THE MARINES' PERFECT WAR

September 17, 2003, 9:00 a.m.
The Marines’ Perfect War
“They wanted to die, and we wanted to kill them.”

n 400 BC, the Athenian general Xenophon led 10,000 hoplites in a march up the Tigris and Euphrates valley — Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers, which today is called Iraq. The Greeks defeated every army that challenged them, including the 100,000-man force that the Great King of Persia sent against them. Xenophon entitled his account of this campaign the Anabasis, "the march up," which became the bane of many a young student of Greek.

Now two old Marines have given us a modern-day Anabasis — an account of the march of the 1st Marine Division from Kuwait to Baghdad, which mirrored the route taken by Xenophon's hoplites some 2,400 years ago. The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division by "Bing" West and Major General Ray "E-tool" Smith, USMC (ret) provides a remarkable description of a campaign conducted by some truly remarkable young Americans.

The Marines permitted West and Smith complete access to the battlefield — as long as they kept out of the way. Like the embedded journalists, they spent time with the Marine infantrymen, tankers, and artillerymen who raced toward Baghdad, but they were also free to move around, to hitch rides in helicopters or on amphibious tractors (amtracs). At one point, they were given use of a commandeered Baath-party official's SUV. All they had to do was find gasoline for it.

But while the reports from the embedded journalists have been described as akin to the "view through a soda straw," West and Smith were able to visit mobile Marine headquarters and listen in as commanders briefed their subordinates. West and Smith thus had the context that embedded journalists, no matter how riveting their reports, usually lacked.

In the pages of The March Up, the commanding general of the storied 1st Marine Division, Major General James Mattis, emerges as something of a latter-day Xenophon. An innovative leader who also led the task force that seized an advanced airbase in Afghanistan at the opening of that campaign, much to the chagrin of Army officers (see my NRO article, "Marines Turned Soldiers") Mattis "led from the front." He clearly had prepared his command well and it responded to his style of leadership.

His "message to all hands" issued at the outset of the campaign contains echoes of Henry V at Agincourt. "While we will move swiftly and aggressively against those who resist, we will treat all others with decency, demonstrating chivalry and soldierly compassion for people who have endured a lifetime under Saddam's oppression…Demonstrate to the world there is 'No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy' than a U.S. Marine."

West and Smith write that military theory suggests

that the ideal location for the general is one where he can observe the battlefield firsthand, gauge the fighting condition of his troops and the enemy, and still communicate with his key subordinates so that he can exploit what he is observing….By being on scene during this battle, Mattis was employing what theorists call the coup d'oeil, when the commander is able to select and focus on the battle's key elements. He could see that the Marines, although tired, were continuing to press forward, while the enemy had retreated into the town. He could see with his own eyes that his troops had the initiative.

On one occasion Mattis offered some water to a tired Marine passing his vehicle. "The Marine refilled his canteens, took a deep gulp, and patted Mattis on the shoulder. 'Thanks, man,' he said, trotting off, apparently unaware that he was talking to his division commander."

The fact that West and Smith praise Mattis is a tribute to his leadership. These are two men who are not easily impressed. West was a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam where he commanded both a platoon and a company. He was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the Reagan administration and is the author of several books, including the recent, well-received novel, The Pepperdogs.

Smith is one of the most-decorated Marines since World War II. He commanded a company during the fight for Hue City during the Tet Offensive of 1968. He began the battle with 146 men. Thirty-four days later, only seven of his men had not been killed or wounded. He was an adviser to the South Vietnamese Marines during the 1972 Easter Offensive. He commanded a battalion during the Grenada operation and later a division.

My daughter asked about his nickname. "E-tool" is an abbreviation for "entrenching tool," military jargon for the small shovel that soldiers and Marines carry for digging their fighting holes. Trying not to be too graphic, I explained Smith's nickname by paraphrasing his own words: "Unlike a rifle, a shovel doesn't jam." As is the case with most legendary characters, the story of how he earned his sobriquet has many variations. Let's just say that the incident involved Ray Smith, a small shovel, and one or more North Vietnamese soldiers.

The March Up doesn't sugarcoat the campaign After all, even the best plan founders on "friction," e.g. map-reading errors, failures to communicate, unexpected enemy actions, and the like. As well-trained and well-led as they were, things often went wrong. . Leaders made mistakes, but they learned as they went. Rumors about Iraqi car bombers and deceptive surrenders spread quickly, adding to the anxieties of the young Marines who would pay the price for complacency or a lack or vigilance. The authors' account of the fight for Nasiriyah is particularly harrowing.

As one might expect of two men who have led Marines in combat, West and Smith demonstrate a deep and abiding affection for the young Marines who fill the pages of this book. West and Smith understand the bond that develops among men at war. They experienced it. "Jobs — staying alive — determined a Marine's family on the march up, not rank or ethnicity. Those you lived with were those you fought with and who would keep you alive."

The Marines faced some sharp fights on the road to Baghdad and more once they arrived. They encountered Iraqi soldiers of all kinds: soldiers of regular units, some of whom fought and some of whom didn't; militia, who preferred not to fight but sometimes did because they wee intimidated by Saddam's fedayeen; and foreign jihadis.

The jihadis asked no quarter and the Marines gave them none. The Marines

knew the difference between these jihad fighters and the militia. Consequently the Marines shot them in the ditches and in the field. They threw grenades into the bulrushes and shot the fighters when they ran out. They threw grenades into the drainage pipes running under the road…A few of the foreign fighters surrendered, but most did not — they had come to Iraq to die, and die they would.

As one Marine put it, this was the perfect war. "They want to die, and we want to kill them."

The March Up, like the Anabasis, is destined to be a classic.

— Mackubin Thomas Owens, an NRO contributing editor, is an associate dean of academics and professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College in Newport, RI. He led a Marine infantry platoon in Vietnam in 1968-1969.

http://www.nationalreview.com/owens/owens091703.asp

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Gunny G's GLOBE and ANCHOR Weblog
by R. W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Gunny G's...
Marines G&A Sites & Forums!
http://www.angelfire.com/ca/dickg/gunny.html
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EVANS CARLSON AND LEWIS PULLER ON ESPRIT DE CORPS....by Gunny G!

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EVANS CARLSON AND LEWIS PULLER ON ESPRIT DE CORPS....by Gunny G!
by DickG

Gung Ho!


The basis of Carlson's thinking was what he called Gung Ho, basically, "work together." But his concept of this was not merely a battle cry, a slogan or a motto, etc.; it is an ideal that goes to the very root and core of leadership and the social structure of the military unit.

He held open " Gung Ho Talks" with his troops with all hands having a say in the matters at hand. Leaders were those who were recognized by their ability to lead, rather than being appointed to rank. Of course, this all came from his experience with the Chinese 8th Route Army, where he had first recognized that the true basis of leadership was ethics itself (something he had pondered upon all his life to that point).

Thus he attempted to teach and guide his raiders in what he referred to as Ethical Indoctrination. Some thought that he carried this too far, but not his own men. He did not carry his ideals of leadership and organization beyond the confines of Marine Corps regulations, but others feared that he would.

Carlson insisted on officers and enlisted alike eating the same food, being provided the same quarters, etc. They sang hymns and patriotic songs together, often with Carlson playing his harmonica. He not only allowed, he insisted each of his own men make decisions on their own.

Carlson had a grasp of what it is that makes men fight. His long and varied service plus his constant study and reflection upon the subject left him with beliefs and theories that he had been developing for many years. These he used in establishing his 2d Raider Battalion. He knew it was necessary for men to know why and for what they were fighting.

He taught his Marines the implications involved between the war in Europe and the war in the Pacific. And every man could ask questions and state his views. They also discussed matters such as what kind of society they wanted after the war, etc.

Interviewed by Robert Sherrod aboard ship just prior to the Tarawa invasion Carlson said, "You spoke about espirit de corps...the Marine Corps has it to a high degree.

But when the going gets toughest, when it takes a little more drive to stay sane and to keep going, and a man is hungry and tired, then he needs more than espirit de corps. It takes conviction....Our greatest weakness is the caliber of our officers, and that, of course, is a reflection of our system of education." Carlson went on to state that the best officers were enlisted men after they had proven themselves in battle.

Within a few days after the battle for Tarawa, Carlson was flown home. He spoke before a meeting of one thousand officers at Camp Pendleton. "Tarawa was won," Carlson told them, "because a few enlisted men of great courage called out simply to their comrades, 'Come on, fellows. Follow me!'

And then went on, followed by men who took heart at their example, to knock out, at great sacrifice, one Jap position after another, slowly, until there were no more.
Tarawa is a victory because some enlisted men, unaffected by the loss of their officers, many of whom were casualties in the first hour, became great and heroic commanders in their own right.

"But--" He paused for a long time. "But with all that courage and fortitude and willingness to die on the part of some of the men, too many others lacked initiative and resourcefulness.

They were not trained to understand the need for sacrifice. Too many men waited for orders--and while they waited they died. What if they had been trained not to wait for orders?"

He was deeply angry. Lives could have been saved. It was this very matter he had mentioned to Robert Sherrod of Time...."What if they had been trained not to wait for orders?" Carlson had asked.

And how extraordinary was the resourcefulness of the few!...But if all had been trained to act by themselves...."Our leaders did not give them that chance," Carlson told the thousand Marine officers at Camp Pendleton."

*************

Lieutenant Geneneral
Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, USMC (Ret.)
Now, Chesty Puller is so well known to every Marine that just about anything that could be written here about him would be redundant. Outspoken and Outstanding, The Marine's Marine! What more could be said? Very little more, and much, much more, both answers would be correct at the same time.

But here is one thing that might be mentioned here. This is in regard to the infamous Ribbon Creek incident and court-martial of the 1956 Marine Corps . The following is neither as well known nor as often quoted as most other stories about Chesty Puller, yet it stands as much as any other to present a clear picture as to who he was and what he stood for, and what he always will be in the eyes and hearts of Marines everywhere.

"On the dimly moonlit night of April 8, 1956, a platoon of Marine recruits at Parris Island, South Carolina, was marched into a tidal arm of Broad River by a thirty-one-year-old veteran drill instructor, Staff Sergeant Matthew C. McKeon. Six recruits drowned."
McKeon had had several drinks of vodka that day, the CMC relieved the commanding officer of the recruit depot, and told Congress that McKeon would be punished.
McKeon was court-martialed.

Amid a nationwide public outcry regarding the whole matter of the drownings in particular and Marine Corps training practices in general, LtGen Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller was recalled to active duty to testify at the trial regarding Marine training and tradition. Mrs. Puller protested to her husband citing previous trouble and controversy in Puller's career. Puller told her, "...The important thing is the Marine Corps. If we let 'em, they'll tear it to pieces. Headquarters won't speak up. It's my duty to do it."

At the trial, Puller was asked questions pertaining to his own military service, the mission of the Marine Corps, the most important element of Marine training, etc. In part, Puller replied that:, "...The definition of military training is success in battle. In my opinion, it is the only objective of military training..."
He quoted Napoleon. "He stated that the most important thing in military training is discipline. Without discipline an army becomes a mob."
Puller was asked what he had learned here (PISC) as a recruit. He replied, "Well, the main thing--that I have rememberd all my life--is the definition of esprit de corps. Now my definition--that I was taught, that I've always believed in--is that esprit de corps means love for one's military legion. In my case the United States Marine Corps. I also learned that this loyalty to one's Corps travels both ways, up and down."

"Q: Now, general, I want you to assume that what is the evidence in this case is a fact. That on a Sunday evening a drill instructor took a platoon that was undisciplined and lacked spirit and on whom he' tried other methods of discipline. And that for purposes of teaching discipline and instilling morale he took that platoon into a marsh or creek--all the way in front of his troops--would you consider that oppression?
A: In my opinion it is not."
"Q: So, in your opinion, was this act of this drill instructor in leading his troops, under those conditions and for that purpose, good or bad military practice?
A: Good...
...I would train my troops as I thought--as I knew they should be trained--regardless of a directive."
"Q: ...I lead these recruits into water over their heads and I lose six of those men by drowning. Would you say that some action should be taken against me?
A: I would say that this night march was and is a deplorable accident."
"Q: Would you take any action against me if I were the one who did that, if you were my Commanding Officer, sir?
A: ...I think, from what I read in the papers yesterday of the testimony of General Pate before this court, that he agrees and regrets that this man was ever ordered tried by general court-martial."

"Puller went into the noncom's club that night with Berman, two Marine generals and other officers; the big crowd stood, shouting until he spoke:
'I've talked enough for today. This will be my last request. Do your duty and the Marine Corps will be as great as it has always been for another thousand years.'
The applause was deafening."

Re
The book, " Marine, The Life of Lt. Gen. Lewis B. (Chesty) Puller, USMC (Ret.)"
By Burke Davis, 1962, Bantam

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USMC BIRTHDAY BALL SPEECH BY CRAIG ROBERTS

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http://www.riflewarrior.com/usmcspeech.html

Marine Corps Birthday Ball Speech Given by Craig Roberts, Marine Vietnam vet and author, to the US Marine Reserve Anti-Tank Battalion, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Nov 9, 2002.



I want to thank you for inviting me to be your speaker on this 227th Birthday of our Beloved Corps. It is quite an honor, and one that I never even considered happening to me when I was a young hard- charging Marine in Vietnam in the mid nineteen sixties. I only wish my father, who was a World War II FMF Marine, Pvt. William F. Roberts, Jr., USMC, serial number 555502, and who passed on last year, could be present to hear his son talk about his Marine Corps.

I know that many of you are wondering why a lance corporal is your speaker. It may because I�m a combat vet, or because I�m known as a writer of military tales, or because I can tell some great war stories. But it might also be because the rank of lance corporal is the best rank to hold in the Marine Corps. At least it was when I was in. A lance was too high a grade to do dirty details, but not high enough to take any responsibility. We supervised working parties of PFCs and Privates, but if anything went wrong, we blamed the Corporal who should have been there supervising, but was down at the slop chute or the gedonk instead, and left us in charge. Yes, lance corporal was a great rank, and a lofty one as well. At least in those days when it was not uncommon for a PFC to re-up after four years to make Lance. And the rank lasted a long time too....at one time I was senior lance corporal of the Marine Corps. I had more time in grade with a clean record than any other lance in the Corps. I was kind of like Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps...but for lance corporals.

Also, there is one misnomer I would like to clear up. There is no such thing as an "ex-Marine." There are only Marines. Some are on active duty, some on reserve duty, and some, such as I, which we can specify as not-presently-serving Marines. The formula is simple: Once a Marine�Always a Marine.

People ask me why I later joined the National Guard and eventually transferred to the Army Reserve instead of joining the Marine Corps Reserve. In 1972 the Vietnam war was still going on, and the USMC reserve unit here was a truck company. I was FMF infantry, and "Motor T" was not something an FMF grunt is interested in. At the time I thought the Guard infantry battalion here could use my experience to train their troops. I could tell you horror stories concerning that decision that would plague me for years, but I won�t. The bottom line is that after 26 years, and various duty assignments�some good and some bad�I managed to retire as a lieutenant colonel in 1999, Infantry branch. During this time with the Army I told my colleagues that if I did a good job, worked hard, and kept out of trouble, I�d eventually get my old rank back as a lance corporal. When I did retire, a Marine gunny I�ve known for years, began referring to me as a "lance colonel." So, in a way, I did come full circle. I am now the only "lance colonel" existing in any branch of the service.

I sometimes am asked what it was like in the Old Corps. Well, I wasn�t in the old corps. When I was in, between 1964-68, the old Korean War salts who served with us called us "boots" and "the new corps." At this point I must clarify what a "boot" is. According to our NCOs in days past, a boot is someone who enters the gate at MCRD ten minutes or more after you do. From then on, he is boot to you and you�ll never let him forget it.

As time passed, the "New Corps" criteria changed with each generation, and my generation now is considered by the WWII and Korean Marines as "the semi-old Corps" or the "not-quite-so-old" Corps.

But a few years back the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, standing next to the Commandant at Parris Island during a training inspection said "Sir, There�s the old corps, the new corps, and whatever in the hell this is." I can�t comment on that, just reporting it. But now those lads at Parris Island then are now probably considered Old Corps by today�s young Marines.

I�m also sometimes asked what boot camp was like in the sixties, before Vietnam. It was rough. It was the hardest training I ever went through. It was the same as it was in the Korean War era, except the M-1s had been replaced by M-14s. In fact, my platoon commander, Staff Sergeant Joe Vierra, carried a .50 caliber receiver out of the Chosin Reservoir on his shoulder. He worked for a gent named Colonel Lewis B. Puller. Vierra was the most sadistic, meanest, most cruel bulldog-faced cigar-chomping gorilla who ever wore a campaign cover. But if there�s anyone I owe the successes of my life, and my survival in Vietnam to, it�s him.

If you remember the TV series "Gomer Pyle" you know what our utilities looked like. They were faded forest green cotton sateen utilities that we scrubbed with scrub brushes on the wash racks by hand until they looked turquoise�what we considered salty. Then they were starched like boards until the crease in the trousers could cut raw meat. Our boots were rough-out brown boots that we dyed black and spit shined, and our covers were starched and ironed until they could be used as a deadly weapon.

All this changed in Vietnam. Our boots rotted, our utilities fell apart, and our 782 gear was next to useless for the amount of gear we had to carry. Imagine a place where it is 125 degrees with 98% humidity day in and day out. It was like working in a blast furnace. Then monsoon season came and it rained hard 24 hours a day until the entire TAOR was nothing but a sauna bath of mud, and lakes of chest deep stinking rice paddies. We finally were issued jungle utilities, jungle boots, and pack boards with willie peter bags to carry our gear. The WWII canvas 782 gear, or what was left of it, was turned in or discarded. Our M-14s rusted no matter how well we tried to keep them, and M-16s wouldn�t be issued until the year after I was medevaced out of country. Our meals consisted of green cans of C-rations, normally cold, two, and if we were lucky (or unlucky), three times a day, for weeks on end, and our rifle cleaning gear was simply the butt-well gear, an old skivi shirt torn into bore patches, and a bottle of motor oil drained from a six-by. So began Vietnam for the Corps.

We learned a lot of things in Vietnam. Never return from a patrol on the same trail used in going out; tie and tape down anything that rattles; always use hand and arm signals instead of talking; always carry extra dry socks and plenty of ammo and grenades, make sure your canteens are always filled, and a thousand other things. But we also learned of danger areas when some of our Marines said certain things. For instance:

A PFC when he says "I learned this in boot camp."

A Sergeant saying, "Trust me sir..."

A 2nd Lieutenant saying "based on my experience..."

A 1st Lieutenant saying "I was just thinking..."

A Captain saying "I think I know a short cut..."

A Major saying "Chow and ammo should be on the way..."

A Colonel saying "One more mission this week won�t hurt us..."

A General saying "last night I had a dream..."

And a gunny saying, "Watch this..."

Since my walking tour of Southeast Asia, I�ve written about Vietnam, the Corps, and other wars and services. But I�m often asked why I haven�t written about other "elite" services such as the Green Berets and the SEALs. After all, aren�t they America�s super warriors?

My response is that the Green Beanies, if used according to their mission and charter are school teachers, and capable of doing a great job of working with indigenous populations. But they are not a fighting force like our Corps. But on the other hand, in Vietnam we proved to be excellent school teachers as well... evidenced by our Combined Action Platoon Marines who worked, taught, fought, organized, and lived in the villes with the locals. We didn�t need any Green Berets, we did it ourselves.

And SEALs? They are simply Marine wannabees who were afraid to go to Marine Corps boot camp, so they joined the Navy. What do they do that Marines haven�t done for years? Especially our Force Recon warriors? Can anyone name one mission the SEALs do that the Marines can�t? I can�t think of a single one.

Now, I do have great respect for the Navy. They provide us with three things: transportation to the battlefields, ships to launch our aircraft, and most importantly, our Docs.

A critical part of the Marine Corps family is our FMF Corpsmen. Unlike SEALs, they aren�t afraid of Marine Corps training. So who is the real Naval Hero here? Think about this: when you see your Doc in the field, and the bullets fly and all of us are on the deck taking up firing positions, Doc is the only guy up and running around to take care of us. Unlike some of the old jokes about Army medics, our Corpsmen do make house calls.

Since I have served in the Marines, spent time on Naval Bases and on ships, served in the Army and was attached to the Air Force, I can give you a first-hand observation of comparing the branches. I agree with Col. David Hackworth when he wrote this:

The Air Force is like a French Poodle: always looks pretty, sometimes a bit pampered and always travels first class. But the Poodle was bred as a hunting dog and in a fight it is very dangerous.

The Army is like a St. Bernard. It�s big and heavy and sloppy and a bit clumsy. But it�s powerful and has lots of stamina and is built for the long haul.

The Navy is like a Golden Retriever. They�re good natured and great around the house. Their hair is a bit long and they often go wandering off for long periods of time. They love water and kids love them.

The Marines come in two breeds, Rottweilers and Dobermans. Some are big and mean and some are skinny and mean. All are mean. They�re aggressive on the attack and tenacious on the defense. They�ve got really short hair and they always go for the throat.

My thanks to Colonel Hackworth for those observations. Now here are a few of my own:

From my perspective, a major difference can be seen in how the services build their bases and installations. I now give this insight to our younger Marines so you can see how the system works.

When setting up a new base, the Air Force first decides where to build the clubs and swimming pools and PX, then if any money is left over, where to build the runway and hangars. They know they can still go back to Congress and say, "gee, we ran out of money and we still need a runway," and they know they�ll get it.

The Army first brings in the engineers to build the golf course, then barracks that would put a mid-eastern sultan to shame, a fantastic officer�s club, a recreation center, and a huge PX, all hosted by civilian contractors. They then request more money to build ranges and training areas. And they get it.

The Navy builds a port by erecting a pier or two, while the chiefs develop a liberty call plan and arrange for transportation for the sailors to the bar district. When all is said and done, they have a great facility and all the comforts of home. And they usually have a few bucks left over, hidden in accounts in the budget of the submarine base, which is all secret�but accessible.

The Marines do it different. We find a mud-flats stretch of beach, slog inland until we find a steep hill, build a swamp on one side and a desert on the other, a rifle range at the bottom, and call it a base. If there�s any money left over, which there normally isn�t, we might think of building barracks.

Tactically and politically, there is also something that needs to be said about the Marine Corps. The Marines are the worlds greatest pacifists. According to the dictionary, a pacifist is someone who wants to end war, establish peace, and resolve political unrest. This is exactly what the Marines do best. If you want to pacify a world hot spot, send in the Marines. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours later the place is pacified.

Our motto, First to Fight, is more than that. It is a way of life. Since November 10th, 1775 when a group of fighting men gathered for the first time in a little tavern in Philadelphia to form the Continental Marines, to the fighting tops of the Bonhomme Richard, to the Barbary Coast, and from the Halls of Montezuma to Belleau Wood, Nicaragua and China, and on to Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Okinawa, then the frozen Chosin and the bloody hills of Korea, and then to the steaming jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam, and beyond to the Mayaguez mission, Beirut, Grenada, the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia, and now Afghanistan, and a thousand other battlefields, our Marines have truly been the "First to Fight" and have distinguished themselves with honor, bravery, sacrifice, and love of God, Country and Corps.

The Marine Corps is more than a service. It is more than a team. It is a family. I want to tell you a little bit about MY Marine Corps Family.

When I was working on my book, "Combat Medic�Vietnam," I had the honor of interviewing and telling the story of many medics and corpsmen. But one gentleman stuck in my mind for years, Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Douglas Wean, a silver star recipient who served with Kilo Battery, 4th Battalion, 12th Marines at Dong Ha, Vietnam in 1968. He told me of an incident that we can all relate to.

One of the Marines in his unit had been wounded during a resupply run, bringing 155 howitzer rounds up the road to the firebase at Camp Carrol on the DMZ. The word came that the resupply truck had hit a mine. Doc Wean ran down the trail to where the smoking six-by rested, twisted and riddled with holes. Doc Wean worked on the wounded until he came to a personal friend, Jimmy. Jimmy was in bad shape, and Doug knew that the best he could do would be to cheer him up by telling him he was going home.

"Doc, ya can�t medevac me," said Jimmy. "Ya gotta fix me up so I can stay."

"You�ve done all you can do here, Jimmy. It�s time to go home.

"But you don�t understand, Doc. My battery needs me. I gotta drive the roads to bring up the rounds. If I don�t deliver, they can�t fire the missions. They all depend on me. I gotta take care of MY guys."

There was that word again. My. My guys. My Marines. At first I hadn�t really understood. What was it that brought men so close together that they would do anything�including die�for their fellows? Now I was beginning to understand. It wasn�t any one thing. It was a combination of several factors that all meld together to form a bond stronger than steel. The war, the terror, the dying and every other unspeakable horror men face in combat is countered by a combination of comradeship, trust dedication, an ingrained instinct for survival, and in the Marine Corps, history and tradition. These guys weren�t only responsible to each other, but to ALL the Marines who had come before. It was a family where one generation followed another and each passed a code of honor to the next. It wasn�t really patriotism or loyalty to a higher authority, it was a sense of responsibility to fellow Marines�past and present. Everybody felt like they were an important part of a family, or a team. They were made to feel that way. A feeling of need built dedication, and the dedication built pride, and a special spirit known as esprit d�Corps. Nowhere at home, or anywhere else in life, did a man feel as needed by his friends as he did here. It was all beginning to make sense. And I was beginning to feel a part of it. They made me feel just as needed and as important too. I was part of the team. I was THEIR Doc. And they were MY family. My Marine Corps family.

The Marine Corps Family. It kind of boils down to that. A team. A tradition. Brothers and sisters in arms, ready to go into harm�s way at a moment�s notice.

And our ancestors all had something in common with those who serve today, and we with them. A common link, and a common bond, forged by uncommon men and women. When we look back to such places as the misty, muddy forest of Belleau Wood in World War II, where the Fifth and Sixth Regiments of Marines earned the nickname of Teufel Hund, or Devil Dog, by the Germans who respected them for their bulldog tenacity and fighting spirit, we find they wore a small badge of recognition that set them apart from all other services: the Eagle, Globe and Anchor.

The China Marines, who patrolled the Yangtse River and the Leathernecks who patrolled the jungles of the Philippines and Nicaragua in the 1920s, also wore the Eagle, Globe and the Anchor.

During World War II, our Marines went ashore at places like Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Okinawa and dozens of other islands and atolls, and shed blood in the sand and coral, their utilities stenciled with the Eagle, Globe and Anchor.

On the rugged hills of Korea, and at the famous Chosin Reservoir, our Marines fought against odds that were often greater than ten-to-one, and we won every battle and fought the greatest marching battle since Napoleon left Moscow when we came out of the Chosin to the coast bearing all of our equipment and our wounded and even our dead. And in the process, destroyed 13 communist Chinese divisions. On the left pocket of the field jacket of every man was printed the Eagle, the Globe and the Anchor.

In Vietnam, we conducted thousands of combat patrols, hundreds of sweeps, dozens of major operations, and fought in steaming jungles, muddy rice paddies, and even house to house in cities. We endured, we fought, and we won every engagement. And we, America�s young men who volunteered for America�s most unpopular war, also proudly wore the Eagle, the Globe and the Anchor.

In Beirut, 242 Marines died in a horrible terrorist atrocity that is yet to be avenged. But it will be. And for all of those brothers that died and those that did come home, they had one thing in common: They all wore the Eagle, Globe and Anchor.

In Grenada, Somalia, Bosnia, and Afghanistan, our brethren also all wore with pride and honor the Eagle, the Globe and the Anchor. Through all of these campaigns, and through all of these generations, we have all shown that our beloved Corps, and our beloved emblem have literally, as our hymn says, served "in every clime and place."

It�s a small emblem, but it says it all. We serve on in the air, on the land, and on the sea. We go anywhere, accomplish any mission, and are indeed, as the popular saying goes today, America�s 911 service.

And there�s one more family member that ranks alongside every Marine here and in the past. The Marine Corps Wife. God Bless her, she puts up with us, suffers when we suffer, supports us through good and hard times, and above all, understands us. No other wife in the world can claim the honor of being a Marine Corps wife. These women are special, and in their own way, also wear the Eagle, the Globe and the Anchor.

So here�s to OUR Marine Corps family. Here�s to MY Marines, past, present and future, and ....

As we used to scream in unison in boot camp in 1964: God Bless the United States Marine Corps, and Chesty Puller, wherever you are!

Happy Birthday, Marines, and Semper Fi!

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THE MAN IN BLACK....

Monday, Sep. 22, 2003
The Man In Black
Country star, Christian, rocker, rebel. Johnny Cash showed the world how to walk the line
By RICHARD CORLISS

The three-day shoot for the video was about to wrap, and director Mark Romanek needed just one more shot from his singer star, Johnny Cash. As Romanek recalls, "I said to John, 'This is the last take. So if you want to get angry or smash something up, this is your last chance.'" Cash didn't get it. He thought Romanek meant this would be the final shot in the ailing star's life, so he had better make it good. Cash wouldn't, couldn't surrender to such defeatism. "I hope it's not the last take," he said in that baritone growl, which for nearly a half-century brought matters of death to musical life.

When Cash did the video for Hurt last year, he was hurting. Indeed, for 15 years he had been in near constant pain. Decades of drug dependency, since conquered, had sapped him. So had heart surgery, diabetes and the medication he took in 1998 for Shy-Drager syndrome, a fatal neurological disease. (The diagnosis was incorrect, and Cash weaned himself from the medication.) Failing eyesight made it difficult for him to read his beloved books on Roman and early Christian history. A dentist, tending to Cash's teeth problems, had broken his jaw and never fixed it properly, the singer once said. Cash was then told he could have surgery, which might end his singing career, or take pain-killers, which could retrigger his drug addition. He chose instead to live with the pain—all of it. "He told me that the only time he didn't feel pain," says author Charles Hirshberg, who spent much time with Cash in his last years, "was when he was onstage."

Moreover, the song Cash had to enact, by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, is an intense cry of pain dished out and taken—a dirge for a life misspent in rancor. "The facet of John that it explores is serious, somber and angry," Romanek notes. "But between takes, the John Cash I saw was someone more active and sprightly than he looks in the video." When Romanek asked the singer's wife June Carter Cash if she would appear briefly in the video, the Man in Black puckishly suggested, "Yeah, honey, why don't you dance naked on the piano here while I'm playing?" The room roared.

"I can't go on, I'll go on," wrote Samuel Beckett, whose plays and novels are no more depressing than your average country lament. John R. Cash (his first producer, Sun Records boss Sam Phillips, dubbed him Johnny) had every right to sing the country blues. Demons found him even when he wasn't looking for them. He dressed like a hip coroner and sang like a gunman turned Pentecostal preacher. His haunting songs perfectly matched his haunted voice. Rarely before Cash had a singer taken vocal pain—not the adolescent shriek of most rock singers but the abiding ache of a veteran victim—and made it so audible, so immediate, so dark and deep. Rarely, before or since, has a voice also shown the grit to express, endure and outlive that misery. His songs played like confessions on a deathbed or death row, but he delivered them with the plangent stoicism of a world-class poker player dealt a bum hand.

That—and his determination to transcend or ignore musical genres—made Cash's death last week, at 71, an event that provoked a serious sense of loss among people of all ages. Children of the '50s remember the startle of his first eminence: the one Southern star who was not a rebellious kid but a grownup with cavernous eyes and a voice to match. Kids of the '60s recall his pop hits, the TV show he was host of for two years and the easy alliances he formed with musicians beyond country's borders. The X and next generations know his old songs as if they were standards, and his boldly simple later work—especially Hurt, which was nominated for six MTV awards—as emblems of moral and musical purity, an antidote to the glitz and aggression of teen icons. Cash made patriarchal integrity cool.

He carried that integrity around the world. "He's loved in countries that don't even like Americans," says singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson, who was a janitor at a Nashville recording studio in 1965 when he first met Cash. "I've seen that firsthand in the places we've played. People love him because of everything he represents: freedom, justice for his fellow man. He is unlike any other artist I've ever known. He's as comfortable with the poor and prisoners as he is with Presidents. He's crossed over all age boundaries, all political boundaries. I like to think of him as Abraham Lincoln with a wild side."

The stature Cash embodies is not so much out of fashion as above it. His CDs are found in the country section of the music store, but he doesn't quite fit there. He came up with rockabilly phenoms like Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, but few of his songs were hard-driving rave-ups. I Walk the Line, Ring of Fire, Folsom Prison Blues—these are, if anything, contemporary folk songs. Cash sang of specific injustices and eternal truths; he was the deadpan poet of cotton fields, truck stops and prisons. He was a balladeer, really, a spellbinding storyteller—a witness, in the Christian sense of the word. Here was a man who knew the Commandments because he had broken so many of them.

As the decades wore on, and Cash notched his annual eight months on the road, experience and excess left their marks on his face, like a hammer pounding tin. He had the battered charisma of an action-movie star who did his own fights. Here was a man who had earned his craggy good looks, his Old Testament God voice, his unique hold on the pop-cultural imagination. Here, three generations of music lovers agreed, was a man—in all his imperfections and grandeur.

If a fighter is sucker punched by fate, as the characters in many Cash songs are, then the heroic thing is to punch back. Cash, as a man and an artist, had the strength to see that bad times may be not a curse but a challenge. His biggest pop hit, the Shel Silverstein song A Boy Named Sue, might be considered comic frivolity for a man whose voice and choice of material more typically dealt in darkness. But the story of a man searching out the father who gave him a girl's name has its own Cashian moral. At the end of a brutal brawl, the father mutters, "You oughta thank me before I die/ For the gravel in your guts and the spit in your eye/ 'Cause I'm the son of a bitch that named you Sue." Adversity made Cash a man, mature and honorable.

He was born into adversity, in 1932, as the fourth of five children of farmers in Kingsland, Ark. For his family, as with others in the Depression-wracked area, cotton was the Cash crop. "We planted cotton in the spring, and we picked it in the fall," says Merline Hall, 77, a childhood friend of the Cash children. "And you used your fingers. There were not any [mechanical] pickers back then. At least, none of us had one." She recalls John as "a good kid" who sang (while his mother Carrie played piano) at the Central Baptist Church. "It was not a false voice," says Hall. "How do you describe it? Let me just say that when he sang, he meant every word he sang. It was the Christian in him."

After high school, Cash worked at an auto plant in Pontiac, Mich., and in 1950 joined the Air Force. He came home, married Vivian Liberto and settled with her in Memphis, Tenn. This was in 1954, and by the next year he had a deal with Sun Records, which had launched Presley's career. Hey, Porter, backed by Cry, Cry, Cry, was his first hit. Around that time, with the help of Phillips and producer Jack Clement, Presley (who would shortly move on to RCA Victor and megastardom) and two other young men, Perkins and Lewis, would create the rockabilly branch of rock 'n' roll.

After Presley's contract was sold to Colonel Tom Parker for $25,000, Perkins had a pop-and-country smash with Blue Suede Shoes, and Lewis followed a year later with the primal boogie Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On. On Dec. 4, 1956, Cash joined the rockers, now known as the Million Dollar Quartet, for an impromptu jam session. Astonishingly, Lewis—the all-time most reckless rock 'n' roller, whom Cash flew in to comfort when Lewis nearly died in the '80s—is the last man standing. "You know," he said in sad wonder last week, "I'm the only one left." (Lewis interrupted his Jacksonville, Fla., concert last Friday night to perform the sacred song Vacation in Heaven in Cash's honor.)

In any class portrait, one notices the similarities. But in this group, Cash stood out—not just with his grave voice and lifer's stare, but with the somber production of his songs. The lyrics Cash wrote for his signature hit I Walk the Line express an unexceptional sentiment: because I love you, I behave. But the thumping bass line and Cash's delivery ("I keep my eyes wide open all the time") make the mood part predatory, part paranoid. Even the upbeat love story Ballad of a Teenage Queen has a spooky side; it sounds as if it's beamed from the bottom of the well of loneliness. Phillips used acoustical reverbs on many Sun productions, but Cash hardly needed it. His voice was its own eerie echo chamber. "His voice was painful, it emoted so much ache and realness," says country star Tim McGraw, who, with his wife Faith Hill, forms a new-generation Cash-Carter duo. "There wasn't anything unreal when you heard Johnny Cash. Faith said today, 'He's the only man in black who can walk straight through the Pearly Gates.'"

Cash moved to Columbia records in 1958, where he had more menacing hits, including the admonitory Ring of Fire ("Love is a burning thing,/ And it makes a fiery ring / Bound by wild desire,/ I fell into a ring of fire"). Some think this was the time of prime Johnny Cash. "He was at his most powerful in the early '60s," says writer-publisher Jack Hurst, author of a book on the Grand Ole Opry. "Back then he was so deeply into the amphetamines that he had lost an awful lot of weight. He looked like a wraith, but a powerful wraith. He was like a prowling tiger onstage. You could see the man fighting demons. This was around the time he was recording Ballads of the True West, and I think he saw visions of himself as an outlaw, with a noose around his neck. He re-created this in his own persona. Against the other side of him it created this huge dramatic tension." Inside Cash, the churchman and the outlaw were having a brawl.

Being on the road for weeks, driving from one town to the next, was exhilarating and exhausting. Country star George Jones, 72, recalls the days when Cash hired him, the Statler Brothers, Stonewall Jackson and other scrounging singers to fill out his tour bill. "Lord, I don't know what we would have done without him," Jones says. "He was our meal ticket." The nonstop nights on the road led to drug and alcohol binges. "We went through those hard times together," Jones says. "We would try to help each other pull through. We'd get together in the dressing room after a show, talk about the mistakes we were making—the pills, the booze, what have you. His first wife Vivian was a wonderful lady. She went through a lot of hell with him. I know she couldn't stand it any more."

It takes a sinner to appreciate the blinding glare of grace. Cash saw the light in 1967, when he began spending quality time with June Carter, of the legendary country clan the Carter family. Carter urged Cash, who was trying to kick his addiction to prescription drugs, to attend services with her at the First Baptist Church of Hendersonville, Tenn. "He said he didn't think he was ready for that," recalls the church's minister Courtney Wilson. "But she told him they could go late and leave early. They came late and sat in the back." That day marked the revival of Cash's churchgoing and the beginning of his great love. He and Carter were married in 1968.

He was even closer to June than to Jesus, but his two loves were connected. "They had a deep, really mystical bond—their love for one another," says Hirshberg, who collaborated with author Mark Zwonitzer on Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music. "It was deeply undergirded with both religion and a total sense, a real deep-down-where-it-counts belief that God had brought them together. They considered their marriage—the fact that they had found each other—to be a miracle of their faith. Their marriage was an absolute religious experience for both of them."

A solid marriage doesn't guarantee career longevity, but Cash managed both. "We had more than one discussion about the ageism of country and rock," says rocker Tom Petty, who recorded and toured with Cash. "When something's gone past that demographic of appealing to people in their 20s, they don't think it's good anymore. Yet here was the perfect case of a guy who was growing older and his music was growing with him." It was Cash who took Bob Dylan to Music City to make the 1969 Nashville Skyline. Later, he guested on songs with Ray Charles, Emmylou Harris and U2. In the '80s, he teamed with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kristofferson for a sometime supergroup called the Highwaymen.

Cash was also loyal to old friends down on their luck. "Johnny always carried people who needed help," says Knox Phillips, Sam's son. "He hired Carl Perkins as part of his band and put him on his TV show, out of love. He did the same for Jerry Lee. No matter how down someone might be or how negative his reputation had become, Johnny always had a come-on-in-and-help-yourself attitude for them." And in 1994 Cash found a sympathetic producer in Rick Rubin, co-founder of the rock-and-rap label Def Jam. It was Rubin's inspiration to return Cash to his roots: the voice, a guitar and the sparest backing. The result was the four American albums. These CDs didn't go platinum—they barely went rhinestone. But they validated Cash's status and towering stature. The latest one, The Man Comes Around, proves to be the perfect send-off for an artist who was failing in everything but artistry. It's Cash's own elegy, eulogy and last words.

The 15 songs include a mess of heartbreak and three wrongful deaths. Throughout, the gravity of Cash's voice lends something sepulchral to the fondest lyrics. When, in his version of Ewan MacColl's The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, he intones, "I know our joy would fill the earth," he could be singing from under it. And in Hurt (the song and the soul-whammingly evocative video) his performance synopsizes a lifetime of anguish. "I hurt myself today/ To see if I still feel," he drones. "I will let you down. I will make you hurt." It is the testimony of a man apologizing for living while preparing for death. On June's next-to-last album, Press On, she duetted with John on Terry Smith's Far Side Banks of Jordan—a song that Cash felt perfectly described their relationship. It's about two elderly people facing the end of their lives, and inevitable separation. June Carter Cash made that trip first, on May 15 of this year, after complications from heart surgery.

Cash was devastated. He knew that if he was to survive June's death, it would be through the thing he knew best: work. "About three days after June passed away," says country music star Marty Stuart, who toured with Cash for 24 years and was for a time married to Johnny's daughter Cindy, "John's son John Carter called me and said, 'Daddy wants to record.' It was the best news I heard in a long time. We all gathered around him and made close to 50 songs." The microphone seemed to be a source of healing and comfort.

Can a wound like the death of the love of one's life ever heal? Not easily; maybe not ever. "He tried to contain himself," Reverend Wilson says, "but her passing took his last spark, the last bit of his heart." Cash admitted as much. "I don't know hardly what to say tonight about being up here without her," he said at his first public appearance after her death, at the Carter Family Fold country music festival in Hiltons, Va. "The pain is so severe there is no way of describing it."

The pain could be described not in words but in sobs. "One day there was just the two of us sitting there," Stuart recalls, "and he broke down and started crying and said, 'Man, I miss her so bad.' I didn't know what to say, so I held his hand. He loved my wife Connie, who's been a friend to that family for a long time. He grabbed my hand and said, 'Son, cling to her; cling to her; cling to her.' What I saw at that moment is that he would have traded every bit of fame, fortune—everything that Johnny Cash meant to the world—for five minutes with June."

Two weeks before Cash's death, Jones and his wife Nancy paid a visit. "He had just gotten back from the dentist," Jones says. "He had numb lips and all. He stayed seated just about the whole time we were there. But he was in a good mood. He said he was fixing to get up and throw that wheelchair away, and he was going back to work." But to others Cash revealed his resignation. Wilson, who visited Cash at Nashville's Baptist Hospital, says, "He was aware things were closing down for him, and he was at peace. He was ready to go home to God."

So many Cash songs speak of the hereafter as if it were waiting, patiently, urgently, in the next room, as if it were comforting—especially for a man who had wrestled his demons to a draw and learned to walk the line—to think of death not as a psycho killer but as a kindly escort. In September When It Comes, a duet recorded this year with his daughter Rosanne, Cash speak-sings this poignant prophecy: "They will fly me, like an angel,/ To a place where I can rest/ When this begins, I'll let you know,/ September when it comes."

For Cash, September came last week, as Americans coped with a more general mourning. And if some felt shock at the news of Cash's passing, they could segue into celebration over a difficult life made exemplary, an outlaw redeemed by a woman's devotion. Besides, if you believe, the Man in Black is now garbed in white, and the doting husband has eternity to spend with his beloved. In a song she composed on the day of Cash's death, country singer Shelby Lynne imagines a sweet reconciliation—the next act of a beautiful duet on a new stage:

Hey, my darlin'
Hey, my sweet
I've waited on the day when I knew we would meet
Hey, my sun
Hey, my moon
Today's the day when Johnny met June

Reported by Jackson Baker/Memphis; Steve Barnes/Dyess, Ark.; Sean Gregory and Jyoti Thottam/New York; Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles; and David E. Thigpen/Chicago
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,485696,00.html

Copyright © 2003 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Privacy Policy
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Gunny G's GLOBE and ANCHOR Weblog
by R. W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Gunny G's...
Marines G&A Sites & Forums!
http://www.angelfire.com/ca/dickg/gunny.html
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MARINE TO THE END...

URL: http://www.myinky.com/ecp/news/article/0,1626,ECP_734_2188470,00.html
Marine fights last battle with friends by side

By Len Wells, Southern Illinois Correspondent
August 17, 2003

Retired Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. Jesse C. Rockett Jr. drew his final breath last Monday at a hospital in Evansville.

To some, he was just one of thousands of World War II veterans who died across this country last week. To his family and friends, this Springerton, Ill., native and resident of Carmi, Ill., was the epitome of the Marine Corps.

Rockett and a friend from Cisne, Ill., joined the Marines in 1945, taking a train to the induction center in St. Louis. After completing basic training, Rockett was shipped off to Okinawa, where he helped mop up Japanese resistance.

During his 20 years in the Marines, Rockett served on the Chinese mainland and was one of the few remaining members of the China Marine Association.

Rockett served with one of the most infamous Marines, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Rockett once told the story that he was the one who had to drive Oswald to an aid station after Oswald shot himself in the foot trying to get out of the military.

During his lengthy military career, Rockett fought in the Korean War, earning the Bronze Star after engaging the enemy in bloody hand-to-hand combat.

But Rockett's greatest battle was with cancer. In 1984, he contracted throat cancer. He recovered, taught himself to speak again and continued with life, operating a service station in Carmi for many years.

In later years, the cancer spread. He would beat it again, and it would return. A few weeks ago, Rockett was admitted to a hospital in Evansville where he would fight his final battle.

In the last hours of his life, Jesse Rockett asked to see his nephew, Braden Willis II of Enfield, and his grand-nephew, Braden Willis III of Fairfield - both Marine Corps veterans.

Rockett, unable to speak, scrawled his last request on a piece of paper and handed it to his nephews.

"Get as many Marines as you can to carry me out," Rockett wrote. "I want someone singing the Marine Corps Hymn when they pack me out of the church."

Braden Willis III knew how much Marine Corps life meant to his uncle. He stepped out of the hospital room and phoned the USMC recruiting station in Evansville.

"I explained that my uncle was dying, and how much it would mean for him to see Marines in dress blues one more time before he died," Willis said. About 7 o'clock, two Marine Corps sergeants walked into Rockett's room.

"My God, Dad, there are two Marines here," said Rockett's oldest daughter. The Marines - one from Pennsylvania, the other from Maine, leaned over, shook Rockett's hand and thanked him for his service to his country.

A smile crossed Rockett's face as he acknowledged the Marines' presence. Neither had ever met Jesse Rockett Jr., but they understood the unspoken bond that exists between Marines.

By now, as many as 30 family members and friends had crowded into Rockett's room. His breathing became more labored - the end was drawing near.

"It was Aunt Linda Duckworth that started singing an old gospel song," said Braden Willis III. "The rest of us joined in. We sang 'Amazing Grace,' 'Victory in Jesus' and 'The Old Rugged Cross.'"

Two nurses heard the sweet harmony of gospel music flowing from the room and drew closer. Standing at the doorway, tears filled the nurses' eyes.

It was somewhere in the middle of "The Old Rugged Cross" that Jesse Rockett Jr. drew his last breath.

An old Marine who had fought two wars, Rockett's last battle was fought with friends and relatives by his side.

A true Marine to the end.

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THE BREVET RANK...

Brevet Rank In The Civil War

Brevet rank, usually an honor, was borrowed from the British and introduced into the American army during the Revolutionary War. Over the years Congress, in legislation, specified reasons for granting brevet ranks and gave the senate the right to approve or reject them after they were recommended by the president. Army Regulation, published periodically, stipulated that an officer functioned at this brevet rank on special assignment of the president in commands composed of different corps and when in detachments or on courts-martial composed of different corps. In these instances the officers ordinarily received pay based on their brevet rank.

In early 1861 some recent graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point were named brevet 2nd lieutenants because there were not enough vacancies in the Regular Army to give them commissions as 2nd lieutenants. Many officers held brevet commissions higher than their ordinary rank, usually for gallant actions or meritorious service in combat or to allow them to serve in a staff position.
The Civil War encouraged the granting of hundreds of brevet commissions to both Regular and volunteer army officers and to at least one enlisted man, Pvt. Frederick W. Stowe, who was brevetted a 2nd lieutenant. About 1,700 Union officers held brevet rank as brigadier or major general.

The awarding of Numerous new brevets often created confusion, such as in the case of George Armstrong Custer. In addition to holding rank as major general of volunteers in the the Civil War, Custer was a lieutenant colonel in the Regular Army when in 1876 he was killed at the Little Big Horn, and also held brevet commissions as major general of volunteers and major general in the Regular Army. For a long time after the war, the army had to determine the official of many an officer and the rank he should show on his uniform.

Although brevet commissions were provided for in Confederate Army regulation, evidence indicates that officers were not awarded them.
In the years after the Civil War these commissions were issued to some U.S. Army officers for various reasons, but few were awarded after the Spanish-American War. In 1918 Tasker H. Bliss received the last brevet commission.

Source: "Historical Times Encyclopedia of the Civil War" Edited by Patricia L. Faust

RETURN TO CIVIL WAR ARMIES PAGE
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THE BREVET RANK USMC

United States Marine Corps Brevet Medal BREVET MEDAL

In its simplest terms, a brevet promotion is an advancement in rank without corresponding advancement in either pay or position. Brevet promotions were widely used in the past to reward outstanding service or gallantry in action. Although they no longer exist in the American military establishment, brevet promotions have a long, colorful and important history. A knowledge of the concept is crucial to understanding the significance of the Brevet Medal and is equally important to understanding the evolution of officer rank in general. Brevets did not originate in this country, but like so many of our other traditions, came to us from England.

As a natural part of the system Their use was limited by Act of Congress on April 6, 1818, which authorized the conferring of brevets on officers of the Army, but required that they be conferred only by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. This Act of Congress also authorized awarding brevet promotions for either extraordinary merit or for the completion of ten years of service. The reason for this provision was simple. Promotions could only be given if there were vacancies through death, resignation, or dismissal and since the Army was so small there were few positions and advancement was slow. Brevet promotions were seen as a solution to the problem. From a cost perspective they had another advantage. Brevet rank entitled the holder to the pay of the brevet rank only if he held a command consistent with that rank. If a captain held a brevet commission as a major but filled a captain's slot, he would only be paid as a captain.

An Act of Congress on April 16, 1814, authorized brevets for the Marine Corps by providing, '7hat the President is hereby authorized to confer brevet rank on such officers of the Marine Corps as shall distinguish themselves by gallant actions and meritorious conduc4 or shall have served ten years in any one grade. " In the 86 years that followed, a total of 121 brevet promotions were granted to 100 Marine Corps officers. Although most of these officers only received one such promotion, fifteen received two and three officers were breveted three times. The first brevet promotion was given to Captain Anthony Gale on April 24, 1814, promoting him to major by reason of not having been a captain for ten years. This Act of Congress did not open a floodgate of brevet promotions; only three other officers received them that year, and no more than seven were granted in any given year until the war with Mexico.

The law authorizing brevets for Marines was modified twenty years later by Act of Congress on June 30, 1834, which also granted Marine Corps officers pay equality with Army officers. In addition, this Act repealed the granting of brevets for ten years service in grade (although those officers who had received such brevets were allowed to retain their rank). This provision made brevet promotions a reward for gallantry in action or meritorious service thereby making the brevet commission one of the most significant ways in which an officer of the Marine Corps could achieve recognition. For the next 81 years it was the highest award a Marine Corps officer could receive

As a result, the need for brevets passed into history - but not until one final chapter had been written: the establishment of the Brevet Medal which was to become unique among American decorations. The following lists the recipients of brevet promotions.

In April 12,1921, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, John A. LeJeune recommended to Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby, that "an appropriate medal or badge or ribbon be prescribed as an article of uniform to denote the holder of a brevet commission." General LeJeune pointed out that brevet commissions had been conferred upon certain Marine Corps officers for "distinguished conduct or public service m the presence of the enemy" during the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Insurrection, and the Boxer Rebellion. He went on to note that there was no authorization for the award of a decoration or badge to denote a brevet promotion and, in actual practice, the brevet commission, once conferred was quickly forgotten by the service at large. The time-honored brevet had become nothing more than an empty honor and lacked any visible sip of the distinguished service it represented. A different condition, he remarked, existed for officers who had earned distinction in the recently concluded First World War. They had earned several newly created decorations, including the Army's Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy Cross, and the Distinguished Service Medals of both the Army and Navy.

The Marine Corps generally followed the Army's lead in regard to rules and regulations of arms, accouterments, manner of dress, wearing of insignia, and the awarding of decorations and medals. Therefore, by first endorsement to General LeJeune's letter the Secretary of the Navy wrote to Secretary of War John W. Weeks to coordinate action on LeJeune's proposal. He pointed out that the Marine Corps was governed by the same general statutes concerning brevets as the Army and asked for comments from the War Department on LeJeune's proposal. The Navy's position was that any badge prescribed for holders of brevets should be the same for both the Army and the Marine Corps. The Secretary of War replied on May 3, 1921, and his answer was short and to the point The Army did not wish to support LeJeune’s proposal. Since there were no longer any Army officers on active duty who held brevet commissions, and since when such officers were on active duty they wore the insignia of their brevet rank, the War Department did not wish to further distinguish brevets by any kind of special decoration.

Regardless of the negative position of the Navy Department, Brigadier General Charles L. McCawley indorsed the effort, and on June 27, 1921, General LeJeune issued Marine Corps Order Number 26. The importance of the Brevet Medal with respect to other decorations was not recognized at its inception. It was original placed after the campaign in which the brevet was awarded. Shortly after that, it was changed. The Brevet Medal indicated the recipient was holding a commission issued by the President and confirmed by the Senate, "For Distinguished Conduct and Public Service in the Presence of the Enemy." To insure its distinction it was to be worn immediately after the Medal of Honor.

The following twenty men are the only known recipients of the Brevet Medal.

*Information from the book, "The Brevet Medal" by John E. Lelle.
Ref
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/5990/militeria/militia_01.html
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RETHINKING MILITARY PROMOTIONS...

Richard Sinnreich


Time to rethink the military promotion system?

Last week, the Washington Post reported the formal censure by the acting Secretary of the Navy of the retiring commander of Marine Corps forces in Central Command and the Pacific. The censure cited his "lack of judgment" in requiring a subordinate selected for promotion to brigadier general to wear the stars of his new rank prior to receiving the prerequisite Senate approval.

In the military, awarding the insignia of rank in advance of actual promotion is called "frocking." It occurs because a considerable time may elapse between selection for promotion and the date on which the latter legally takes effect. Meanwhile, assignment exigencies may require the selected officer to assume the duties of his or her new rank before actually receiving it.

Usually, such a "promotable" officer must simply operate for a time at the lower rank. In some cases, however, and especially where interaction with foreign military forces is involved, sporting a lower rank than the job requires invites unnecessary complications.

In those circumstances, senior commanders may decide to frock the officer, granting him or her the outward status of the new rank without the associated pay and juridical authority. But the rules governing this practice are very restrictive, especially for flag officers.

In the case in question, the officer was assigned a sensitive command in Kuwait. Although he had been selected for promotion to brigadier general a year earlier, the selection still had not been confirmed. In preempting that confirmation, however well intended, the officer's superior violated an important element of civilian control of the military, to say nothing of a jealously guarded Congressional prerogative.

His scolding thus was justified. But the episode merely highlights a longstanding problem with the way military rank is awarded. In most occupations, the job determines the rank. In the military almost uniquely, the rank at least nominally determines the job.

But today, military rank once awarded is permanent. That wasn't always the case. Until the last century, primarily to accommodate wartime force expansion and peacetime contraction, it was common to "brevet" an officer temporarily to a higher rank.

Like frocking, breveting reflected assignment. Unlike frocking, however, breveting awarded the officer all the pay and privileges of the rank.

More important, when the assignment ended, so also did the brevet. While permanent rank, having been confirmed by Congress, could be reduced or removed only by court-martial, a brevet could be terminated at the stroke of a pen.

For that very reason, breveting was vulnerable to abuse. But it had the virtue of allowing prompt and flexible matching of rank to mission requirements. And because it conferred no permanent authority, it presented no threat to civilian supremacy.

As American military and naval forces transform themselves to accomplish with smaller formations tasks that formerly required much larger ones, it may be time to resurrect the brevet in some modernized form.

Consider, for example, a contingency requiring a relatively small U.S. force — a brigade task force, say — to deploy independently and collaborate with a larger allied or indigenous military organization.

Today, typically, to provide the necessary senior representation, the brigade would be subordinated to a higher headquarters, duplicating commanders and increasing the deployed footprint. Instead, breveting the brigade commander and augmenting his or her staff might well be cheaper and more effective.

Or consider a current Defense Department proposal to replace component commands in overseas theaters — each headed by a 4-star flag officer — with standing joint task forces commanded by 3-stars. The objective, endorsed by most military professionals, is to improve the routine integration of multi-service forces.

But at least one senior commander in Europe has warned that reducing the rank of a task force commander from 4 stars to 3 would seriously diminish his or her ability to deal on an equal level with allied counterparts. In Europe, he contends, credibility tends to be associated with rank more than with position.

Here too, breveting might just as effectively satisfy the representational requirement without permanently inflating general officer ranks or requiring additional and unnecessary headquarters echelons.

Finally, it may be time to reconsider altogether the relationship between promotion and assignment. The traditional model, in which rank is associated with the officer rather than the job, is by no means the only one possible and may no longer be the best.

Any alternative system must reflect the reality that military officers, unlike civilians, lack the freedom to reassign themselves at volition. It must assure them reasonable financial stability and career progression. And of course, it can't be permitted to diminish the basic accountability of military officers to civilian political authority.

Within those broad parameters, however, there remains considerable scope for innovation. Maybe now is the time to begin exploring it.

Lawton’s Richard Hart Sinnreich comments on military issues for The Sunday Constitution.
http://www.lawton-constitution.com/sinnreich/sinnreich.htm


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R. W. "Dick" Gaines
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THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS: PARALLELS IN HISTORY

The Cuban Missile Crisis: Parallels in History
Oct 20, 2003


Summary

The Cuban missile crisis under President John F. Kennedy holds some apt parallels to the challenges currently facing U.S. President George W. Bush.

Analysis

October always reminds us of the Cuban missile crisis. This is the 41st autumn since the defining moment that ended the first phase of the Cold War. In 2003, the memory of the missile crisis is, we believe, particularly apropos. Americans in general tend to think that everything the country is facing at a particular moment is unprecedented. Americans tend to think in extremes. Everything is either worse or better than ever before. Leaders are more corrupt, more perfect, more brilliant or more stupid than they have ever been. Americans lack nothing more than a sense of proportion. It is therefore interesting to look at what historian Barbara Tuchman called a distant mirror to compare the current situation with circumstances the United States faced in the past. This is not intended to either praise or condemn the current administration or the Kennedy administration. It is meant simply to gain some perspective on the current state of affairs.

The Cuban missile crisis started in a series of intelligence blunders that began under one administration and continued into the next. U.S. intelligence under Dwight
Eisenhower misunderstood the nature of Fidel Castro's insurgency and miscalculated the likelihood of his victory. Eisenhower responded by initiating a covert war against Castro that suffered from Eisenhower's desire that it not only work, but that the war be completely deniable.

The result was the Bay of Pigs plan, which had little chance of working in the first place and no chance of working once U.S. President John F. Kennedy tinkered with it. The entire plan was based on a misreading of the mood of the Cuban people. It was based on the assumption that Cubans would welcome an invasion and that, in addition, they would be in a position to rise up against Castro. Whatever the true reason for the failure of the Cubans to rise, U.S. intelligence was wrong: There was no rising.

Intelligence under Kennedy also miscalculated the Soviet Union's intentions toward Cuba. That was an intelligence failure, but it was also a failure on Kennedy's part to appreciate how Soviet leaders viewed him. Kennedy came to power in part over his persistent claim that the Soviets were ahead of the United States in strategic nuclear capability -- what was called the missile gap. In fact, the strategic balance heavily favored the United States, and Kennedy knew it. He hammered the issue because it was a strong plank in his electoral platform.

From Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's point of view, however, the victory of a man who did not seem to grasp the realities of the nuclear balance opened up interesting possibilities. Khrushchev's meeting with Kennedy in Vienna left him with the conclusion that Kennedy was inexperienced, poorly informed and timid. The Bay of Pigs fiasco simply confirmed to Khrushchev that Kennedy was out of his league. Indeed, years of hagiography notwithstanding, Kennedy had little grasp of the international reality when he took office or in the following year.

Khrushchev understood what he thought Kennedy did not, which was that the United States, with missiles in Germany and Turkey and a large intercontinental bomber fleet, could devastate the Soviet Union. The Soviets, on the other hand, could hardly touch the United States. Khrushchev's decision to put missiles into Cuba was a desperate attempt to rectify the balance of power. He assumed, based on Kennedy's abysmal performance to date, that U.S. intelligence might miss the missiles until after they were operational and that, even if they were detected, Kennedy would not have the nerve to take decisive action.

Three things led to the Cuban missile crisis:

1. Consistently poor U.S. intelligence.

2. A prior administration that failed to react to the threat in a timely fashion and in essence passed on the Cuban problem to its successor.

3. A new administration whose president struck his adversaries -- and allies -- as a deer frozen in the headlights.

We will allow our readers to draw the obvious parallels to the current situation.
In spite of these defects, Kennedy recognized that the Soviet move represented a fundamental challenge to U.S. security. He understood that it was much preferable, from the U.S. point of view, for American nuclear weapons to be menacing the Soviet Union rather than have Soviet missiles threatening the United States. While ethically shaky -- if we assume that the basis of ethics is equal treatment -- the view was practically sound for an American president. Thus, in spite of global criticism that he was threatening nuclear war, Kennedy understood that geopolitically he had no choice.
It is interesting to recall that Kennedy -- caught between those who wanted an invasion of Cuba and those who wanted to take no action that might trigger a nuclear war -- chose a compromise path in which the United States announced its commitment through a quarantine policy, without unleashing an invasion. It is also interesting to note that there was a tremendous global uproar over Kennedy's actions. Many allied governments, while publicly supportive, were privately appalled by what they saw as an overreaction. Crowds in European cities -- not to mention the communist world -- demonstrated against U.S. aggression and portrayed Kennedy as a simplistic cowboy, irresponsibly playing with the lives of millions.

Khrushchev's perception was quite different. Realizing that he had miscalculated, he sought a line of retreat. Khrushchev realized too late that however unsophisticated Kennedy might have appeared in Vienna and Berlin and during the Cuban missile crisis, there was no escaping the physical threat that Soviet missiles in Cuba posed to the United States. The physical danger to the United States, more than any other factor, focused Kennedy's mind. Kennedy knew that there was room for error on everything but the physical security of the country. He understood that, geopolitics aside, Khrushchev had crossed a threshold when he introduced the threat, and crossing that threshold changed the entire equation. That Europeans thought him a cowboy was immaterial once the direct security of the United States was at stake.

Kennedy's actions were seen as extreme and disproportionate to the threat. He struck many in the world as reckless and incautious. Countries worldwide pointed at the nuclear threat the United States posed to the Soviet Union and argued that the Soviets were simply balancing things. Kennedy didn't want the threat to be balanced. He wanted the Soviets to remain at risk and the Americans to be safe. As he famously said in connection to other matters, "Life is unfair." It wasn't great philosophy, but it made sense to Americans.

The United States threatened overwhelming force but actually used very little. In the end, Kennedy negotiated a settlement with Khrushchev and then lied about it. In a private deal with the Soviets, the United States agreed to exchange its missiles in Turkey for the Soviet missiles in Cuba. Kennedy's rationale for this was sound. The missiles were obsolete. However, he also understood that -- given his record of weakness in foreign affairs -- he needed to appear to win even if he only tied.

Therefore, holding open the possibility of invasion and even nuclear war as the threat, he extracted a concession from the Soviets that made the withdrawal of the Turkish missiles a secret part of the agreement, which would be void if it were publicly revealed.

In other words, Kennedy lied about the letter and nature of the agreement. He lied explicitly when he asserted that there had been no quid pro quo over the missiles. He then lied in spirit when he made it appear that the Soviets had capitulated in the face of his resolute courage. In fact, there had been a quid pro quo and -- though the United States certainly came out ahead in the immediate deal -- Washington had to give up its own missiles and guarantee that it would not support attempts to overthrow Castro. The United States stopped the missiles. The Soviets secured Cuban communism.

It is interesting to see these parallels:

1. Both Kennedy and current U.S. President George W. Bush were widely perceived as inexperienced in foreign affairs. Their foes perceived them both as bunglers.

2. Both focused intensely on anything that physically threatened the United States.

3. The rest of the world regarded both presidents as overreacting and as cowboys, risking world security on minor provocation.

4. Both were casual with the truth when it suited the national -- or their political -- interests.

It is not clear how much deeper these parallels run.

Kennedy's missile crisis ended in a temporary stalemate. It also triggered a massive Soviet commitment to increase its strategic nuclear capabilities and led to the construction of a massive ICBM force able to threaten the United States from within the Soviet Union. By the end of the decade, the Soviets achieved the strategic nuclear parity they had sought in Cuba. In that sense, Kennedy simply bought a few years -- which was not trivial, but not decisive.

However, Kennedy's next decision -- to increase the U.S. commitment to Vietnam while supporting the overthrow of the Diem government -- proved disastrous. Some claim that Kennedy wanted to withdraw from Vietnam. Perhaps, but we note two facts. No withdrawal took place while he was alive and, more important, it was Kennedy's foreign policy team (including Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy) who engineered the Vietnam War under former President Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy could have fired them all and built a new team, but we suspect he also would have retained them and followed their advice. They were the winning team in Cuba, after all.

At the decisive moment, Kennedy set the stage for the decline in the second phase of the Cold War. Cuba represented a push. It was a punctuation mark, not a definitive solution to anything. On the contrary, it was an intermediate peak to which the United States would not return until the end of the Cold War. Bush has not yet had his Cuban missile crisis. He has not yet been able to maneuver the war to its decisive moment. He is facing an adversary that is committed to avoiding any decisive moment.

However, the danger that a Cuban missile crisis poses is that of an illusory solution.
All of that is intended to be thoughtful and deep. The point of this essay is simpler however. Americans tend to think of each moment as extraordinarily unique and the present leaders as particularly incompetent. Those who opposed President Bill Clinton thought he was particularly venal, and those who oppose Bush think him uniquely incompetent. It is useful to look back on moments like the Cuban missile crisis, which we tend to see through the prism of time as a particular moment of U.S. courage and decisiveness. Like the current circumstance, it was a moment born of failure, ineptitude and dishonesty, and it ultimately gave rise to the things it was intended to prevent. The president that presided over the crisis is revered today. There are few who were alive in September 1962 who would have thought that Kennedy would be remembered for his strategic acumen. And there are many historians who still wonder what the shouting was about.

Bush's critics should take note of this. And Bush should remember that the kind of victory he gains -- if he gains one at all -- is as important as the victory itself.


Copyright 2003 Strategic Forecasting LLC. All rights reserved.


~~~~~
This is...
Gunny G's Marines
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By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
~~~~~

THE "OLD ONES"

Nothing Sweeter
Reflections on Veterans Day, 2002

By Mackubin Thomas Owens

Posted November 11, 2002
Print version
-----

Master Gunnery Sergeant Rogers was one of the most remarkable Marines with whom I ever had the honor to serve. He was a "Montford Point Marine," named after the base in North Carolina where African-Americans who enlisted during World War II and served in all-black units in the segregated Marine Corps of the era, mostly in combat service support jobs, were trained. One of his first assignments was to help transport the bodies of dead Marines back across the beaches of Okinawa during the ferocious battle for that island in 1945. As distasteful as his early experiences may have been, he persevered, the Marines were the first service to integrate in the early 1950s, and Master Gunny Rogers had a long and distinguished career in the Marine Corps, lasting well into the 1970s.

If Master Gunny Rogers was bitter about his early years in the Corps, he never said so. What he did say is pertinent to the observation of Veterans Day: "There is nothing sweeter than to be an old man who has fought for his country." Indeed, the original Latin meaning of "veteran" is the "old ones," the old soldier of long service. One thinks of the old Roman legionnaires, or Napoleon's Old Guard.

In the United States Veterans Day honors all who served — not just the long-term soldiers, but the two-year draftees of the Cold War era, not just those who died in wartime (Memorial Day), but those who served in peacetime or who fought and survived, not just the minority of servicemen who saw combat, but the vast majority of the armed forces who provided them with the support necessary for them to succeed.

Today when we think of veterans, we often have in mind the "greatest generation," the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who fought World War II and who now are passing rapidly from the scene. Their story has been told by historians like the late Stephen Ambrose and in innumerable films, from Guadalcanal Diary to Saving Private Ryan. They have, especially in recent times, been the object of particular affection.

Those who fought in Vietnam have not fared as well. This is largely because those who shape popular culture today are often those who avoided service in Vietnam, and transferred their loathing for the Vietnam War to those who fought it.

According to the conventional wisdom passed down from the anti-war left of the '60s and '70s and absorbed by the shapers of the popular culture, the Vietnam War was uniquely unjust and brutalized those who fought it. At first vilified by the anti-war left as a war criminal and a baby-killer, the Vietnam veteran soon evolved into a victim — victimized first by his country, which made him poor and then sent him off to fight an unjust war, then victimized by a military that dehumanized him and turned him into a killer.

James Webb, the best-selling novelist who was awarded a Navy Cross for valor in Vietnam as a Marine infantry officer and who served as Secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration, has pointed out that the largely negative view of the Vietnam veteran comes from the same Baby Boomers who are big boosters of the "greatest generation." The irony is that those who fought in Vietnam did so because they looked to the World War II generation as, in Webb's words, "their heroes and role models. They honored their fathers' service by emulating it, and they largely agreed with their fathers' wisdom in attempting to stop Communism's reach in Southeast Asia."

As Mr. Webb points out, those who came of age during the Vietnam War differed from their parents in that they were not members of a unified generation but merely an age group. Despite the fact that nothing divided this age group more than the war, the media and the academy anointed those who opposed the war as spokesmen for the Baby-Boomers as a whole. But they never spoke for all. As Webb notes, "The sizeable portion of the Vietnam age group who declined to support the counter-culture agenda, and especially the men and women who opted to serve in the military during the Vietnam War, are quite different from their peers who for decades have claimed to speak for them."

The point of course is not to denigrate the unparalleled accomplishments of those who fought and won World War II. It is to remind Americans that Veterans Day is inclusive. It ought to honor all veterans. The fact remains that while different people join the service for different reasons, all are equally subject to long, arduous, and often hazardous duty.

American veterans would do well to remember the Saint Crispin's Day speech of Shakespeare's Henry V.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

And they should remember the timeless wisdom of Master Gunnery Sergeant Rogers.

Go to:
http://www.claremont.org/writings/021111owens.html
http://www.claremont.org/writings/021111owens.html

* Owens on Veterans' Day, from Precepts

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LONG AFTER FADING AWAY, A FORGOTTEN MARINE REEMERGES


Author(s): Benjamin Gedan,
GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
Date: May 11, 2003
Page: 13 Section:
City Weekly

Omitted from the bronze Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington, uncelebrated in World War II history texts, and long unrecognized in his hometown, former US Marine Sergeant Henry O. Hansen will be memorialized this summer with the construction of a public garden, 58 years after he helped raise the first American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945.

A triangular vacant lot on Medford Street outside Somerville's Magoun Square will house a community garden, monument, and seating area to honor the unsung veteran, marking the end of eight years of sporadic lobbying. Hansen, who later died in the fighting, is the only original flag-raiser without a memorial in his hometown, city officials said.

"They never got recognition," James G. O'Connor, director of Somerville's Veterans' Services Department, said last week. "It's been overlooked."

Planning for the park is in the earliest stages, though further along than fund-raising for the $100,000 project.

The city's Conservation Commission has not yet designed the monument, received private donations, or identified possible grant funds.

City officials have pledged no public money to the project, and plans to post a temporary sign describing the initiative have been delayed, said Anne Phelps, Conservation Commission director.

A $10,000 pledge from CVS, however, has given organizers a renewed sense of mission, providing the "driving force" behind the long-promised memorial, said Michael Fager, who is coordinating the project for the Conservation Commission.

The funds will not be donated until a new CVS store opens in the fall, said Gerald Cohen, president of SF Properties Inc., which helped negotiate the gift as part of a CVS development project in Magoun Square.

Despite the slow start and sour economy, however, organizers said they were optimistic about the prospects for additional fund-raising.

The war in Iraq could spark renewed appreciation for veterans of World War II, Fager said, adding that local World War II veterans and their relatives need no reminder of soldiers' sacrifices in the European and Pacific campaigns.

"This particular event was, for the history of World War II, so important. People don't want to forget," he said of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi. "We have just finished a war, and we are reflecting on what it means."

On Feb. 23, 1945, after intense fighting, Marines from Company E, 2d Battalion reached the summit of Mount Suribachi.

Under fire, six Marines, including Hansen, secured a small American flag to a 20-foot section of Japanese iron pipe and hoisted the Stars and Stripes, according to documents in the Marine Corps University Research Archives and the Naval Historical Center.

When resistance ceased, five other Marines replaced the original flag with a larger one, and the event was immortalized in a photograph by Joe Rosenthal, which served as the model for the Washington, D.C., monument.

The second flag-raisers achieved instant hero status, and have been celebrated on websites and in countless photographic reproductions of the event.

As Somerville officials outline plans to open the city's seventh public garden, with a wrought iron fence, irrigation pipes, and perennials, officials said the time to honor the local, original flag-raiser has finally arrived.

"If you say `the flag-raising,' you see the huge monument in Washington of the second flag-raising," O'Connor said, lamenting the lack of a city memorial. "Hopefully, something will happen."

Benjamin Gedan can be reached at gedan@globe.com.

Note:
See also...
Addendum from Free Republic

POOR SOLDIER RICHLY REMEMBERED

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Poor soldier richly remembered

By MONIFA THOMAS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Related:
� Photos from the funeral

Sixty years after surviving the mud and blood of Guadalcanal, Sgt. Robert Cochran died a nearly forgotten solider.

The World War II veteran, alone and poor, was living in a state-funded nursing home in Marietta. Since his death April 5, he lay unmourned and unclaimed in the Cobb County morgue, awaiting a pauper's burial.

Dell Whitaker, who met Cochran last year while visiting the nursing home, could not let the passing of a decorated member of "The Greatest Generation" be treated with so little respect.

On Wednesday, as bagpipes keened and rifle fire cracked the air, people who had never met the former Marine in life came to Mountain View cemetery in Marietta to honor him.

As the plaintive notes of taps sounded from a trumpet, several people, including a young boy in a Cub Scout uniform, snapped to attention and saluted the flag-draped coffin.

"The story just touched my heart, and I wanted to give this man honor for his service," said Tony Perez, who didn't know Cochran but has a son who is a Marine pilot recently returned from the war in Iraq.

Cochran served in the 3rd Marine Division during World War II, fighting in several skirmishes.

A Cobb County resident since 1950, he was a car salesman at Tidwell Ford before his retirement.

Shortly after his wife of 16 years, Barbara, died in 2000, Cochran moved into the Marietta Rehabilitation Center.

That's where Whitaker met him. She says she basically wandered into the center last Christmas, looking for a good deed to do.

"Last Christmas, instead of exchanging presents, I decided to do something for the veterans," said Whitaker, who works for the Cobb County government. "I called DFACS, and they told me about Mr. Cochran."

She started visiting Cochran regularly, and the two became friends. "He was very sweet and all Marine," Whitaker recalled. "I used to bring him books about WWII, and he enjoyed that."

After Cochran died and his body went unclaimed, Whitaker went into action.

"I stayed on the phone for about three days with the Marine Corps," she said. "I asked if it was possible to get Mr. Cochran a military burial, and they just bent over backwards. They were wonderful."

Meanwhile, Cliff Hicks, a friend and former co-worker of Cochran's, tried to contact his son, who lives in Illinois.

"After three or four days of calling him after his father died, he told me that he had given the county permission to cremate the body," Hicks said.

"But I knew that wasn't what he wanted."

So Hicks contacted Cochran's stepdaughter, Lorena Elsey, who lives in Marietta, and the two of them got the son's permission to have a military funeral for Cochran. People who knew Cochran said Wednesday's ceremony was exactly how it should have been.

"Bob was very military minded, and his life revolved around the Marines," said Hicks, who had helped take care of him for the last 18 years. "I sort of adopted Bob and his wife in the late 1980s. Both of them had poor health. . . . When she passed, I continued to take care of Bob after he moved from his apartment to the rehabilitation center.

"I know this is what he wanted," Hicks said of the military funeral.

As the echoes of the 21-gun salute faded, Marines folded the American flag from the coffin and handed it to Cochran's stepdaughter.

The small knot of people began dispersing, Whitaker among them.

"These vets deserve everything," she said. "They have made supreme sacrifices for this country."



Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/cobb/0603/05funeral.html