The Marines' Top General Talks About A Changing Corps

So why did Bob Neller join the Marines?

"I needed a job," says the top Marine officer, nonchalantly.

He went to Officer Candidate School the summer before his senior year at the University of Virginia, with the intention of then going to law school.

"The law school thing didn't work out," he recalls, "and I wanted to get married and my parents were getting divorced and I didn't have any money. And the Marine Corps said, 'Hey come do this for two-and-a-half years.' And I said, 'Sure.' "

It stretched to 44 years.

"Stuff happens," says Neller, who could be a poster boy for the Corps, with his bulldog scowl and compact frame. We sit in the Pentagon's Marine dining room, decorated with glass cases full of swords, epaulettes and the occasional medal.

For the past four years Neller has been the Marine Corps commandant, the officer charged with equipping, training and maintaining a ready service, as well as being a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He'll step down this fall after a career that took him from Somalia and Panama to Belgium, Iraq and finally to the Pentagon.