DI abuse
"Being a marine can be brutal, the men at Ripper admit. Boot camp was not pleasant and, although incidents of sergeants physically attacking their men when they muck up are rare now, older hands say that they were relatively common in 1991, when the film is set."
I do not think this was true in 1991 and I know it was prohibited in the mid 1960's too. My son went through boot camp at San Diego in the late 80's and saw nothing like this. While I have not had access to DI training material, I would be surprised if this is permitted. This is not to say that DI are not demanding and don't push recruits beyond what they thought they can accomplish. I think such suggestions do a disservice to men who dedicate their career to making people into Marines.
There has probably always been a tendency to say things were tougher in the old Corps, but for a guy like me who went through OCS in the 1960's it is hard to think of 1991 as being that long ago. Now, there was the story about why Chesty Puller was banned from the Basic School after his retirement. It seems he got the young officers so fired up that they were jumping off the "flying bridge" (the balcony) and one of them missed graduation with a broken leg.
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