From Conscription to Subscription
By Rear Admiral David P. Polatty, USN
Here at Naval Training Center Great Lakes, where the Navy begins, it is difficult to look at the way we conduct business and not draw parallels to a manufacturing assembly line. Every day of the year, recruits arrive at our gates by bus—one after another. They are administered immunizations, issued uniforms, given their meals and relieved of their hair—one after another. Divisions are numbered sequentially, each progressing in rigid order through a standard curriculum—one after another. Even the time-honored graduation ceremonies that mark the end of basic training, with all their prestige and pageantry, occur every Friday—one after another.
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