Category: Marine Corps

According to Military.com, Lieutenant Colonel Taylor White, the commander of the Marine Wing Support Squadron 274 at Cherry Point, North Carolina was fired by his boss Major General Matthew Glavy for his “loss of confidence” in White’s ability to lead;

The wing has recently been linked to two significant aviation mishaps.

On July 10, a KC-130 that took off from Cherry Point crashed in Mississippi, killing all 16 Marines aboard. A day later, lightning struck a flightline in nearby New River, fatally injuring one MV-22 Osprey maintainer and sending another briefly to the hospital.

A spokeswoman for 2nd MAW, 2nd Lt. Monica Witt, said MWSS-274 had not had any involvement in either incident and that White’s relief was unrelated. The specifics of why he was relieved have not been made available.

As many as 16 members of the military were killed when a KC-130 from Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina crashed in a Mississippi soy bean field. From ABC News;

Witnesses described hearing a loud “crackling” noise around the time of the plane crash.

Andy Jones, a local farmer, said he heard a loud boom and described watching the aircraft twirling through the air before falling down.

“[The plane] was spinning down,” Jones told The Associated Press late Monday.

Speaking at a press conference late Monday, Leflore County Emergency Management Director Fred Randle also offered no explanation for the crash and stressed that the situation was still under investigation.

The FBI was also on the scene Monday’s presser, and Randle said that the EMA would address the public about the crash again Tuesday.

The C-130 Hercules aircraft is fairly sturdy and not prone to malfunction, but what goes up….

The Washington Post tells the story of Ronald L. Ridgeway who was thought to have been killed in action near Khe Sahn, Vietnam as a Marine Lance Corporal. His parents were notified of his death and they attended his funeral in St Louis, Missouri and came home with a folded flag. But while friends and family mourned his death, he sat in a POW camp in Vietnam. This is his listing from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) website;

He had been captured when his platoon was nearly wiped out in an encounter with NVA troops which had encircled Khe Sahn. From POW Network;

At approximately 9:30 a.m., the patrol made contact with an NVA force of unknown size. Although the ambush site was within view of the base, Brellenthin’s unit was pinned down by heavy fire and attempts to reinforce it were driven back by the NVA.

When the Marine unit finally was able to break contact and return to base, they were forced to leave their dead behind. It was several days before they could attempt to recover the dead because of heavy enemy activity. When they were finally able to get back into the area, the Marines found that repeated harassment and interdiction fire had badly scrambled the remains of their fellow Marines. They recovered what they had thought were the remains of nine dead Marines, none of whom could be individually identified. Among them, according to the government forensics experts, were Brellenthin and Ridgeway.

Those sets of remains were combined with the remains of nine Navy men who had died in a separate incident and were interred in a mass grave in St. Louis.

Back to the Post’s story;

He got lice, malaria and dysentery and lost 50 pounds. He wore pink-and-gray-striped POW pajamas and rubber sandals, all of which he brought home with him when he was freed.

He was beaten with bamboo canes and tied up during interrogations.

[…]

Ridgeway said he didn’t dwell on the notion that people back home might think he was dead. They would be fine. His job was to survive.

In January 1973, he was in North Vietnam’s notorious Hanoi Hilton prison when his captors abruptly announced that the POWs were to be freed as part of a peace agreement before the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.

He was released on Mach 16, 1973, he came home, got married and went to college and he just retired as a supervisor for the Veterans Affairs Department.

Welcome home, Mr. Ridgeway.

Military.com reports that Lieutenant Colonel Jennifer Grieves, the former commander of Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 464 in New River was canned after her command lost confidence in her ability to command. That stems from a domestic beef back in December.

Grieves, who enlisted in 1990 and would earn a commission eight years later, gained a level of celebrity when she became the first woman to ever command Marine One.

In 2009, ABC News named her a “person of the week” as she wrapped up her one-year tour in the post, reporting that her final flight featured an all-female crew. She also received a personal acknowledgment and send-off from then-President Barack Obama.

Thanks to Devtun for the link.