In the history of American military service, it is not unusual to hear of siblings joining up and serving together. But a brother and sister joining the U.S. Marine Corps at close to the same time is unusual.
However, that is the story of Matthew and Kathryn Boyd, two locals who decided the Marine Corps offered a chance to lose their immediate environs and to find themselves.
Matthew Boyd, now 26, was the first to join and go through Recruit Training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He admits that in his senior year in high school, he was a "knucklehead" and was not prepared for college.
"I was honest with myself at the time and realized I just wasn't ready for more school," Matthew said. "So when looking at my options, and having a thing for the ballsy move, I went to talk to the Corps. I signed up and off I went."
Kathryn Boyd, now 28, had a similar period of finding her way when she was finished with high school.
"I tried college for a year, it didn't work out," she said. "I then went to beauty school and got certified. But I realized I was bored and needed a change. I wanted to see outside the city limits. So I followed my brother out of a sense of competition. If he was ready to take on the Marine Corps, I was, too. So I joined and shipped out to Parris Island, S.C."
When Matthew hit the Island, he focused on the task of completing the training, grabbing small creature comforts as the times and the spartan conditions permitted. One memory from that period that stood out for him was the Crucible, the test that Marines endure at the end, putting Marines through their paces with the new skills they have obtained as well as their endurance and character. The recruits of San Diego tackle a road march and a mountain called the Reaper. The recruits who make the climb officially can call themselves Marines.
"It was sheer joy at the top of that mountain," said Matthew. "And that orange juice box I had saved for that occasion was the best I ever had in my life."
Kathryn says she was not scared of basic training, as both her brother and her recruiter had given her some tips and inside information that gave her some idea of what to expect. But there was no teacher like experience and being in the middle of it all.
"When I got to Parris Island, the 'shark attack' began (when new recruits are swarmed by drill instructors, shouting at them, giving them rapid fire orders and generally turning the stress way up with the seeming chaos)," she said. "It was very disorienting at first, but compared to most of the girls I was with, I was relatively mature. It was not as shocking to me as it was to most of them. But still, it was a sudden shift and I found myself wondering, 'What the hell did I sign up for?'"
Except for the reception station, Kathryn saw no males during recruit training. Her drill instructors and all the cadre were women, as well as her fellow recruits.
"The one time I saw males during the training cycle was out at the rifle range," she said. "We all shot at the same range and we had gone so long without seeing males it was, 'Look, boys over there.' It was a shock. It made me wonder what they were thinking, seeing the skinny, scraggly short-haired girls looking at them."
Her time on the Island came to an end as she completed her Crucible and she knew at that moment she was a Marine.
"I cried like a baby," she said.
Both Matt and Kathryn then went to do Marine Combat Training, the month-long school non-infantry Marines go to to bolster their infantry skills. For Matthew, he noted that the hazing of recruit training had stopped. The instructors there had one month to teach a battery of combat skills. Matt went to the School of Infantry located at Camp Pendleton, especially taking note of the exercise at the end where they practiced what they had learned in a simulated Middle East village for three days.
Kathryn went through her experience of MCT in the dead of winter, calling it "the most miserable month of my life." Though while there, she did save the life of a fellow Marine who was coming down with pneumonia, but did not want to leave training and face a medical recycle and have to repeat a phase of training.
The next stage for both Marines was to go learn their job skill. Matt's training started in Pensacola, Fla., where he began learning to become a Rotary Wing Avionics Technician. After a training period in an environment he described as "more relaxed" than basic, he had a chance to make some friends he is still in touch with to this day. After this stage, he was off to Camp Pendleton for a bit more schooling and then basically just a walk down the street to report to his unit and his new home for the next few years.
Kathryn remained on the island for learning her trade, administration, at Camp Johnson, but was restless during that eight-week period and was ready to get to her duty station.
Matt was enjoying days of "working on helicopters, playing golf" and marveling at the fact his day job involved "19-year-old kids working on multi-million dollar aviation systems that other dudes were flying."
"I worked on UH-2 Cobras (attack helicopter gunships), so yeah, these were cool," he said.
He noted a sense of satisfaction doing that job, getting the feeling of doing something significant, something that mattered.
When Kathryn arrived and took up her assignment at a duty station nearby, both of them enjoyed the experience that much more.
"We were close to each other in California for three years," Kathryn said. "It was a blessing being near each other. It wasn't lonely."
"It made me feel I wasn't far from home," said Matt.
Matt became a family man while there and Kathryn was there for the birth of his daughter, Harper.
"It was a blessing," Kathryn said.
Matthew summed up the California experience as "family, golf and flying helicopters."
But good things always end and in Matthew's case, he left the service one year early to take care of a critically ill father-in-law who died two years after Matthew left the Corps.
Now, both are out of the Marine Corps and are heading into the next stage of their lives. Both have considered the idea of returning to the Corps. At the time he seriously considered it, only Reserves were available for Matt, which he decided against.
Kathryn still is considering the idea of entering the Active Reserve component of the Marine Corps, being part of the active duty cadre of a Marine Reserve unit.
Matthew, now a long-haired man who has since dabbled in the music scene (described as looking like a roadie for Lynyrd Skynyrd), is raising his daughter. Kathryn enjoys being an aunt and thinks about what the next step is.
But whatever life brings them next, they share the experience and, any Marine will tell you, they will bear for life the title of United States Marine.