Language at the Point of Need — The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center

Abstract

Every morning at 0500, Lance Corporal David Leffler wakes and gets himself ready for physical training. Standing in the dark on a grassy field in the middle of the Presidio of Monterey, he musters with 200 or so other Marines, a routine that is as much a social event as is it is a drill to account for the members of the Marine Detachment. He then endures a series of sprints up and down the steep hills of the Presidio or, more often, Leffler and his fellow Marines will put themselves through the punishing paces of a high-intensity interval training workout. Leffler, who has blond hair with a disposition that is equally friendly and courteous, grew up the suburbs of New York, attended an elite day school before attending Princeton, where he studied Politics and Near Eastern Studies. After completing graduate studies while working as a defense analyst in the Pentagon, he grew tired of feeling detached from his work. He was almost overwhelmed by what he described to me as a ‘slow gnawing’ to do more, so, at the age of 26, when many of his college classmates were already making millions of dollars a year, Leffler enlisted in the Marine Corps, earning a basic, annual salary of about $22,000.¹