Great Song.........
H/T Marc
also: USMC Band At Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Video: Marine Corps Birthday 2010
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2 comments:
I've hit the big time! Thanks Theo! Visit my blog for my vids from previous years.
About that "... Marine Corps for another 500 years..." thing.
By the outbreak of the Korean War, the USMC was reduced to 2 understrength regiments (2 battalions of 2 rifle companies each. One on the west coast, the other on the east coast.) Those two companies and the one remaining squadron of USMC air was what was scraped together to form the Fire Brigade.
The USMC had been disallowd a reserve. The Corps created a "summer reserve" of young hopefuls instead. Summer reserves received no organized training. They were just young men waiting for the rare enlistment slot to open up.
The remainder of the division and wing sent to Korea was made up by scrapping every possible man from every possible detachment. Most were not infantry by training. There was also a call up of men who'd left the Corps at the end of WW2. These men had to pay their own way to Camp Pendleton to be assigned to a unit.
The summer reserve made up between 12% to 20% of the force, depending on which unit. These men had no training other than a day or two on the rifle range and then whatever lectures could be given on the ship over to the war. Summer reserves had not even been to Boot Camp.
The Corps was so desperate for bodies that the brigs were cleared out of all non felony convictions to fill the gaps.
All this was going on while regimental, squadron, wing and division HQs had to be created and staffed. MacArthur's idiot idea for an amphib landing at the single worst place on the west coast of Korea also had to be planned simultaneously. Mac had no one on his staff that could do the planning, or even had a basic grasp of what was required, including Mac himself.
For a senior general that was "involved" with so much amphib work in the south Pacific during WW2, Mac was egregiously clueless on the concept. His only skill was to point to a place on the map and say "land there".
Sources:
First to Fight by General Victor H. Krulak.
Last Stand of Fox Company by Drury and Clavin.
The jackasses in the "senior services" have always had a hard on for USMC resources and there's a long long long history of the US Army and USN trying to do away with the Corps.
Bastards.
Semper Fi.
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