Happy Birthday, USMC!

Did you remember to leave cheap whiskey and crayons out for the ghosts of Dan Daley, Smedley Butler, and Chesty Puller last night?

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QotD: Reach Out And Touch Edition...

"If you're not a shooter, that might not sound like a big deal, but hitting a target more than a quarter mile away with no optical magnification and eyes no longer young — that's something."

Happy 241st Birthday, Devil Dogs!

On this day in 1775, in Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the very first U.S. Marine made his mark on the dotted line, laid the pen down, turned and looked behind him at the second guy in line and said

"Things were different in the old Corps."

Happy birthday, USMC!



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Happy Birthday, Devil Dogs!

239 already? You don't look a day over 225.
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Miscellany...

• Happy Birthday to all Shock Trooper Devil Dog Blood-Sucking War Machines everywhere!


• There is a new Sunday Smith up at the other blog.


• Today's wikiwander started at "Zanclean flood", has reached "lorica squamata" and is still ongoing.

Laconic.

I just finished re-reading Gates of Fire for the first time in several years. The most-remembered highlights of the book are the one-liners delivered by Spartans the likes of Dienekes and Leonidas.

This Veteran's Day, go read an interview with a real hero, Silver Star recipient MSgt Robert Blanton, who answers the question "Give us a rundown of the event in which you earned the Silver Star?" thus:

Clearing houses, got ambushed, rammed my vehicle through the house to get one of my team leaders out, got attacked by a suicide bomber, captured a guy and we killed 12.

I believe I get more wound up describing a trip to the grocery store than this man does recounting smashing the gates of hell open with the front bumper of his Humvee.
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Today In History: Happy Birthday, Devil Dogs!

On this day in 1775, in Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the very first U.S. Marine made his mark on the dotted line, laid the pen down, turned and looked behind him at the second guy in line and said

"Things were different in the old Corps."

Happy birthday, USMC!

EDITED TO ADD:

Hat tip to Caleb for finding this video, which you should really, really, really not watch if hilariously gratuitous F-bombs will make you or anybody else in the room cry, but which captures the deep, sensitive inner soul of the Shock Trooper Devil Dog Blood-Sucking War Machines of the USMC perfectly.


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Happy Birthday, USMC!

On this date in 1775, the first guy to sign on the dotted line in Tun Tavern in Philadelphia turned, looked at the second guy in line, and said "Things were different in the old Corps!"

Happy Birthday, Devil Dogs!

All the changing seasons of my life... Part Deux.

The 42-kiloton Russian VTOL cruiser Kiev, launched in 1972, was the terror of Tom Clancy novels and the boardgame Sixth Fleet when I was in high school.

Now it's a floating theme park. In China.

By comparison, CVN-65 USS Enterprise, "The Mobile Chernobyl", should have at least two more deployments in her before she heads for retirement sometime around her 50th birthday.

The Chinese may have other plans for the Varyag, however...

Of course, like nuclear subs, an aircraft carrier force is not something you just whip up out of nowhere. There's a lot more to it, especially in the fields of crew training and doctrine, than just possessing the gear. You could hand me the most accurate rifle on the planet and I'm not going to step out on the grass at Camp Perry and win a President's Hundred tab.

Speaking of aircraft carriers, here's a picture of the now-decommissioned USS Forrestal with the VSTOL carriers HMS Invincible and Spain's Principe de Asturias, as well as a giant floating can of whoopass:


VSTOL carriers are just tiny by comparison with the bird farms.

Killdozer.

You know what's cooler than a bulldozer? An armored bulldozer with a belt-fed 40mm grenade launcher, that's what.

I don't know about you...

...but I teared up.

Today In History: Little-known feats...

On this date in 1776, the Continental Marine Corps captured Nassau in the Bahamas. For reasons that remain unclear to me, we gave it back. Also unknown is why this incident is unmentioned in the Marine Corps Hymn.

"From the streets of tacky tourist traps,
To the scenic beachfront bars..."

Sadly, there's a metaphor in there someplace...

So the USMC came to town about a week ago to practice urban warfare in our modern nation-building era. The plan was to practice deploying from helicopters in parking lots surrounded by big city buildings, patrolling and setting up roadblocks in urban environs clogged with "no-shoot" civilians, et cetera.

Instead, they've spent their week on necessary humanitarian aid, evacuating flood victims and building sandbag levees. It was needed, it was humanitarian, and it was, somewhat poignantly, a metaphor for our military's problems since those klieg lights first shone on SEALS slithering ashore on Somali beaches in 1992.

Yum.

Tonight I will likely dream about being a sandbag.