The Real Story

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 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.

Passed on to a Marine from another Marine!