bajaguy
Elite Nomad
Posts: 9247
Registered: 9-16-2003
Location: Carson City, NV/Ensenada - Baja Country Club
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Mood: must be 5 O'clock somewhere in Baja
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Happy Birthday
Happy 232nd birthday (Saturday 11-10-2007) to all of you Baja Leathernecks........... 
from a humble "doggie"
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DENNIS
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 29510
Registered: 9-2-2006
Location: Punta Banda
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I think I'll wait till tomorrow. Don't want to get these guys too excited. I've seen them splinter a bar in under five minutes.
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bajaguy
Elite Nomad
Posts: 9247
Registered: 9-16-2003
Location: Carson City, NV/Ensenada - Baja Country Club
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Mood: must be 5 O'clock somewhere in Baja
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Thought I would be early with my greetings for once
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DENNIS
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 29510
Registered: 9-2-2006
Location: Punta Banda
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Never too early for a good thought.
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Al G
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 2647
Registered: 12-19-2004
Location: Todos Santos/Full time for now...
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Mood: Wondering what is next???
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Happy Birthday to the sea going bellhops...could not do it without you.
The swabby....
Albert G
Remember, if you haven\'t got a smile on your face and laughter in your heart, then you are just a sour old fart!....
The most precious thing we have is life, yet it has absolutely no trade-in value.
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bajadock
Super Nomad
Posts: 1219
Registered: 12-20-2006
Location: Punta sur de \'Nada
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Bellhops? Is that the new union in grocery store parking lots? HPBD!
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dccf
Junior Nomad
Posts: 98
Registered: 10-20-2007
Location: S. Cal
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For all you Marines out there, this ought to get you ready for the Birthday Ball.
Semper Fi ~
Ask a Marine what's so special about the Marines and the answer would be "Esprit de Corps", an unhelpful French phrase that means exactly what it
looks like - the spirit of the Corps, but what is that spirit and where does it come from? The Marine Corps is the only branch of the U.S. Armed
Forces that recruits people specifically to fight.
The Army emphasizes personal development (an Army of One), the Navy promises fun (let the journey begin), the Air Force offers security, (its a great
way of life). Missing from all the advertisements is the hard fact that a soldier's lot is to suffer and perhaps to die for his people, and take
lives at the risk of his/her own. Even the thematic music of the services reflects this evasion.
The Army's Caisson Song describes a pleasant country outing. Over hill and dale, lacking only a picnic basket. Anchors Aweigh, the Navy's celebration
of the joys of sailing, could have been penned by Jimmy Buffet. The Air Force song is a lyric poem of blue skies and engine thrust. All is joyful,
invigorating, and safe.
There are no land mines in the dales nor snipers behind the hills, no submarines or cruise missiles threaten the ocean jaunt, no bandits are lurking
in the wild blue yonder. The Marines Hymn, by contrast, is, all combat. We fight our Country's battles, First to fight for right and freedom, we
have fought in every clime and place where we could take a gun, in many a strife we have fought for life and never lost our nerve.
The choice is made clear. You may join the Army to go to adventure training, or join the Navy to go to Bangkok, or join the Air Force to go to
computer school. You join the Marine Corps to go to War! But the mere act of signing the enlistment contract confers no status in the Corps.
The Army recruit is told from his first minute in uniform that "your in the Army now", soldier. The Navy and Air Force enlistees are sailors or airmen
as soon as they get off bus at the training center. The new arrival at Marine Corps boot camp is called a recruit, or worse, but never a MARINE. Not
yet, maybe never. He or she must earn the right to claim the title of UNITED STATES MARINE, and failure returns you to civilian life without
hesitation or ceremony.
Recruit Platoon 2210 at San Diego, California trained from October through December of 1968. In Viet Nam the Marines were taking two hundred
casualties a week, and the major rainy season operation Meade River, had not even begun. Yet Drill Instructors had no qualms about winnowing out
almost a quarter of their recruits.
History classes in boot camp? Stop a soldier on the street and ask him to name a battle of World War One. Pick a sailor at random to describe the
epic fight of the Bon Homme Richard. Everyone has heard of McGuire Air Force Base. So ask any airman who Major Thomes McGuire was, and why he is so
commemorated.
I am not carping, and there is no sneer in this criticism. All of the services have glorious traditions, but no one teaches the young soldier, sailor
or airman what his uniform means and why he should be proud of it. But ask a Marine about World War One, and you will hear of the wheat field at
Belleau Wood and the courage of the Fourth Marine Brigade, fifth and sixth regiments.
Faced with an enemy of superior numbers entrenched in tangled forest undergrowth, the Marines received an order to attack that even the charitable
cannot call ill - advised. It was insane. Artillery support was absent and air support had not yet been invented, so the Brigade charged German
machine guns with only bayonets, grenades, and indomitable fighting spirit. A bandy-legged little barrel of a gunnery sergeant, Daniel J. Daly,
rallied his company with a shout, "Come on you sons a b-tches, do you want to live forever"?
He took out three machine guns himself, and they would give him the Medal of Honor except for a technicality: he already had two of them. French
liaison officers, hardened though they were by four years of trench bound slaughter, were shocked as the Marines charged across the open wheat field
under a blazing sun directly into the teeth of enemy fire. Their action was anachronistic on the twentieth-century battlefield; so much so that they
might as well have been swinging cutlasses. But the enemy was only human; they could not stand up to this. So the Marines tookBelleau Wood. The
Germans called them "Dogs from the Devil."
Every Marine knows this story and dozens more. We are taught them in boot camp as a regular part of the curriculum. Every Marine will always be
taught them! You can learn to don a gas mask anytime, even on the plane in route to the war zone, but before you can wear the Eagle Globe &
Anchor and claim the title you must know about the Marines who made that emblem and title meaningful. So long as you can march and shoot and revere
the legacy of the Corps, you can take your place in line. And that line is unified spirit as in purpose.
A soldier wears branch of service insignia on his collar, metal shoulder pins and cloth sleeve patches to identify his unit. Sailors wear a rating
badge that identifies what they do for the Navy. Marines wear only the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor, together with personal ribbons and their CHERISHED
marksmanship badges. There is nothing on a Marine's uniform to indicate what he or she does, nor what unit the Marine belongs to. You cannot tell by
looking at a Marine whether you are seeing a truck driver, a computer programmer, or a machine gunner. The Corps explains this as a security measure
to conceal the identity and location of units, but the Marines' penchant for publicity makes that the least likely of explanations. No, the Marine is
amorphous, even anonymous, by conscious design.
Every Marine is a rifleman first and foremost, a Marine first, last and always! You may serve a four-year enlistment or even a twenty plus year career
without seeing action, but if the word is given you'll charge across that Wheatfield! Whether a Marine has been schooled in automated supply,
automotive mechanics, or aviation electronics, is immaterial. Those things are secondary - the Corps does them because it must. The modern battlefield
requires the technical appliances, and since the enemy has them, so do we, but no Marine boasts mastery of them. Our pride is in our marksmanship,
our discipline, and our membership in a fraternity of courage and sacrifice."
For the honor of the fallen, for the glory of the dead", Edar Guest wrote of Belleau Wood," the living line of courage kept the faith and moved
ahead." They are all gone now, those Marines who made a French farmer's little Wheatfield into one of the most enduring of Marine Corps legends. Many
of them did not survive the day, and eight long decades have claimed the rest. But their actions are immortal. The Corps remembers them and honors
what they did, and so they live forever. Dan Daly's shouted challenge takes on its true meaning - if you lie in the trenches you may survive for now,
but someday you will die and no one will care. If you charge the guns you may die in the next two minutes, but you will be one of the immortals.<
All Marines die; some in the red flash of battle, some in the white cold of the nursing home. In the vigor of youth or the infirmity of age, all will
eventually die. But the Marine Corps lives on. Every Marine who ever lived is living still - in the Marines who claim the title today. It is that
sense of belonging to something that will outlive your own mortality, which gives people a light to live by and a flame to mark their passing.
Semper Fi
John Mailliard
johncathmail@earthlink.net
EarthLink Revolves Around You.
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DENNIS
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 29510
Registered: 9-2-2006
Location: Punta Banda
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Right on, dccf...........
Is this your composition? Very impressive and heartfelt.
Are you a Marine?
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dccf
Junior Nomad
Posts: 98
Registered: 10-20-2007
Location: S. Cal
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Dennis,
I am a Marine but I cannot take credit for the above. Found it somewhere on the net. The authors name and email address is at the bottom of the
page.
Glad you enjoyed it.
Semper Fi
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DENNIS
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 29510
Registered: 9-2-2006
Location: Punta Banda
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Thanks. Didn't see the reference. I'm not Marine but, very much Army. Happy Birthday Bro. See you in a couple of days. That will be ours.
I hope HoseA will dig out that meaningful cemetary shot he put up last year. I thought of that every day since.
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DENNIS
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 29510
Registered: 9-2-2006
Location: Punta Banda
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Thanks Gene.
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DENNIS
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 29510
Registered: 9-2-2006
Location: Punta Banda
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BUMP
Happy Birthday, Marines. Thank you all.
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bajadock
Super Nomad
Posts: 1219
Registered: 12-20-2006
Location: Punta sur de \'Nada
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Is this the company?
http://www.militaryconnections.com/news_story.cfm?textnewsid=2236
www.worcesterwreath.com
No, I did not serve in the military, but, this story is wonderful.
Thanks for turning us on to it.
[Edited on 11-10-2007 by bajadock]
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Loboron
Junior Nomad
Posts: 76
Registered: 4-21-2007
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I'm a former Marine and proud of it. 1960-1964
I was stationed for four years in San Diego, The Marine Corp Recruit Depot (M.C.R.D) as it's referred to.
I was recruited to play football, back then the Marine team was the team to beat. We always had the headlines in the sports section a head of San
Diego State whom we always beat each year, well except for one.
Then, when the Chargers arrived in 1961 we shared not only our facilities at M.C.R.D, we also shared the sports section and news.
Because of our record, we lost one game in those four years, we were always invited to play in Bowl games. In 1963 we were number 10th on the list for
the Rose Bowl.
In 1962 we were invited to Play in Mexico, Mexico City had put together an all-star team to play us. Although we beat them easily, we made all the
headlines through out the United States.
We were the first Marines in uniform ever to return to Mexico since the Battle of Chapultepec, fought in September of 1847. It was one of the
bloodiest battles ever fought by the marines.
A little know fact is that the Red stripe on the side of the pants of the Marine Dress Blue uniform is a reminder of the blood spilled there.
Happy birthday Marines, where ever you are.
Semper Fi
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dccf
Junior Nomad
Posts: 98
Registered: 10-20-2007
Location: S. Cal
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Bump.
Happy Birthday devil dogs.
SEMPER FI
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