CAMP LEJEUNE, NC — "Take me to the brig!" Chesty Puller once demanded during an inspection, "I want to see the real Marines." Aboard Camp Lejeune, Marines seek to keep that spirit alive in the 21st century with Lance Corporals Course, a professional military education program designed to teach newly-promoted Lance Corporals the fine arts of thievery, insubordination, and slacking off that are essential to the E-3 rank.
The program features an intense six week course in which Marines learn the fundamentals of how the Uniform Code of Military Justice works, and how to properly violate every single article in it.
"Look, we all know that Marines are going to violate the UCMJ no matter what we tell them," said Sergeant Major Jack Mitchell, head of the Camp Lejuene Staff Academy and a resident of Webster Springs, W.Va. "At least this way when they drive through the front gate in their stolen car with a bag of spice in the glove compartment and an underage girl in the trunk they know exactly what we're going to be charging them with."
According to Mitchell, the first Lance Corporals course was an ad hoc program he created in 2010, following publication of the comic strip Terminal Lance.
