Earning the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor: One Man’s Journey Through Marine Boot Camp
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Tom Morton always felt called to serve, but the path there was anything but straight. After trying college twice and walking away both times, he made a decision that put him on a bus to Parris Island and onto the yellow footprints of Marine Corps boot camp.
Our American Stories listener Tom Morton takes us inside the physical and mental grind of Marine training, from relentless discipline and sleep deprivation to the final crucible that strips recruits down and rebuilds them as something new. What begins as a search for purpose becomes a hard-earned transformation, culminating in the moment he received the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor and learned it wasn't just a piece of metal, but a way of life.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:14.2 | And we return to our American stories. |
| 0:16.9 | And as you know, we tell stories about everything on this show. |
| 0:19.9 | And up next, a story suggested to us by a listener. |
| 0:24.2 | In 2009, Tom Morton decided to join the Marine Corps. |
| 0:28.6 | But it wasn't a cakewalk to get onto the yellow footprints at Paris Island. |
| 0:34.2 | Here's Tom with his story of joining the Marines. |
| 0:41.7 | So I was born and raised in Nashville, |
| 0:48.5 | Tennessee, you know, kind of a middle class upbringing, like in the suburbs and stuff. |
| 0:56.4 | Overall, fairly normal childhood. My parents split up and got a divorce when I was 13. It was hard initially, |
| 1:02.7 | but eventually it was something that I came to really respect and treasure because I learned a ton from my stepdad. And like my father is a more, he's always been a businessman, you know, like he |
| 1:09.8 | kind of followed the smarter path, the more stable path. |
| 1:14.6 | And that was kind of what his father pushed on him. |
| 1:18.0 | And my stepdad didn't really have a lot of family by the time he was an adult. |
| 1:24.4 | So he ended up getting drafted into Vietnam and kind of was forced into service. |
| 1:29.1 | But the way that he handled it and the way that he looked at it, it always kind of made it seem |
| 1:33.1 | not necessarily something glorious, but something honorable. |
| 1:42.7 | The way that my stepfather, Gary, is about handling trauma and stuff, like he, he looks at everything as kind of like, well, that was terrible, but I learned this from it and I'm moving forward. |
| 1:55.9 | And I think that was kind of what made me realize that, like, even if the military was going to give me things that were horrible to experience, like it was something that I could learn from and grow from if I took the right path with it. |
| 2:11.1 | And, you know, I think even as a little kid, I was always fascinated by the military. |
| 2:16.9 | But, you know, after I think after I got to know my stepfather and kind of had somebody that was honest and open with me about you know the bad times not just what you see in war movies and stuff it made me respect it more even knowing that it wasn wasn't as positive as it was portrayed. |
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