Greg Cope White

You wanna know what it's like to be gay and suddenly stuck in Marine boot camp at Pariss Island? Well read this book. Greg Cope White's THE PINK MARINE (2016) provides you with a pretty detailed, nearly day-to-day look at the punishing 13-weeks of Marine Corps basic training, along with periodic lookbacks at his earlier, peripatetic life of frequent moves with his oft-divorced mom and his brothers, always the 'new kid' at several schools. Then, at eighteen, bored with his life at a Texas show more community college, he journeys to New Orleans to join the Marine Corps Reserves on the buddy system with his best friend, Dale. It's 1979, years before "don't ask, don't tell," so Greg doesn't tell, and throughout boot camp, the slight, underweight recruit lives in constant fear that he will be exposed as a homosexual and either beaten, discharged in disgrace, or both. But along the way he also discovers a strength he never knew he had and not only makes it through basic, but excels.

There's also plenty of frank talk here about the temptations he faces in the constant close contact with sixty to seventy men, including group showers, but it never goes full porno, except maybe in the language of the constant hazing by the homophobic drill instructors. In the end I found myself admiring the author, for his discipline and for all he accomplished, going from a skinny teenager with no goals to a full-fledged Marine, and an honor graduate at that. Greg Cope White finished out his six-year obligation, and even had the chance to be an officer, but chose to remain a sergeant.

Cope White has enjoyed a successful career in Hollywood as a TV scriptwriter and producer, given his first chance by none other than Norman Lear, who wrote the Foreword for this memoir. I enjoyed the hell out of this book. It will join my special collection of military memoirs and other books about the military life in war and peace.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA show less

Picture this - its 1971 and the military services “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is fifteen years in the future. It is officially illegal to be gay while serving in any of the military branches, and in much of America for that matter, even though the Stonewall “riot” is two years in the past.

You are an insecure, gay 19-year-old whose best friend Dale — who is straight and comes from a military family — has just told you he is joining the Marines and heading off to boot camp show more for the entire summer. But all you hear is “summer” and “camp” and you impetuously decide to sign up with him.

So begins Greg Cope White’s 2016 book The Pink Marine. It’s the quintessential coming-of-age tale, but with a “closeted teenager at boot camp” twist. A gentle humor carries the book and likely masks the terror of being found gay that Cope must have felt while going through training at Parris Island. The result is a great read with appeal to anyone who remembers what it was like to be a timid kid unsure of how you’d ever fit into this world.

What Cope does have is obstinance, and an overwhelming desire not to let his best friend down. His first challenge is putting on some weight - he learns at the Marine recruiter’s office that he is fourteen pounds below the minimum weight to enter the Marines. With Dale’s help he crosses this first hurdle in the eight days before Dale goes to boot camp, ensuring they can both go together on the “buddy system”, which will keep them together through boot camp.

The rest of the book is a boots-on-the-ground memoir of Cope’s 13 weeklong basic training experience. As the weeks go by and the difficult challenges of boot camp somehow get met, Cope’s confidence begins to build. He starts to realize that he will come out of boot camp an entirely different person than he was when he went in. But still gay, of course, and unfortunately still having to remain closeted.

If you’ve seen last fall’s Netflix miniseries Boots, based on Cope’s book, then many of the scenes here will be familiar to you. But I would say the Netflix version, which I have seen, is a “loose” adaptation, and one that changes some significant parts of the story line. I found the book to have a more authentic feel, and to better reflect the times of the early 1970s, when men were men, and no one would ever think that a gay man could make it as a Marine. show less