This Green River High School graduate didn’t know what she wanted to do after school, but she did know what she didn’t want to do.
“I didn’t want to do what everyone else does and go right off to college,” Jennie Kordus said.
Knowing this, she started figuring out and researching her options, which led her to the United States Marine Corps. In 2013, she graduated from GRHS and in August of that same year she became a Marine.
“I joined to do something different,” she said. “Joining the military gave me a lot more options to do things you would never be able to do living a civilian life.”
Not all of her family was excited about her decision. Her dad liked the idea, but her mom was not ready to let her daughter go.
“My mom, she wasn’t to pleased when I told her I was going to join the Marines,” Kordus said. “At graduation for recruit training, she started to cry and when I asked what was wrong all she could say was ‘It’s not every day that you lose your little girl.”’
After a year in the Marines, Kordus’ mom has adjusted.
“She is proud of where I am now, but I know she is still afraid for me,” Kordus said.
At times, Kordus didn’t know if she had made the right decision.
“I didn’t really know. It just seemed like something that would be good for me to do at the time,” she said.
After recruit training, Kordus went to Camp Geiger in North Carolina for Infantry Training Battalion.
“I was part of a study involving females integrating into infantry,” she said.
Kordus was one of 26 females in her platoon.
By the end of the training, she was one of seven in her platoon to join 24 other women who made it through infantry training and received an 0311 infantry military occupation.
After graduating from Infantry Training Battalion, she was sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., to learn how to be a military police officer. There are two kinds of MP’s: field MP and PMO, Kordus said. PMO is like any other police officer, but on a military instillation, she explained. Kordus graduated as an MP and is stationed in Quantico, Va., for the next four years.
“So far, infantry training has been my favorite position,” she said. “In 2016, if infantry is opened to females, I plan to move into an infantry position of an 0331 machine gunner.”
“I am currently an MP serving in a special unit,” Kordus said. “For security purposes I cannot say much on my job or what I do.”
Kordus is not sure whether or not she will re-enlist after her total of five years is up.
“From here, I will serve an honorable term and when I do get out of the Marine Corps I plan to hopefully do something in the medical field,” she said.
No matter what Kordus does, she wants to do her best and be successful at it.
“My biggest fear is failure,” she said.
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