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Updated: 8 February 2010
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Kilo 4/13,
C2, Battery Sign 1968
Note the holes in the sign from shrapnel and other flying objects.
Provided by : ulitmaterack.ajandj.com
These Medals and Ribbons represent all
awards that Kilo 4/13 has
Received since it was commissioned.
"Franklin Deleno Roosevelt"
“In selecting men
for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or
denomination of the candidate—look to his character.” —Noah
Webster
This Date In Marine History
Looking For Real Unclassified Documents From The Vietnam
War?
" To observe a Marine is inspirational,
to be a Marine is exceptional."
Gunnery Sergeant Charles Wolf
Lest we forget ......
~ THE CORPS ~
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 (it’s a great way of
life).
Missing from all the advertisements is the hard fact that a soldier's life 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, and invigorating, and safe. There are no land mines 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 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 "you're in the
Army now, soldier". The 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 a recruit, or worse (a lot
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 and Operation Meade River had not even begun,
yet Drill Instructors had no qualms about winnowing out almost a quarter of
their 112 recruits, graduating 81. Note that this was post-enlistment
attrition. Every one of those 31 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 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 and ask for a description
of the epic fight of the Bon Homme Richard. Ask an airman who Major Thomas
McGuire was and what is named after him. 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 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 comprised of the
Fifth and Sixth Marines. 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. Even so the Brigade charged
German machine guns with only bayonets, grenades, and an 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.
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 so
anachronistic on the twentieth-century field of battle that they might as well
have been swinging cutlasses. But the enemy was only human. The Boche could
not stand up to the onslaught. So the Marines took Belleau Wood. The Germans,
those that survived, thereafter referred to the Marines as "Tuefel Hunden"
(Devil Dogs) and the French in tribute renamed the woods "Bois de la Brigade de
Marine"
(Woods of the Brigade of Marines).
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 and Anchor and claim the title
United States Marine you must first know about 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 line. And that line is as unified in
spirit as in purpose.
A soldier wears branch service insignia on his collar, metal shoulder pins and
cloth sleeve patches to identify his unit, and far too many look like they
belong in a band.
Sailors wear a rating badge that identifies what they do for the Navy.
Airmen have all kinds of badges and get medals for finishing schools and
showing up for work.
Marines wear only the Eagle, Globe and Anchor together with personal ribbons
and their CHERISHED marksmanship badges. They know why the uniforms are the
colors they are and what each color means. 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 or a cook or a baker. The Marine is
amorphous, even anonymous, by conscious design.
The Marine is a Marine. 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
or automotive mechanics or aviation electronics or whatever 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 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 may 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 either 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 our own mortality,
which gives people a light to live by, and a flame to mark their passing ......
Semper Fi
