Category: Marine Corps

According to the Washington Post, General Robert Neller the Marine Corps commandant, told Marines supporting NATO operations in Norway that “there’s a war coming” and he predicted that there is a “big ass fight” on the horizon;

Neller and other Corp leaders told the force they should be prepared for a change in their peacetime mission, should the need arise. In particular, Neller predicted the Pacific and Russia to be the focus of any conflict in the future outside of the Middle East, Military.com reported.

“Just remember why you’re here,” Sgt. Maj. Ronald Green told the troops, according to the military news site. “They’re watching. Just like you watch them, they watch you. We’ve got 300 Marines up here; we could go from 300 to 3,000 overnight. We could raise the bar.”

The remarks made by Marine Corps leadership follow the release of the new administration’s National Security Strategy which highlights the global goals of China and Russia to undermine US security interests.

It is unclear to what extent [Neller’s] comments were indicative of an actual war to come or merely meant as a pep talk for troops stationed far from home over the Christmas holiday. A spokesman for the general did not immediately respond to questions sent by email Saturday.

Bobo sends a link to the Marine Corps Times which reports that Colonel Daniel P. O’Hora, the commanding officer of the Marine Corps Engineer School was fired because of a “loss of trust and confidence in his ability to serve in command.”

“I have never seen or heard of a Marine Corps command so broken and climate so hostile, the mental health of the members is at a dangerous level and if unchanged could result in heightened incidents to loss of life,” an undated memo from the Equal Opportunity Office to the commander of Training Command included in the investigation says. “Immediate intervention is needed to heal the command and return it to its once glory.”

Subordinates complained that he couldn’t take constructive criticism and that he “was like an abusive spouse”.

Last week, we wrote about Marine Master Sergeant Hector Trujillo who was gravely injured when he rescued a Japanese citizen from a automobile wreck in Okinawa. Stars & Stripes reports that Trujillo was, in turn, rescued by three other Marines, Corporal Matthew Dungan, Sergeant Justin Erler and Lance Corporal Eduardo Rosario, on the roadway that day;

Erler, a 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion boat mechanic, jumped into action and performed CPR on Trujillo, with assistance from Cpl. Matthew Dungan and Lance Cpl. Eduardo Rosario — both of the 9th Engineer Support Battalion — until paramedics arrived.

The three Marines have been credited with saving the life of the 44-year-old father of three.

[…]

“There were some cars out in the middle of the road,” Erler told Stars and Stripes during an interview last week at Camp Hansen. “The first thing I did is I just ran to go assess and see what’s going on. That’s when I found the master sergeant. He was unconscious and he wasn’t breathing.”

Erler began chest compressions right where the master sergeant had fallen near the median. Dungan and Rosario assisted him.

“All of us have kind of been brought up the same way,” Dungan said of his fellow Marines. “If we see somebody [in trouble, helping] is just what we do. We have to help them; we can’t just leave them.”

Erler said the situation got personal when he saw Trujillo’s wedding ring.

“If this was me, I would want someone to keep me going for my wife and my family,” he said.

The article says that Master Sergeant Trujillo is still in critical condition, but he’s improving.

San Diego News 8 reports that Marine Master Sergeant Hector Trujillo stopped on his way to work when he came upon the scene of an accident in Okinawa, Japan and pushed a Japanese man to safety just before he himself was struck by another motorist.

Master Sgt. Trujillo has served for more than 20 years and is currently in a hospital bed at Naval Medical Center in a medically induced coma.

Trujillo’s best friend, Jason Texeira, said it was Trujillo’s selfless nature is what that landed him in the hospital.

Last Friday, the father of three and who is currently stationed in Okinawa, Japan, witnessed a crash on an expressway and stopped to help. As he pushed a local man out of harm’s way, a car hit him.

Trujillo suffered a skull fracture as well as spinal injuries. He was flown from Japan to San Diego over the weekend.

It looks like a number of Japanese folks have contribute to his family’s GoFundMe page, I guess some folks appreciate the Marines on Okinawa.

Time magazine reports that Marine Corps drill instructor Gunnery Sergeant Joseph Felix was sentenced to ten years in prison, demotion to private, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and a dishonorable discharge for trainee abuse while he was at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

The charges against Felix included commanding recruits to choke each other; ordering them to drink chocolate milk and then training them until they vomited; and punching recruits in the face or kicking them to the ground.

“He wasn’t making Marines. He was breaking Marines,” prosecutor Lt. Col. John Norman told the jury on Wednesday. He called Felix a bully who heaped special abuse on three Muslim recruits because of their faith.

One of them, Raheel Siddiqui, a 20-year-old Pakistani-American from Taylor, Michigan, hurled himself to his death after what the jury decided was mistreatment by Felix that included slapping Siddiqui and calling him a terrorist. Siddiqui’s family sued the Marine Corps last month for $100 million.

The government did not charge Felix with any crime directly related to Siddiqui’s death. The judge, Lt. Col. Michael Libretto, did not allow testimony about whether Felix’s actions were responsible for the recruit’s suicide.

Felix was also charged with forcing one trainee, Lance Corporal Ameer Bourmeche, to renounce his Muslim faith by making him ride inside the unit’s laundry dryer. Rekan Hawez, a native of Iraqi Kurdistan was forced into the dryer, but the machine was never turned on.

I don’t know any Non-Commissioned Officers who would have engaged or condoned this behavior. Felix was an exception to the rule. Private Felix can serve his prison time knowing that Bowe Bergdahl is running around free without a dishonorable discharge. While I agree that Felix earned his sentence, Bergdahl deserved an equal sentence.

242 years ago today the Naval Committee of the Continental Congress was directed to raise two battalions of Marines, and so we got the naval infantry.

Tun Tavern, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, pictured above, was the site of the first recruitment drive for the Marine Corps. The tavern’s manager, Robert Mullan, was the “chief Marine Recruiter.”

The first amphibious assault by the new Marine Corps occurred in the Bahamas on March 3, 1776 when the force seized Fort Montague and Fort Nassau, a British ammunition depot and naval port in New Providence.

So Happy Birthday, Marine Corps. From the Halls of Montezuma to shores of Tripoli. From the peak of Suribachi to the alleyways of Fallujah.

According to Military.com, the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the December 2012 conviction of Marine Corps sniper Staff Sergeant Joseph Chamblin. Chamblin was found guilty of desecrating enemy corpses with urine;

Even though Chamblin pleaded guilty and got a relatively light sentence under a pretrial agreement, the appeals court found evidence of unlawful command influence that was never cured or eradicated in the case.

“The highest-ranking officer in the Marine Corps [Marine Corps commandant Jim Amos] told [then-Lt. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, appointed by Amos as the oversight authority for the sniper cases] that the appellant and his co-accused should be ‘crushed,’ ” the court wrote. “This is an unusually flagrant example of UCI. We find that UCI this direct, and occurring at this level, is highly corrosive to public trust in this proceeding.”

The Marine Corps can still re-prosecute the case, but without Amos’ undue influence, that doesn’t seem likely.