[pct-l] USMC Birthday & Veterans Day

[Jim and/or Ginny Owen]

Jerry Goller wrote:

>232 years of walkin' talkin' hell, death, and destruction
>
>The meanest fighting force the world has ever seen
>
>Mountain tall, guerrilla tough, United States Marine.
>
>I'd go on with the rest of it but I suspect it's a
>bit....ah.....inappropriate for this forum.......   ;o)
>


In 1962 the Marine Corps stopped teaching unarmed combat to new recruits.  
They found that in combat, the newbies would try to close with the enemy and 
take them apart with their bare hands rather than just shoot them and be 
done with it.  The attitude was bad for the casualty rate - and kept the 
Navy medics too busy.

In any case, the article that follows is a very short history lesson. I 
think it's appropriate to remember just what it is that keeps this country 
free so that those who choose to do so can hike the long trails.

Walk softly,
Jim

>March 11, 2004
>
Return of the Marines: All-American warriors in Iraq
by W. Thomas Smith Jr.

Beginning this month, leathernecks from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force 
will return to Iraq, replacing elements of the Army's 82nd Airborne 
Division. The return of the Marines is surely bad news for those desperate 
to undermine the liberation of Iraq.

Not to take anything away from the U.S. Army — its soldiers have performed 
magnificently, and will no doubt continue to do so — but America's enemies 
have a particular fear of U.S. Marines.

During the first Gulf War in 1991, over 100,000 Iraqi soldiers were deployed 
along the Iraqi-Kuwaiti coastline in anticipation of a landing by some 
17,000 U.S. Marines. Terrified by what they had been taught about the combat 
prowess of Marines, the Iraqi soldiers had nicknamed them "Angels of Death." 
The moniker — first published by Pulitzer-winner Rick Atkinson in his 
best-selling Crusade — carried over into the second Gulf war, last year, as 
the 1st Marine Division swept across the Iraqi plains. Attacking American 
forces were unsettling enough, but reports of the seaborne "Angels of Death" 
being among the lead elements were paralyzing to many Iraqi combatants.

Despite less armor than other American ground forces, the Marines were among 
the first to fight their way into Baghdad. And when intelligence indicated 
that foreign troops were coming to the aid of Iraqi diehards, Marine Brig. 
Gen. John Kelly stated, "we want all Jihad fighters to come here. That way 
we can kill them all before they get bus tickets to New York City."

Typical Marine bravado, some say. But it works.

Best-selling author Tom Clancy once wrote, "Marines are mystical. They have 
magic." It is this same magic, Clancy added, that "may well frighten 
potential opponents more than the actual violence Marines can generate in 
combat."

Fear of Marines is not a new phenomenon, nor is it unique to Iraqi soldiers.

Established in 1775, the U.S. Marine Corps came of age in World War I during 
the 1918 Chateau Thierry campaign near the French village of Bouresches. 
There, Marines assaulted a line of German machine-gun nests on an old 
hunting preserve known as Belleau Wood. The fighting was terrible. Those 
Marines who weren't cut down by the enemy guns captured the nests in a 
grisly close-quarters slugfest. The shocked Germans nicknamed their foes, 
teufelhunden (devil dogs).

"Marines are considered a sort of elite Corps designed to go into action 
outside the United States," read a German intelligence report following the 
battle. "They consider their membership in the Marine Corps to be something 
of an honor. They proudly resent any attempts to place their regiments on a 
par with other infantry regiments."

Twenty-four years later as the 1st Marine Division was steaming toward 
Guadalcanal, a Japanese radio propagandist taunted that which the Japanese 
soldiers feared most. "Where are the famous United States Marines hiding?" 
the announcer asked. "The Marines are supposed to be the finest soldiers in 
the world, but no one has seen them yet?"

Over the next three years, Marines would further their reputation at places 
with names like Tarawa, Saipan, and Iwo Jima.

That reputation carried over into the Korean War.

"Panic sweeps my men when they are facing the American Marines," confessed a 
captured North Korean major. It was a fear echoed by his Chinese allies. In 
late 1950, Chinese premier Mao Tse Tung put out a contract on the 1st Marine 
Division. The Marine division, according to Mao in written orders to the 
commander of the Chinese 9th Army Group, "has the highest combat 
effectiveness in the American armed forces. It seems not enough for our four 
divisions to surround and annihilate its two regiments. You should have one 
or two more divisions as a reserve force."

Though costly for both sides, the subsequent Chinese trap failed to destroy 
the 1st Marine Division.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Frank Lowe later admitted, "The safest place in Korea 
was right behind a platoon of Marines. Lord, how they could fight!"

Over a decade later, Marines were the first major ground combat force in 
Vietnam. Army Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who commanded all American 
military forces in that country, conservatively stated he "admired the élan 
of Marines." But despite the admiration, some Army leaders found their 
equally proficient units wanting for similar respect.

In 1982, during the invasion of Grenada, Army General John Vessey, then 
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, telephoned one of his officers and 
demanded to know why there were "two companies of Marines running all over 
the island and thousands of Army troops doing nothing. What the hell is 
going on?"

The reputation of Marines stems from a variety of factors: The Marine Corps 
is the smallest, most unique branch of the U.S. armed forces. Though it is 
organized as a separate armed service, it is officially a Naval 
infantry/combined-arms force overseen by the secretary of the Navy. The 
Corps' philosophical approach to training and combat differs from other 
branches. Marine boot camp — more of a rite-of-passage than a training 
program — is the longest and toughest recruit indoctrination program of any 
of the military services. Men and women train separately. All Marines from 
private to Commandant are considered to be first-and-foremost riflemen. And 
special-operations units in the Marines are not accorded the same respect as 
they are in other branches. The Marines view special operations as simply 
another realm of warfighting. Marines are Marines, and no individual Marine 
or Marine unit is considered more elite than the other.

Consequently, newly minted Marines believe themselves to be superior to 
other soldiers, spawning understandable resentment from other branches.

But do Marines actually fight better than other soldiers? Rivals argue it's 
not so much their ability to fight — though that's never been a question — 
but that Marines are simply masters in the art of public relations. 
President Harry Truman once stated that Marines "have a propaganda machine 
that is almost equal to Stalin's." Fact is, while other armed services have 
lured recruits with promises of money for college, "a great way of life," or 
"being all you can be;" the Marines have asked only "for a few good men [and 
today, women]" with the mettle to join their ranks.

Not surprisingly, there have been numerous unsuccessful efforts — primarily 
on the part of some Army and Navy officers — to have the Corps either 
disbanded or absorbed into the Army or Navy. Most of those efforts took 
place in the first half of the 20th Century. But even after the Marines' 
stellar performance in World War II, Army General Frank Armstrong proposed 
bringing them into the Army fold and condescendingly referring to the Corps 
as "a small bitched-up army talking Navy lingo."

As late as 1997, Assistant Secretary of the Army Sara Lister took aim at the 
Marines. "I think the Army is much more connected to society than the 
Marines are." Lister said before an audience at Harvard University. "Marines 
are extremists. Wherever you have extremists, you've got some risks of total 
disconnection with society. And that's a little dangerous."

Of course, the Commandant of the Marine Corps demanded an apology. Lister 
was fired. And Marines secretly said among themselves, "Yes we are 
extremists. We are dangerous. That's why we win wars and are feared 
throughout the world."

Despite its detractors, the Marines have become a wholly American 
institution — like baseball players, cowboys, and astronauts — in the eyes 
of most Americans. Marines indeed may be extreme, but America loves them, 
extremism and all. And fortunately for America, her enemies in the war 
against terror will continue to shudder upon hearing, "the Marines have 
landed."

— A former U.S. Marine infantry leader and paratrooper, W. Thomas Smith Jr. 
is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in a variety of national 
and international publications. His third book, Alpha Bravo Delta Guide to 
American Airborne Forces, has just been published.
>


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