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!

Carl E. Alridge Jr

SSgt, USMCR

Medical Staff Coordinator (OOB)

V.A. Medical Center