I’m sure you’ve heard the logo; “The few, the proud, the Marines.” It takes a lot of work, a lot of dedication, and a lot of guts to become a Marine. The Marine Corps boot camp is longer than that for any other branch of the U.S. military.
Marines are supposed to be able to outshoot, out-march and outperform any other soldier in the world. However, there are even fewer Marine Corps leaders than there are Marines and that is because a leader must be even better than those he or she leads.
What makes it so hard for someone to be a Marine officer is that he or she first has to be able to be a Marine. That is already a feat on its own. Above and beyond that however, a Marine officer has to have the best leadership and organizational skills possible.
A Marine officer, by the time he or she becomes an officer, has to go through the Marine Officer Candidate School and Marine Corps’ Officer training, which is like boot camp and leadership camp put together into one awesome package. What this means is that by the time an officer receives “the brass”, he or she has survived and endured the most rigorous physical and mental training possible.
There are precious few Marine officers, but those few are enough because they are the best of the best. A Marine officer is just as good as any of the soldiers he is commanding and then some. The Army might expect you to be all that you can, but the Marine Corps expects you to be more; to be a Marine.