The eight-man Marine trial board did not need very long to reach a verdict. After deliberating less than four hours—including a break for dinner —the board last week acquitted Staff Sergeant Harold Bronson of involuntary manslaughter, maltreatment and assault. Bronson, a drill instructor (D.I.), was tried for the death last March of Private Lynn E. ("Bubba") McClure. During a mock bayonet drill supervised by Bronson, other recruits beat McClure, 20, a mental retardate, into a vegetable.
Despite Bronson's acquittal, the episode has helped trigger a trial larger than that of any individual. The defendant is the Marine Corps itself.
The nation's proudest fighting force is the target of a fusillade of criticism —the worst since 1956, when another D.I., Staff Sergeant Matthew McKeon, marched a platoon into a swamp at Parris Island, S.C. Six of the recruits drowned, and McKeon, after a brief prison sentence, was restored to good standing. Bronson's acquittal and the likelihood that charges will be dropped against others involved in McClure's death heighten fears that the corps will not be able to reform itself.
Certainly with respect to the hated D.I., long noted for torturing and abusing recruits in the guise of "building men," reform has been slow in coming —as Bubba McClure learned too late. A born loser and high school dropout from Lufkin, Texas, McClure had been rejected by the Army and Air Force before he somehow passed the Armed Forces Qualification Test in San Antonio, after failing it in Lufkin. Sent last year to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, he was quickly tagged a "problem recruit" and assigned to a "motivation" platoon. When he defied orders to participate in a pugil-stick fight (a simulated bayonet drill in which 12-lb. poles padded on both ends are used as weapons), Bronson ordered other recruits to whale away at McClure, even after the 115-lb. youth fell to the ground screaming for mercy. He died in a hospital after doctors removed half of his crushed skull.
Other abuses have surfaced lately:
¶ At Parris Island, a recruit was suspended by his arms from a chinning bar in a mock crucifixion that ended only when his fingertips went numb.
¶ A harassed recruit at San Diego was driven to such despair that he threatened suicide. The drill instructor obligingly instructed him on how to slash his wrists. The recruit's wounds, fortunately, were superficial.
¶ On the very day that Marine Corps Commandant Louis H. Wilson was discussing such outrages before the House Armed Services Committee, three D.I.s at Parris Island were suspended after one struck a recruit with a blow of such force that it perforated the youth's stomach.
On any given day, there are roughly 1,150 D.I.s on duty. Yet since 1970 alone, no fewer than 1,072 legal actions taken against D.I.s have resulted in convictions or nonjudicial punishment. The figure suggests that many more thousands of abuses go unpunished or even unreported. Admits one Marine colonel: "Since Viet Nam, the situation got away from us." The fact is that long before Viet Nam, Marine D.I.s were legendary for their sadistic cruelty.