was ordered to turn it over to me as fast as humanly possible -- even if they had to stay up all night redacting privileged information from the 300 pages of documents.

I can only speculate why Germano's ouster received such high-level handling. What I do know is this: It came amid a heated debate about the future of women in the armed forces and whether they deserved a role in combat, and Germano was then, and has been since, an outspoken advocate for equality and integration who isn't afraid to break things to get her point across. Never before or since have I received a command investigation so quickly. When Lt. Col. Joshua Kissoon, commander of Parris Island's Third Recruit Training Battalion, was relieved of his post the following year amid a hazing scandal, documents of any kind related to his firing took months to surface. In "Fight Like a Girl," Germano's account, co-written with journalist Kelly Kennedy, of her year at Parris Island, each page is filled with details that highlight the challenges she faced as a commander of female recruits amid the macho culture of the Marine Corps.

Male officers told her she should smile more, she alleges; some, like Kissoon, appeared to make a point of not acknowledging her when they completed the same hikes during recruit training. Among some leaders at Parris Island, she writes, Fourth Recruit Training Battalion, home to all female recruits, was snidely referred to as "The Fourth Dimension." The unit itself had serious problems, too, she writes. Because female drill instructors would become pregnant and never be replaced on the drill field, she found the unit was severely understaffed, with soaring stress levels that contributed to abuse of recruits and junior drill instructors. And, in her telling, 4th Recruit Training Battalion had achieved contentment with mediocrity. Female recruits arrived at the unit unable to meet the minimum fitness standard, and were informed early on that they weren't expected to excel in hikes or on the rifle range.

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"Fight Like a Girl" hits shelves April 3.

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yiostheoy · Mar 27, 2018

Catfighting huh?

I doubt it.

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Fight Like a Girl

waltky Well-Known Member

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Fight Like a Girl

waltky Well-Known Member

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