Leadership involves building an esprit de corps, the creation of a sense of purpose in pursuit of noble and clear objectives.
The Peace Corps is guilty of enthusiasm and a crusading spirit. But we’re not apologetic about it.
I never thought anyone would pity me because of my time in the Marine Corps.
I am a Marine Corps veteran, but more importantly – or as important maybe – I’m the chairman of the Oversight Investigation Subcommittee and the House Veterans Affair Committee.
I think I am typical in believing that the Peace Corps trained us brilliantly and then did little more except send us into the bush. It was not a bad way of running things.
From the time I left the Marine Corps after serving as an infantry platoon and company commander in Vietnam, I decided that I would focus on immediate goals that inspired me to devote all of my energy to them, rather than putting together the more cautious and traditional building blocks of a predictable career.
I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General.
I want to warn anyone who sees the Peace Corps as an alternative to the draft that life may well be easier at Fort Dix or at apost in Germany than it will be with us.
We also very importantly recommend continued growth in the Army and the Marine Corps end strength.
I was a lifeguard, camp counselor, the president of the YMCA Leaders Corps. I also took piano lessons. I was a dancer.
Being in the Marine Corps and doing the job I did, there is a lot of risk involved. It made me comfortable with risk.
My record was so bad that I was first rejected by the Peace Corps as a poor risk and possible troublemaker and was accepted as a volunteer only after a great deal of explaining and arguing.
Americans rightly, but sometimes excessively, celebrate every person in uniform as a hero, but seldom honor the difficult and often dangerous work being done day after day by members of our diplomatic corps. Warriors capture the popular imagination more easily than peacemakers.
Those memories of living in a developing nation are part of who I am today and give me a profound understanding of the challenges of economic development – an understanding which will make my tenure as Peace Corps director, I hope, a very special one.
I never was a hippie! I went to India because so many friends like Mia Farrow and the Beatles were going there to discover truth. And so I went and trekked through India by myself, but instead of discovering truth, I wanted to join the Peace Corps.
I grew up in Boston in a very, very, very Marine town. So back in my neighborhood in Boston, a working-class neighborhood, when you got your draft notice, you went down, and you took your draft physical. And then, if you passed it, you joined the Marine Corps.
The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson’s on the main drag into maturity.
Emphasis in the Marine Corps isn’t on talking about your feelings.
