Court-Martial at Parris Island: The Ribbon Creek Incident

Court-Martial at Parris Island: The Ribbon Creek Incident. By John C. Stevens, III. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1999. ISBN 1-55750-8143. Maps. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 184. $27.95.

Government leaders and the public have never been confronted with harder questions about U.S. Marine Corps training methods than in the aftermath of the 1956 Ribbon Creek incident in which six recruits drowned at Parris Island. John C. Stevens, III, who went through boot camp a year later, returns to the scene of that formative experience to reexamine events surrounding the recruit deaths and the subsequent court-martial of Matthew C. McKeon, the drill instructor who took his platoon into Ribbon Creek on a Sunday night punishment march in an effort to tighten discipline.