What Is a Code Red in the Marine Corps?
In the 1992 movie "A Few Good Men, " young Navy lawyer Tom Cruise confronts crusty Marine Col. Jack Nicholson, who is a key witness in the court martial of two enlisted men charged with murder. Cruise, his face red, demands to know: "Did you order the Code Red?" Nicholson's response, the movie's dénouement, also poses a troubling question: do Marines, in fact, have a Code Red? And, if so, what is it? Can we handle the truth?
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History
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Aaron Sorkin was a struggling actor and writer in 1988 when older sister Deborah, a Navy lawyer, was assigned to defend Marines accused of assaulting a fellow Marine in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Out of that, Sorkin, a moonlighting bartender, conceived "A Few Good Men," which went from scribbled notes on cocktail napkins to opening in 1989 as a Broadway play and three years later as a movie. In it, Cruise and Nicholson memorably cross swords over a supposed Code Red at Marine Rifle Company Windward, guardians of Gitmo's fenceline.
Identification
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As described in the movie's script, also written by Sorkin, Code Red was an unofficial, unsanctioned form of Marine Corps disciplinary action. It was punishment administered by members of a unit against one of their own, often a misfit, someone deemed to be out of step or not sufficiently squared away to meet the corps' exacting standards. In the case of the movie, the discipline proves deadly.
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It's Real, But . . .
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Sorkin, who would go on to create "The West Wing" television series, has been quoted as saying his sister was sent to Guantanamo to investigate a Code Red. And Code Reds exist, of course, far beyond the vocabulary of the Sorkin siblings. In hospitals, Code Red serves as an alarm, most often alerting the staff to burn cases or actual fire. In the tech realm's more-sinister sanctums, it identifies a computer worm unleashed in 2001. And in the Marine Corps, it's invoked as a last resort. But is it the same Code Red seen in the movie?
Contradictions
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For its part, the Marine Corps, like the top brass in the movie, dismisses the notion of a do-it-yourself discipline called Code Red, saying it's neither permitted nor practiced. Privately, some Marines insist it does go on, just as generations of GIs and Marines alike can swear that harsh blanket party rituals took place long before and after the movie "Full Metal Jacket" put them on full cinematic display in 1987.
The Truth
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In the real world, the Marine Corps openly embraces something called Code Red. While not widely known, it's also not something hidden "deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties." It's just part of the lexicon at the sprawling Marine Corps Base Quantico near Washington, D.C. While rain, sleet and gloom of night are not permitted to stay postmen from their appointed rounds, when Quantico's weather gets too tough, the base commander can always order a Code Red. That does not unleash improvised furies on a laggard Leatherneck but instead signals a halt to normal operations. As the final alert in an escalating series of weather-related warnings, it follows codes Green, Yellow and Blue. A Code Red, issued to local radio and television broadcasters, declares the base closed and lets nonessential personnel know they do not have to report for work.
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References
- Photo Credit Columbia Pictures
