Young Swanson Braxton IV just recently graduated from the United States Marines Corp Boot Camp, where he says he learned to kill, not drill.

Many will know him from his days as a private in the Bermuda Regiment, as a Police Officer in the Bermuda Police Service, and as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital (KEMH).

His step-father, Major Henry Campbell - who has raised him from childhood - is no stranger to the military either. Now the Commandant of the Bermuda Cadet Corps, he has been a soldier in the Bermuda Regiment for more than 20 years.

The new graduate told The Royal Gazette: "From here I will be going to Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, North Carolina, where I will be doing the school of infantry, for more combat training.

"They will be teaching us war tactics, warfare and fighting and stuff."

After this period of training he will qualify as an MP or Military Police.

"I'll be stationed somewhere in the States and I do get three choices, but as my first I am choosing the East Coast, my second, the West, and overseas as my third option," he said.

Pvt. Braxton is also a former Florida Air Academy student. He has American citizenship through his birth father.

"From the time I was a little boy, I always liked the army and army things," he said.

"And when my dad retired I used to dress up in his army fatigues and run around the house and my neighbourhood. From there, I went to Florida Air Academy, where I learned to fly and I was also pursuing scuba diving.

"But scuba diving took my heart and so I left flight and continued scuba diving."

He then returned to the Island and volunteered for the Bermuda Regiment.

"I did ten months there and left as a Lance Corporal," he said. "I went on one Cadretrip to Camp Blanding, in Florida. From there I left and went to the Bermuda Police Service and I was a rescue diver for them. I was on the operations side, but I was attached to the Marine side for rescue diving."

After three years, he went to King Edward VII Memorial Hospital for an EMT course.

"I was an EMT for about a year," he said.

It was after all of the above that he and his wife, Zawadi, were surfing the web and came across the Marine Corps, where a cousin had gone before him.

"I made a few phone calls, I was looking at it, reading up on it and made a decision to go for it right away," he said.

Comparing Regiment Boot Camp to the Marines version, he said: "In Bermuda they use the Ruger and in the Marine Corps we use the M16A2, which is a smaller calibre rifle."

Asked whether Boot Camps are similar to the ones seen on TV, Pvt. Braxton said: "What you see on TV is a toned down view of what really happens.

"You just have to suck it up really. If you into the Marine Corps thinking that everything is personal, then you are going to have a very hard time. Boot Camp is not the place to say, 'he's yelling at me so I am not going to do what I have to do,' because after Boot Camp you still have your superiors yelling at you no matter what.

"At the end of the day, your job is done and then you can just relax."

He added: "I will never forget Boot Camp.

"The biggest difference between here and overseas is that here they perfect drill, but in the Marine Corps, they perfect us to kill. We train to kill 24/7, here we're drilling all the time and that is one of the things that pushed me away from the Bermuda Regiment.

"I really wasn't into the drilling aspect of being in the military, I love the outdoors, put me in some greens with a gun, put me in the bushes.

"Some of the things that we don't do here is our PT (physical training) sessions, they are dangerous. If you act up as a platoon, even if one person acts up, we have assault courses that are amazingly crazy.

"At the end of Boot Camp there is a thing called the Crucible, which is just insane and it is a 54-hour exercise course, in which you only get about three hours sleep.

"It starts on Thursday and ends Saturday morning. All you do is walk, hike, obstacle courses, assault courses, we're fighting, it's everything. With that we were only given three MRE, in Bermuda we call them ration packs, for the entire time and we had to make sure that we rationed our food for the whole entire time.

"We walked over 60 miles in that whole entire period. We were constantly on our feet. It was cold, rainy, which to them makes for better training, but it is tough."

There is no option to drop out, said Pvt. Braxton.

"The fastest way out of Boot Camp is to graduate," he said. "You can say you quit, you can drop out, but they just send you back to the beginning. So you are going to become a Marine no matter what.

"They will break you until they make you into a Marine. If you continue showing that you don't want to be here, they will lock you up in the brig and you will stay a prisoner until you serve your term.

"So you are either a Marine or you are locked up in a brig, and personally for me that is worst than Boot Camp."

He added: "They don't baby you. For instance, I dislocated my shoulder on an obstacle course, I put it back in place and I finished first.

"But even so, they didn't have any pity on me the next day with a sore shoulder."

The physical aspect of the training was not a bother for him, but he said: "Mentally, they will play with your mind.

"Here they get in your face, but you don't have three or four people all yelling different commands at the same time and you have to answer each one of them and do exactly what each one has said. And you have to pick which one you will do first, and it doesn't matter, because whichever one you choose, you are wrong anyway. I've had enough spit in my face.

"And if you are right, you are wrong and if you're wrong, then you are really, really wrong."

He added that they had to refer to each other and themselves in the third person. The reasoning behind that, he said: "It was to show that we are not individuals, we are one, one team, and that is how we fight — as one."

Pvt. Braxton, who was just married on Valentine's Day, spoke about the young men in Bermuda who are not interested in attending the Bermuda Regiment.

"They don't know what they are dealing with and to me, they haven't grown up yet, their maturity level is too low," he said.

"If they think that is a bit hard, they wouldn't last 24 hours in the Marine Corps. It is not like in Bermuda, where you can desert, you can hide for a while, and the MPs here may not touch you because you are on the street with them.

"But in the Marine Corps, one of the laws in place is that you can get put to death for desertion. If you go beyond 90 days and if you have served a dishonourable term, then you can be sentenced to death.

"The Marine Corps is strict, but at the same time, they take care of you."

Asked if he had planned to specialise in any particular area, he said: "When I get back I will be promoted to Private First Class and my next promotion will be Lance Corporal, from Lance Corporal, I'm taking up a MESAP programme, which is an officers' programme.

"That is the career path that I want to take. They will put me through school to get my degree and after my four years, I will do officer's school, which is six months.

"After successful completion of that, I'll be promoted to Second Lieutenant."

Asked how difficult it was to go from the Bermuda Regiment to the Marine Corps, he explained: "It wasn't very difficult for me, because I had it pretty much instilled in me from watching my daddy (Major Henry Campbell) when I was a little boy."

Also his mother, Juanita Campbell, was a Police officer, whose mantra was: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."