Homecoming

By any account, Brittney Holley had an amazing year in 2011.

In June, the 18-year-old graduated from Anderson Union High School. In August, she completed 18 months of cosmetology training and successfully passed her state licensing test. And in mid-September, she boarded a plane and flew to Parris Island, S.C., for three months of intense physical and mental training as a U.S. Marine Corps recruit.

Boot camp is what they call the 13 weeks of basic instruction that involves 56 hours of simulated combat physical training.

But it’s more like a factory that turns children into adults. At least, that’s the way Holley’s mother, Amy Hawkins Stone, sees it.

“She was a typical teenager, but she always had this side to her. She has definitely come back a woman,” Stone said as her daughter, resplendent and reserved in her crisp, military uniform, greeted more than 100 well-wishers one recent Sunday morning upon arriving home in Anderson after being gone for 70 days.

Meanwhile, Stone is marveling at the many small changes that add up to the new person her eldest daughter has become.

“This is how I pictured her. Sometimes, people take a more scenic route, but she went straight to being an adult. But looking back now, I can see the Marine in her even as she was a small child,” she said.

Private Holley looks every inch a Marine with her long, blonde hair gathered neatly into a tight sock bun worn squarely at the back of her head.

“It’s an experience that every teenager should go though,” said Pvt. Holley, when asked about boot camp. “I went in expecting the worst and it was 20 times worse!”

Nonetheless, Pvt. Holley came out that experience proudly wearing the eagle, globe and anchor crest on her hat and lapels and sporting a shiny silver sharpshooter’s badge on the front of her uniform jacket.

“Boot camp prepares you to survive in combat,” said Pvt. Holley, one of just 12 young women from her original platoon of 60 to complete boot camp. The others were dropped or washed out for various reasons, although they will be given one chance to redo boot camp at another time.

“We graduated with 43, but it’s because we picked up (women) from previous dropouts,” Pvt. Holley explained.

Making it through Marine boot camp was one of the toughest, yet most rewarding things Pvt. Holley has experienced in her young life, she said.

“I came out believing I can do anything,” Pvt. Holley said with convincing sincerity. “Even when they were breaking us down to get rid of our old, bad habits, I never hated it. I knew exactly what they were doing,” she said.

“She felt like she didn’t have to be torn down. All she needed was to be built back up. Even when she was being torn down, she took it as if they were building her back up,” her mother explained.

Along the way, Pvt. Holley said she received lots of support from her family, her faith in God and her friends.

Pvt. Holley said the amount of family support was “Awesome! I was called at least five times during each mail call. The other girls came to me for support because I was getting so much support from my family.”

The many letters she received from family and friends also helped buoy her spirits whenever she grew discouraged or worried about failing a particular task or test, she said.

And although private time was rare, limited to “less than four hours each Sunday and only a few moments each night” before falling asleep, Pvt. Holley said, she still spent five minutes each evening reading scripture passages and praying with a bunkmate.

“I also attended church each Sunday,” she said.

“I prayed so hard each night until I began to realize that with God’s help I did it before and with God there is always a way though” even the toughest obstacle or physical test, Pvt. Holley said, noting further that “the Marine Corps is so much about spirituality.”

The experience has “inspired me to become a chaplain in the service” once she retires, she said.

“Even going to beauty school for one-and-a-half years mentally prepared me because I was being bossed around constantly there,” Pvt. Holley said with a smile.

Pvt. Holley is enjoying a month of partial reintegration back into civilian life, but she is on constant guard to keep herself mentally sharp and physically fit.

“I’m going to wake up at 4 a.m. each morning and run three miles because I want to see combat. I want to serve my country,” she said, noting that by Jan. 16, she will start 10 months of training, first for combat and second as a military policewoman.

“Female Marines are just as important in combat as males,” Pvt. Holley said to reemphasize her original point.

In the meantime, she is enjoying her month in Anderson by visiting with family and friends, going on a few dates, spending time each morning drinking real coffee, playing her guitar and just possibly … getting a tattoo, much to her mother’s chagrin.

“I told her that if any part of her tattoo shows when she is wearing a wedding dress that I won’t pay for the dress,” Amy Stone said of her daughter’s ill-advised wish.