Marines Archives

Strap a 40 pound PRC-41
To the pack frame
Four smoke grenades
Don't forget the extra handset
Stand up
Grrrrr
You're not done
Need to eat, add ten pounds of C-s
Drink too, hook three quart canteens
A six pound load to the belt
A two pound M1911A1 .45
Ammo mags and medical pouch too
Stand up
Grrrr
You're not done
782 gear, e-tool, poncho and pack
To hold socks, skivvies and utilities
Pens and message pads
Some pogey bait too
15 more pounds on the frame
Stand up
Grrrrr
You're not done
Put on flak jacket
Top off with helmet and liner
Yet another 12 pounds
Strap on the pack board
Stand up
Walk
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Now you have an idea where "grunts" come from.

On Dec. 6, 1950, the 5th and 7th Marine regiments started their famed advance to the rear (Marines never retreat) from Chosin Reservoir in northeast Korea near the Chinese border to Hungnam, South Korea. They carried their dead and wounded in temperatures that hovered around 35 degrees below zero. The feat is celebrated in the Corps to this day, but it's an otherwise little known event in a widely ignored war.

Last week, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James T. Conway dedicated a monument at Camp Pendleton in California to the Chosin Reservoir campaign, in which the Marines faced more than 100,000 Chinese troops and took more than 4,000 casualties.

Conway said while "Korea is often a forgotten war that many consider a police action, . . . we in the Marine Corps don't see it that way. We see it as a tremendous bright spot in our legacy."

If you want to learn more about this bit of Marine legacy, check out "The Chosin Few" documentary, which started to hit the movie theaters last week. It's directed by Brian Iglesias, a Marine Iraq combat veteran.

Semper Fidelis.

A Navy buddy of mine working on the Pakistan relief operation mused in an e-mail on Monday that for some odd reason Paris Hilton and her arrest for alleged cocaine possession received more media play over the past weekend than the fact that "we rescued thousands of people."

So, for those of you tired of Hilton coverage, here's an update on the Defense Department operations in Pakistan as that country struggles with one of the worst disasters in history.

On Monday, Marine and Navy helicopters rescued 625 people and flew in 114,000 pounds of supplies. Afghanistan-based Air Force C-130s delivered about 55,000 pounds of goods.

Since late July, Army, Navy and Marine helicopter crews have rescued 9,433 people and flown in 1.7 million pounds of goods, and Air Force C-130s have delivered 985,000 pounds of supplies since operations began.

The Pentagon has dispatched an additional 18 Army helicopters from the 1st Battalion, 52nd Aviation Regiment, 16th Combat Aviation Brigade, based at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, for the flood relief mission. They're expected to arrive in mid-September.

The Navy is operating the USS Peleliu amphibious ready group, home to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, off the Pakistan coast and dispatched the USS Kearsarge and the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Norfolk, Va., to the same waters on Aug. 27.

All this is in addition to the Defense Department's primary day jobs in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It's good to get some perspective on what counts and what does not.

Navy Chief Information Officer Rob Carey approved an electronic signature policy for the Navy and Marine Corps on Aug. 27 in a move designed to save paper, improve security and save money.

Carey said the policy is not a mandate to replace hand-written signatures but rather a policy to adopt electronic signatures as the preferred means of conducting business transactions within the Navy and Marine Corps.

Electronic signatures will be certified by using the Common Access Card issued to all military personnel and qualified contractors, he said.

Ironic side note: Cary signed his new electronic signature policy with his old-fashioned hand-written signature.

My colleague Megan Scully from CongressDaily reported on Wednesday that Navy Undersecretary Robert Work has kicked off a study on the post-Afghanistan future of the Marine Corps, with an emphasis on a return to the traditional "from the sea" mission.

The study includes a serious look at all the heavy armor the Corps has acquired during the past nine years of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq such as MRAPs.

I suggest the examination should take a realistic look at developing the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), an advanced version of the Marine's venerable amtrac intended to operate as a boat and an armored vehicle.

The EFV, designed to speedily transport troops from Navy ships as far as 25 miles offshore, has been under development since 1988 and costs have increased to the point that each has a price tag just shy of $19 million, according to a Government Accountability Office report released in July.

I know the Marines really love -- and want -- the EFV. But I think the Corps can find a cheaper way to do the job than relying on a program that will spend $1.8 billion to buy 96 vehicles.

The Defense Department is warning "patriotic women" to be aware of individuals posing as members of the military on dating sites who are running scams. In a press release issued on Thursday, the department related a story of a woman named Shelley who "was thrilled to meet a handsome Marine on a dating website she frequented." Making a long story short, the guy, presumably not a Marine, tried to swindle her out of some money with a sob story.

The scam, Defense said, is similar to the Nigerian e-mail ruse, in which a person receives a message from someone in the West African nation who is in financial trouble and needs to unload some money.

All this is certainly disturbing, and the public should be warned. But what's odd about the press release is how it links love with patriotism, as if that drives the attraction. We learn Shelley "was deeply patriotic and had a great admiration for service members." Later, Defense tells us, "These cyber criminals, posing as military members, prey on patriotic women seeking love online, . . . ." And again, Paul Sternal, the acting cyber crimes program director for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, says: "It's not a bad thing to be patriotic, but people are trying to distort that for personal gain."

Bob Brewin will return to What's Brewin' July 20.

The warfighting philosophy of Marine Gen. James Mattis, nominated to replace Gen. David Petraeus as the next commander of U.S. Central Command, is to break down units into very small groups that have lots of autonomy that allows them to act very quickly. Greg Grant, who covered Defense issues for Government Executive and now works for Defense Technology, writes that under such a "decentralized battlefield . . . quality becomes much more important than quantity."

Smaller independent units will rely more on social, or what in the past has been referred to (sometimes condescendingly) as soft, skills. From Grant's piece:

As the large footprint counterinsurgency approach is fast falling out of favor, eliminating scattered insurgent networks will require small, discrete units. "It's going to be more important what individuals bring to the battlefield than their numbers," Mattis said.

The "advise and assist" capability of ground forces will be key, requiring that regular forces achieve a "seamless" integration with special operations forces. Those small teams, he said, must partner with foreign militaries, live and work among the local people, and operate with a minimal logistics footprint.

"These wars will be fought among the people... we're going to have to deal on human levels with human beings and not think that technology or tactics by targetry will solve war," he said.

What does this mean for technology? It's hard to say. You can see the references to technology with the words "networks," "seamless," and "partner," which typically means information sharing. But Mattis also is dismissive about technology solving all the military's battlefield challeneges: We should "not think that technology or tactics by targetry will solve war," he says.

But these smaller units, ostensibly, will need good communications, imagery, and lots of intelligence that only high-powered networks can deliver to small handhelds.

Trolling through FedBizOpps last night for an interesting gadget or gizmo procurement, I came across something even better based on my experience. The Marine Corps on Okinawa (where I had a brief stay before heading to Vietnam) just awarded a $5,600 contract Karing Kennels at Kadena Air Force base to house and feed stray dogs and cats in central Okinawa.

I, of course, wanted to know more, and fired off a note to the Marine PA shop at Camp Butler to find out the extent of the stray dog and cat problem on The Rock, as well as the kind of accommodations and chow provided by Karing Kennels to stray pooches and felines.

Alas, the Camp Butler PA folks must have more pressing inquiries than mine, as I have yet to hear back from them.

But, thanks to Google-based research, I did discover that Okinawa has a serious stray cat and dog problem, due, sadly, to the fact that folks and their families abandon their pets before returning home at the end of their tour, according to this article from Stars and Stripes.

So, kudos to my Marine Corps for having the heart to take care of the Okinawa strays.

My resident cats -- Bootsy, Chessie, Daphne, Inky, and Willa -- asked me to pass on a big "Semper Meow" to the Okinawa Marines.

Real Marines love cats.

As we get ready to honor those who served and died for this country on Memorial Day, the New Mexico Department of Veterans' Services will take care of some forgotten veterans: those who died with no known family to bury them.

Through its Forgotten Heroes Burial Program, the department -- in cooperation with the Veterans Affairs Department, the Santa Fe National Cemetery and New Mexico's 33 counties -- has stepped up to become the "family" of these servicemen ignored in death.

Ray Seva, spokesman for the veterans' services department, said it became aware of the issue this year after Thaddeus Lucero, the manager for Bernalillo County, informed them that no family member had stepped forward to claim the remains of 14 veterans despite repeated attempts by the county and its medical investigator office to locate relatives.

John Garcia, the secretary at veterans' services, said unclaimed remains of veterans are a national problem. "It's extremely disheartening to hear that there are thousands of unclaimed cremated remains of veterans nationwide," he said.

Seva told me that the 14 veterans will be buried with full military honors on June 4 at the Santa Fe National Cemetery. They are:

Charles Walker Curlee, Army
Patrick Faudi, Air Force, Korean War
Wesley D. Fontaine, Army
John Thomson, Marines
Carl N. Peterson, Navy, Korean War
Howard Fried, Army, WW II
Patrick Ford, Air Force
Donald K. James, Army, Vietnam War
Clovis Walker, Air Force
Lonny Douglas Greg, Navy, Vietnam War
Norman Stiver, Air Force, Vietnam War
Carleton Crouch, Air Force, Vietnam War
William Bailly, branch and date of service unknown
John Mercado, branch and date of service unknown

Garcia said, "All fallen veterans deserve to be treated with respect because they sacrificed to serve and protect our country. We are now pleased to be able to do this for those veterans who have been forgotten in the end."

My Marine Corps -- actually the Marine Reserve -- has a procurement on the street that boggled my mind. It's for an online physical fitness program that will include drag and drop functions and a variety of templates to make sure Marine reservists stay truly Semper Fit.

I know I sound like an Old Corps crank, but the only thing I dragged around in my time in the Marines was a tired and aching body.

I also notice the online program does not include any exercises favored by drill instructors of yore, such as holding gallon buckets filled with sand at arms length for an hour. Do that daily -- combined with a 10-mile run with a pack -- and I guarantee you'll be far fitter than pointing, clicking and dragging with a mouse.