By Janet Reitman for New York Times Magazine, July 6

Recruits at Parris Island have been subjected to severe hazing, far beyond that experienced in other U.S. military boot camps. Is this really the only way to create a warrior?

[....]  ‘‘It’s going to be good, Mom,’’ he told her, before saying goodbye on March 6. ‘‘Don’t worry. I’m ready.’’

That call was the last time she heard her son’s voice.

Raheel Siddiqui was born and raised about 20 miles southwest of Detroit, in the vast suburban-industrial wasteland known as Downriver. There are three military recruiting stations in the area, once a hub of auto manufacturing which is now, like much of the Rust Belt, a region of Best Buys, Taco Bells and Walmarts. Taylor, a city of some 61,000 people, is both the largest and one of the poorest of the Downriver communities: a pocket of mostly white and African-American residents, nearly a quarter of whom live below the poverty line.

Raheel was raised in public housing and spent his high school years intent on escaping his shabby hometown. ‘‘He always wanted challenges,’’ says Jerry Abraham, a former guidance counselor at Truman High whom Raheel frequently enlisted to help him find the hardest classes. In pursuit of a perfect G.P.A., Raheel had virtually no social life, though he had a naïve optimism unusual for a teenager. ‘‘He saw the world as nothing but a wonderful place,’’ says Karey Lee, Raheel’s supervisor at a nearby Home Depot, where he worked part time on the customer-service desk. ‘‘I don’t think he knew that hatefulness existed, to be honest.’’

Military recruiters were fixtures at Truman High [.....]