Joe Harden

Once A Marine Joe Harden

"Welcome to the United States Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California. It was Monday, October 27, 1969, and I, along with sixty-seven other fools possessing equally bad judgment, had just arrived in hell."

It's a cold morning in 1969, and Joe Harden is about to leave everything he ever knew behind... to see if he has what it takes to earn the title of United States Marine.

Come stand in the yellow footprints with Joe as he leaves his home, a small town in the Ozark Mountains, all the way to the US Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, California. You'll learn what it was like to be chewed out by Drill Instructors, how it felt to march on the "Grinder", and just what it took to turn a hillbilly into a Marine. You'll even meet some of Joe's fellow recruits, and how they came together 40 years later to return right back to where it all started. "Once a Marine, Always a Marine" proves to be true in this tale from the Old Corps.