Seapuppy
06-21-2005, 06:52 PM
over the yrs I've gotten alot of stuff on the military....but this one is really well written..it's rather long but a good read.......so for you Jarheads (aka marines).....this one is for you!!! :argh
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), the Air Force offers security
(its a great way of life).
Missing from all the advertisements is the hard fact that a soldier's
lot is to suffer and perhaps to die for his people, and take lives at
the risk of his/her 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, invigorating, and safe.
There are no land mines in thedales 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 have
fought for life and never lost our nerve.
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 Marine Corps 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 "your
in the Army now", soldier. The Navy and Air Force enlistees are
sailors or airmen as soon as they get off bus at the taining center.
The new arrival at Marine Corps boot camp is called a recruit, or
worse, but never a MARINE. Not yet, maybe never. He or she must earn
the right to claim the title of UNITED STATES MARINE, and failure
returns you to civilian life without hesitation or ceremony.
Recruit Platoon 2210 at San Diego, California trained from October
through December of 1968. In Viet Nam the Marines were taking two
hundred casualties a week, and the major rainy season operation Meade
River, had not even begun. Yet 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, and not necessarily for
physical reasons; at leasttwo 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 not withstanding, the Corps
reserves the right to pick and choose.
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 Thomes 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 wha his uniform means and why he should be
proud of it.
But ask a Marine about World War One, and you will hear of the wheat
field at Belleau Wood and the courage of the Fourth Marine Brigade,
fifth and sixth regiments.
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 had not yet been invented, 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 sons a bitches, do you want to live forever"?
He took out three machine guns himself, and they would give 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
trench bound slaughter, were shocked as the Marines charged across the
open wheat field under a blazing sun directly into the teeth of enemy
fire. Their action was anachronistic on the twentieth-century
battlefield; so much so that they might as well have been swinging
cutlasses. But the enemy was only human; they could not stand up to
this. So the Marines took Belleau Wood. The Germans called them "Dogs
from the Devil."
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 in route to the war zone, but before you can wear the
Eagle Globe &Anchor and claim the title you must know about the
Marines who made that emblem and ttle meaningful. So long as you can
march and shoot and revere the legacy of the Corps, you can take your
place in line. And that line is unified spirit as in purpose.
A soldier wears branch of service insignia on his collar, 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 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 f explanations. No, the Marine is amorphous,
even anonymous, 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 plus
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, automotive mechanics, or aviation electronics, is
immaterial. Those things are secondary - the Corps does them because
it must. The modern battlefield 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 actions are 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 lie 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; some in the red flash of battle, some in 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 Marnes who claim the
title today. It is that sense of belonging to something that will
outlive your own mortality, which gives people a light to live by and
a flame to mark their passing.
OOORAH!!! :argh arr
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), the Air Force offers security
(its a great way of life).
Missing from all the advertisements is the hard fact that a soldier's
lot is to suffer and perhaps to die for his people, and take lives at
the risk of his/her 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, invigorating, and safe.
There are no land mines in thedales 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 have
fought for life and never lost our nerve.
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 Marine Corps 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 "your
in the Army now", soldier. The Navy and Air Force enlistees are
sailors or airmen as soon as they get off bus at the taining center.
The new arrival at Marine Corps boot camp is called a recruit, or
worse, but never a MARINE. Not yet, maybe never. He or she must earn
the right to claim the title of UNITED STATES MARINE, and failure
returns you to civilian life without hesitation or ceremony.
Recruit Platoon 2210 at San Diego, California trained from October
through December of 1968. In Viet Nam the Marines were taking two
hundred casualties a week, and the major rainy season operation Meade
River, had not even begun. Yet 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, and not necessarily for
physical reasons; at leasttwo 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 not withstanding, the Corps
reserves the right to pick and choose.
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 Thomes 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 wha his uniform means and why he should be
proud of it.
But ask a Marine about World War One, and you will hear of the wheat
field at Belleau Wood and the courage of the Fourth Marine Brigade,
fifth and sixth regiments.
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 had not yet been invented, 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 sons a bitches, do you want to live forever"?
He took out three machine guns himself, and they would give 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
trench bound slaughter, were shocked as the Marines charged across the
open wheat field under a blazing sun directly into the teeth of enemy
fire. Their action was anachronistic on the twentieth-century
battlefield; so much so that they might as well have been swinging
cutlasses. But the enemy was only human; they could not stand up to
this. So the Marines took Belleau Wood. The Germans called them "Dogs
from the Devil."
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 in route to the war zone, but before you can wear the
Eagle Globe &Anchor and claim the title you must know about the
Marines who made that emblem and ttle meaningful. So long as you can
march and shoot and revere the legacy of the Corps, you can take your
place in line. And that line is unified spirit as in purpose.
A soldier wears branch of service insignia on his collar, 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 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 f explanations. No, the Marine is amorphous,
even anonymous, 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 plus
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, automotive mechanics, or aviation electronics, is
immaterial. Those things are secondary - the Corps does them because
it must. The modern battlefield 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 actions are 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 lie 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; some in the red flash of battle, some in 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 Marnes who claim the
title today. It is that sense of belonging to something that will
outlive your own mortality, which gives people a light to live by and
a flame to mark their passing.
OOORAH!!! :argh arr