Latest news, weather and high school sports for Albany and Southwest Georgia

Every week Fox 31 takes you inside life at the Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, but we wanted to go a step back and see how marines are made.  Fox 31's Romney Smith recently spent a week in Parris Island South Carolina where the U.S. Marine Corps trains marine recruits.  Check back weekly for new stories, diary additions, pictures, and video from the series.

Educators from Southwest Georgia recently got on a bus to educators and headed to Parris Island South Carolina to get a taste of boot camp.  Westover High School Counselor Tracy Knighton says she wanted to learn more about marine boot camp in order to better advise her students. “We go visit college campuses  all the time and those recruits come to us, but its different when you’re going through it yourself and you can actually see firsthand what those recruits are going through” says Knighton.

All male recruits living east of the Mississippi River and all female recruits nationwide are trained at Parris Island.  Drill instructors gave the educators a taste of the introduction to the Marine Corps in an exercise known as 'yellow foot prints' where recruits line up and learn how to stand like a marine. 

New recruits tend to mess up details which causes drill instructors to yell corrections.  So the more a recruit messes up, the more the drill instructors yell, but Staff Sgt. Deneice Newton says all of the drills and yelling has a purpose. “Believe it or not through mass punishment comes teamwork, so if one makes that mistake and the group gets punished, then the next time that one thinks they're going to make a mistake they'll be somebody else peer pressuring that group that's going to say 'hey don't make that mistake because we're all going to get in trouble for it” says Newton.

Recruits also have fitness requirements to make it into boot camp, but the physical training isn't over when they arrive - it gets harder. Drill Instructors say it’s imperative to strengthen recruits so they can handle the vigorous training.

Check back in with our website frequently as we’ll add more pictures, behind the scene notes, and video’s on all kinds of topics ranging from rifle training to swim qualifications to female recruits and the final test known as the 'crucible'. 

The series will run every Sunday and Friday night at 10 p.m.  on Fox 31 News at 10.