Happy Birthday Devil Dogs!!!! Nov 10th

[Steve in PA]

Happy 227th birthday to the United States Marine Corps.....and all my fellow grunts (the only true Marines!!! LOL....I know I'm gonna catch hell for that statement )

United States Marine Corps
0351 Antitank Assaultman
E Co 2/6
Camp LeJeune, NC
1979-1983

[ 11-09-2002, 08:41 PM: Message edited by: Steve in PA ]

[OfcMikey]

I like Marines, they make good pets.

I have a few good friends that are Marines, cause you are always a Marine, no matter what you do after the Corp.

Happy Birthday Devil Dogs.

No, I wasn't one.

[jarhead6073]

Oohh Rah Devil Dogs. On November 10, 1775 Congress resolved that two battalions of Marines be raised, so the first Commandant of the Marine Corps (Samuel Nichols) prodeeded to set up shop in Tun Tavern Philadelphia to begin recruiting. 227 years later we're still here. Not bad for a bunch of ruffians recruited in a bar!

For those of you who are Marines, you may have seen this before but it was passed on to me for the first time a couple days ago. It's long but a good read.

Esprit De Corps

Ask a Marine what's so special about the Marines and the answer would be "esprit de corps", an unhelpful French phrase that means exactly what it looks like - the spirit of the Corps. But what is that spirit, and where does it come from?

The Marine Corps is the only branch of the U.S. armed forces that recruits people specifically to fight. The Army emphasizes personal development (an army of one), the Navy promises fun (let the journey begin), and the Air Force offers security (it's a great way of life). Missing from all of these advertisements is the hard fact that it is a soldier's lot to suffer and perhaps to die for his people, and to take lives at the risk of his own. Even the thematic music of the services reflects this evasion. The Army's Caisson Song describes a pleasant country outing over hill and dale, lacking only a picnic basket. Anchors Aweigh, the Navy's celebration of the joys of sailing, could have been penned by Jimmy Buffet. The Air Force song is a lyric poem of blue skies and engine thrust. All is joyful and invigorating, and safe. There are no landmines in the dales nor snipers behind the hills, no submarines or cruise missiles threaten the ocean jaunt, no bandits are lurking in the wild blue yonder.

The Marines hymn, by contrast, is all combat. We fight our country's battles, first to fight for right and freedom, we have fought in every clime and place where we could take a gun, in many a strife we've fought for life.

The choice is made clear. You may join the Army to go to adventure training, or join the Navy to go to Bangkok, or join the Air Force to go to computer school. You join the Marines to go to war.

But the mere act of signing the enlistment contract confers no status in the Corps. The Army recruit is told from his first minute in uniform that "you're in the Army now, soldier". Navy and Air Force enlistees are sailors or airmen as soon as they get off the bus at the training center. The new arrival at Marine Corps boot camp is called recruit, or private, or worse (much worse), but not Marine. Not yet; maybe not ever. He or she must earn the right to claim the title, and failure returns you to civilian life without hesitation or ceremony.

My recruit platoon, Platoon 2210 at San Diego, California, trained from October through December of 1968. In Vietnam the Marines were taking two hundred casualties a week, and the major rainy season operation, Meade River, had not even begun. Yet our drill instructors had no qualms about winnowing out almost a quarter of their 112 recruits, graduating eighty-one. Note that this was post-enlistment attrition; every one of those who were dropped had been passed by the recruiters as fit for service. But they failed the test of boot camp, not necessarily for physical reasons (at least two were outstanding high-school athletes for whom the calisthenics and running were child's play). The cause of their failure was not in the biceps nor the legs, but in the spirit. They had lacked the will to endure the mental and emotional strain, so they would not be Marines. Heavy commitments and high casualties notwithstanding, the Corps reserves the right to pick and choose.

But the war had touched boot camp in one way. The normal twelve-week course of training was shortened to eight weeks. Deprived of a third of their training time, our drill instructors hurried over, or dropped completely, those classes without direct relevance to Vietnam. Chemical warfare training was abandoned. Swimming classes shrank to a single familiarization session. Even hand-to-hand combat was skimped. Three things only remained inviolate: close order drill, the ultimate discipline builder; marksmanship training, the heart of combat effectiveness; and classes on the history, customs and traditions of the Corps.

History classes in boot camp? Stop a soldier on the street and ask him to name a battle of World War One. Pick a sailor at random to describe the epic fight of the Bon Homme Richard. Everyone has heard of McGuire Air Force Base, so ask any airman who Major Thomas B. McGuire was, and why he is so commemorated. I am not carping, and there is no sneer in this criticism. All of the services have glorious traditions, but no one teaches the young soldier, sailor or airman what his uniform means and why he should be proud to wear it.

But ask a Marine about World War One, and you will hear of the Wheatfield at Belleau Wood and the courage of the Fourth Marine Brigade. Faced with an enemy of superior numbers entrenched in tangled forest undergrowth, the Marines received an order to attack that even the charitable cannot call ill-advised. It was insane. Artillery support was absent and air support hadn't been invented yet, so the Brigade charged German machine guns with only bayonets, grenades and indomitable fighting spirit. A bandy-legged little barrel of a gunnery sergeant, Daniel J. Daly, rallied his company with a shout. "Come on, you sonsa*****es! Do you want to live forever?" He took out three of those machine guns himself, and they would have given him the Medal of Honor except for a technicality. He already had two of them. French liaison officers, hardened though they were by four years of trenchbound slaughter, were shocked as the Marines charged across the open wheatfield under a blazing sun and directly into enemy fire. Their action was so anachronistic on a twentieth-century battlefield that they might as well have been swinging cutlasses. But the enemy was only human; they couldn't stand up to this. So the Marines took Belleau Wood.

Every Marine knows this story, and dozens more. We are taught them in boot camp as a regular part of the curriculum. Every Marine will always be taught them. You can learn to don a gas mask anytime, even on the plane en route to the war zone, but before you can wear the emblem and claim the title you must know of the Marines who made that emblem and title meaningful. So long as you can march and shoot and revere the legacy of the Corps, you can take your place in the line.

And that line is unified in spirit as in purpose. A soldier wears branch of service insignia on his collar, and metal shoulder pins and cloth sleeve patches to identify his unit. Sailors wear a rating badge that identifies what they do for the Navy. Marines wear only the eagle, globe and anchor, together with personal ribbons and their cherished marksmanship badges. There is nothing on a Marine's uniform to indicate what he or she does, nor (except for the 5th and 6th Regiments who wear a French fourragere for Belleau Wood) what unit the Marine belongs to. You cannot tell by looking at a Marine whether you are seeing a truck driver, a computer programmer, or a machine gunner. The Corps explains this as a security measure to conceal the identity and location of units, but the Marines penchant for publicity makes that the least likely of explanations. No, the Marine is amorphous, even anonymous (we finally agreed to wear nametags only in 1997), by conscious design. Every Marine is a rifleman first and foremost, a Marine first, last and always. You may serve a four-year enlistment or even a twenty-year career without seeing action, but if the word is given you'll charge across that Wheatfield. Whether a Marine has been schooled in automated supply, or automotive mechanics, or aviation electronics, is immaterial. Those things are secondary - the Corps does them because it must. The modern battle requires the technical appliances, and since the enemy has them, so do we. But no Marine boasts mastery of them. Our pride is in our marksmanship, our discipline, and our membership in a fraternity of courage and sacrifice.

"For the honor of the fallen, for the glory of the dead", Edgar Guest wrote of Belleau Wood, "the living line of courage kept the faith and moved ahead." They are all gone now, those Marines who made a French farmer's little Wheatfield into one of the most enduring of Marine Corps legends. Many of them did not survive the day, and eight long decades have claimed the rest. But their action has made them immortal. The Corps remembers them and honors what they did, and so they live forever. Dan Daly's shouted challenge takes on its true meaning - if you hide in the trenches you may survive for now, but someday you will die and no one will care. If you charge the guns you may die in the next two minutes, but you will be one of the immortals. All Marines die, in the red flash of battle or the white cold of the nursing home. In the vigor of youth or the infirmity of age all will eventually die, but the Marine Corps lives on. Every Marine who ever lived is living still, in the Marines who claim the title today. It is that sense of belonging to something that will outlive your own mortality that gives people a light to live by and a flame to mark their passing.

Marines call it esprit de corps.

[Mental Ammo]

Semper Fi DevilDawgs!

Former Sgt.

87 - 94
NASNI 88 - 89
K Co 3/1 89-91
MSG Dets: Nassau, Bahamas; Havana, Cuba and Singapore!

I miss it!

Here is a link to the Commandant's Birthday Message: http://www.usmc.mil/comrel/120day.nsf/cmcmessage02

Hope everyone has a happy and safe Birthday!

[ 11-09-2002, 10:22 PM: Message edited by: DeputyDawg ]

[jarhead6073]

quote:

---

Originally posted by DeputyDawg:
[NASNI 88 - 89
K Co 3/1 89-91
MSG Dets: Nassau, Bahamas; Havana, Cuba and Singapore!
[/QB]

---

Jesus! No wonder you miss it! With those sweet duty stations I'd miss it too! Oh wait, I do miss it. I was actualy at NASNI for about 4 months. I got the 5k T-shirt to prove it.

[Bob A]

USMC 1986-1997

I had a lot of fun, busted a lot of caps, and drank a lot of beer. I wouldn't trade my time for anything, but I wouldn't go back for anything either.

Semper Fi Marines.

[ 11-10-2002, 12:41 AM: Message edited by: Bob A ]

[GRACE]

Steve, Steve.....you know you grunts need your beans, bullets, and bandaids even if they are late or if ya never actually get them

Supply Admin and Ops Clerk 1992-1996

3d SRIG, Okinawa, Japan
MCB, Quantico, Va
1st SupBn, Camp Pendleton Ca

Darn, looks like I am the boot of the group

Oh well, Happy 227th Birthday Marines!!!!!

Grace

[dkiefner]

I don't discount the eloquence of Jarhead's speech, but I take exception to the part about knocking the other branches.

I spent a number of years in the Army - Armor and Infantry - and was never addressed as 'Soldier' or even 'Private' in Basic Training. I don't personally like their current "Army of One" campaign, but hey, recruiting is all about advertising and sales.

The combined military is one team, comprised of smaller and smaller teams. One team's job is often dependent upon another's, no matter what uniform they are wearing.

A little interbranch ribbing is traditinal and OK. I'm not even gonna tell my best Corps jokes on account of it is their birthday and all.

That said, Happy 227th to the USMC. I'll expect a card next June 14th; hopefully you'll all figure out how the magazine goes into the keyboard by then.

[jarhead6073]

Grace,

Don't worry, you're not the boot here, I am unless somebody else hasn't posted yet.

1996-2000
6073 Aviation Maintenance Ground Support Electrician
Mals-12 Iwakuni, Japan 97-98
Mals-11 Miramar (San Diego) CA 98-00


BTW, I could never write anything as eloquent as what's posted above, I'm just passing it on. It's not meant as a dig to any other service it's just an inspirational item.

[dkiefner]

>>>BTW, I could never write anything as eloquent as what's posted above, I'm just passing it on. It's not meant as a dig to any other service it's just an inspirational item.<<<

LOL - Q.E.D.

[kateykakes]

As the sister of a very proud Marine, I'd just like to send a birthday wish. Happy birthday, Devil Dogs! Semper Fi.

[jarhead6073]

Ok, I'm a rock. What's Q.E.D. mean?

[dkiefner]

>>>Ok, I'm a rock. What's Q.E.D. mean?<<<

Close enough.

quod erat demostrandum = which was to be demonstrated - usually found after a proof of a mathematical problem.

[Mike Tx]

My wife was Marine.