I'm David Hoffman, filmmaker and way back in the 19 eighties, I got the chance to go with these breeds into their exercises and stay with them, which I'm about to tell you about, because I think it's important before you see this sequence.

The film ran on prime time PBS one hour long, but you're going to see ah, clip.

That I think is important because it shares who these Marines are.

So here's what happens.

We get on this helicopter, we get off in the snow, they drop us off, and we're there in these hills in with Norway, supposedly looking at flight North Norwegian ski troops.

They used to call the White Death, I think, and it was really interesting to be in this kind of cold cameras, freezing people, really not taking care of themselves properly among my crew on among the Marines.

And then they put up these tents you're going to see and the tents are awful.

Eight guys sleeping in a circle with the heating unit in the middle when you woke up in the morning.

He had black all around your nose, all sleeping together.

Heads out, feed in against the heating unit that was into center of the tent, including us.

And so it's nighttime.

So I say, Okay, let's talk to these guys because they're being real friendly to us.

They taking care of us.

And I'm really curious about what kind of people joined the Marines.

I was a little older than them, but I was not marine material.

I didn't have that level of fighting May.

Maybe I didn't have as much testosterone as these guys did.

Take a listen.

And I think you'll find something really interesting about who they were.

Are on about why I ended up respecting these men so much.

I'll tell you a bit more about this when the film clip is over.

Enjoy it.

All right, just Hi, judge.

Go, go Pulling dog.

Hey, Integrate to be off the damn ship.

Walking on land.

Good.

May I get paid?

Go back home.

God save the world's fine.

It's just a goal that people have got to pay big prices to go to a damn ski resort.

You got three?

Yeah, good job coming up the hill.

We're almost there.

All right.

Great.

Now.

Yeah.

Sit down.

Hoping to close all of pretty bad shape.

That's led.

Kick her ass.

Oh, do you Slides under some Freeze.

Put up.

Put up.

Okay, Go.

Okay.

You got your gear?

Accounted for now.

Thereby.

Feeling okay.

Great to be out here.

How's everybody doing?

You crank up that stove yet?

Do you feel?

Do they hurt?

Yeah.

Tingle.

Yeah.

At least tangling.

Take both your hands.

Take off your gloves.

They're going to arms.

You're good.

A Corman state.

Okay, Stove going.

I want to go ahead.

Okay.

We're going to strip by year off when she gets clean.

Long johns, which hang this up in ceiling.

You stone.

I'm gonna drink almost 10 years.

I can still remember the pride that I felt, you know, the first time somebody come up and say, you know, good going marine.

Fine job.

I felt like I was about 10 feet tall.

Could take on the world of self confidence and self reliance.

It was fantastic.

It was the best feeling I've ever I've ever known.

You know, I never I never graduated high school and I never, you know, I was part of a team to finally won.

You know, I was in that team that won, you know, it was like, Damn, I did something.

You know, I did something for myself.

You know, I wanted to quit so many times a boot camp, you know, I told them.

I told my drawings, stuck.

There's one time, you know, I don't want to be here, you know?

And this guy's in there that I didn't know and they said, Who are you?

Do you know, it's just, you know, you had a bad day and stuff, but it's a It's a great feeling.

I know everybody here knows that feeling.

It's like it's It's ah, day where if you have ever had any other doubt, you know, you've ever earned anything at all.

Okay, there was no doubt in your mind the day they said platoon, whatever.

It was yours in, dismissed.

You took it One bucks back, step you about face, and it is just tears.

It You were just so you're just fulfilled from having to accomplish really something special.

You know, you made something of yourself.

You accomplished one of the hardest tax there is, and that is completing parasol in basic training.

I did a lot of growing up when I came in.

I was farty lot when I was back 18 which wasn't very long ago.

But I'm there now.

You, uh it really does bring a big change in personality.

You see, guys that come in and they'll go through Marine Corps in the Marine Corps.

Now go back home on leave or something.

They seem like they're older, Did other people there to themselves.

They act older, they grow up real fast.

Friends thought I was impossible.

John, I what happened?

What they do to you?

Nothing.

Just staying there, you know, talking about mind, my business, not causing trouble.

It's really good, too, because you get to look at them and see that nothing's changed.

You get to go home, you see that they're still doing the same thing that they've always been doing and probably will always be doing.

And you're making somebody so But when I come home down, they asked me, they still asked me about it.

You know, if they can tell that it's made a big improvement on when I go home.

I don't I don't do a lot of things that I used to do, but mostly when I was home.

Well, I used to be hanging out with these guys that we just we look for trouble.

It's just simple that we'd look for now.

I think most guys, you prove something more to themselves natives, somebody else.

And once you prove something to yourself, it just you naturally prove things to other people.

You don't have to put on a show and say a march or something like that.

You just what you learn pride and confidence in yourself.

You just automatically comes to the surface and everybody else sees it.

You know, before I come in the Marine Corps, I thought I had think so bad.

He's, you know, poor.

I was I was like, poor me.

Poor Dave.

He had everything.

He didn't have decision.

You know what?

I had everything we like day and night.

I had I thought I had, you know, I had it made, but, you know, we're a lot of like in other ways, too, from coming from two totally different places.

One thing we find, though, that both of us came in for is a challenge.

Like I had it.

But it didn't mean that.

Because without a challenge, that's what we all want.

We wanted the ultimate challenge.

Before I come in here, I was looking out for me and only me.

You know, I had a lot of Quentin's is, you know, before I committed, but not really too many real good friends.

You know, I really didn't.

I looked out for me and took care of myself.

We're in here, you know that These guys around here, you know, I don't really know him.

I've only known him for about a year now, most of all.

And, you know, I've I feel, you know, we don't say too much each other, but I feel closer than these guys, you know, because I know that you you know, there, there behind your back, you up.

You know, everybody's, you know, different different races from different places.

But, you know, we all got one thing in common.

We're here, you know, were Marines.

We're together here in this one place.

So it's It's nice to go home too.

When you get, this will be the longest.

I haven't been away from home eight months toe, usually with doing so much.

We're busy all the time.

You know, like Corporal Smith sometimes, you know, he tells us to do stuff, and it's a real pain in the neck.

You know, I think he's a real jerk sometimes, But you gotta you gotta put up with it.

You know, like duty.

You know, I gotta go out there as soon as we're done here and patrol up and down.

I don't want to do it, But if I don't do it, get on my back, You know?

And there's a reason for that to look out for the other Marines that were in the other times.

Right now, it's just some of those details.

It's it's got to be done, and they get past me.

And I've got a pass from the moment, all right, But yet they know that it's got to be done right, or something's gonna hit the fan.

All right, so they do it and I can go.

I say, uh, okay, I need a couple of volunteers.

No doubt they know it's gonna be some kind of two bit job, but yet they go ahead and volunteer just to get it over with every day.

Well, they know what it was like to get out of sleeping bag tomorrow.

When you're so cold, so cold, you're in pain and it hurts just being out there on fire watch and you're freezing to death because you feed a wet or just some minor technicality.

But if they appreciate 1/2 a CZ much, it must hurt that they don't.

We would be yet inside.

We got our own pride.

We know what we have accomplished, and we know we don't prove it to them.

It's just something between us right here.

We wouldn't say it to each other, but will say, you know it.

It's a fit with team.

We're a team.

We're a team right here, every one of us.

But we never we really never We knew it, but never told each other.

You know, learning a lot.

I can feel it right now.

If you could be sitting right where I'm sitting right now, you could feel it.

You know, I could feel in college, you know, he's the queen's quiet guy.

But when you go home, most people don't respect nothing about anybody else.

It's just it's a dog eat dog world.

But if most people served in the military for a short time Marine Corps of the Marine Corps, they learn to respect each other.

And that way, when you went home, maybe everybody would would have a lot more appreciation for each other, more than more than repeat anything that's been said here again tonight, one of us is going to start.

Just cracked one joke, and that's all it's gonna take.

We're gonna crack jokes and such as extreme that nobody has ever heard before.

And it's not being able to put on tape.

Yeah, that's what I suspect.

A fair number of people watching this clip.

Our Marines were Marie's had Marines and their families and understand the incredible core, the core of how they feel together, the loyalty to each other, how it turns kind of rough guys into terrific guys into guys.

You can see you're going to succeed in life.

This film is now 30 some years old and the Marine Corporal Soon First Platoon are going to get together for a retreat this fall, and they've invited me to come and kind of reminisce with them.

I can't wait.

I'll make a video of it.

I think it's gonna be really interesting to find out what happened to these people.

I thank you for watching the clip.

I thank you for being a subscriber.

If you're not, please join.

I thank you for supporting me on Patri on if you do.

And I hope to give you more clips from these films in the near future.

Thank you.