UncleBill, I have a tangental question - this espirit de corps the Marines instill in themselves, is it focused on the Corps as a whole, or is there additional pride in one’s own brigade or regiment? I’m talking about customs, traditions, colors, songs, mottos, what-have-you - like the British have in their regimental system, or the IDF has with their combat brigades. Obviously all marines see themselves as brothers, but is their any effort to make them feel closer to their own specific unit?
My understanding is that one difference in the boot camps is that in the Marines, women are held to the same standards as men. Is that correct?
(Were this IMHO, I would offer that the Marine dress uniforms are the coolest looking in history with the possible exception of the Nazi SS.)
Not NEARLY as much as I have seen in the U.S. Army or British units, the focus is on “Marine”, so much more than “6th Marine Regiment”, or “2nd Tank Battalion”. The only thing I can think of is the joking barbs thrown about between Parris Island and San Diego Recruit Depots, with San Diego being “Hollywood”, and a similar rivalry, if you will, between the West Coast units and the East Coast units. But those are very minor, and are more rivalry and competition.
That’s not just a Marine thang. From personal experience, I’d give the 2nd and 11th Armored Cavalry Regiments at least even odds against any Marine Corps unit you’d care to name for esprit de corps.
Service & Support units typically don’t care one way or the other; who can get worked up over the glorious history of toilet paper deliveries and latrines dug of the 1198th Service & Supply Field Sanitation Detachment?
:smack: :smack: :smack:
It would help propel the thread along better if I would read what people are actually saying.
Ignore my previous post; I plead caffeine deprivation and low blood sugar.
So, does “tell it to the Marines” mean:
-
Try telling your cock-and-bull story to a hard-headed no-nonsense type, or
-
Take your cock-and-bull story to some sap who’s dumb and gullible enough to believe it?
I think that originated from the fact that Marines were stationed or had spent time at many foreign places, so any rumors about strange and wondrous being in faraway lands (specifically China) may be confirmed or denied by Marines who had been there. It was the title of a 1927 movie, and later used in WWII posters, which imply that Marines keep secrets and are good takers of intel, maybe.
Of course the next page of Google links has an earlier reference with the opposite meaning from the Brits:
Ex-Army here from a support MOS. My combat training consisted of about one day of hand to hand and bayonet training, two weeks of BRM (basic rifle marksmanship), and two to three weeks of combat maneuvers. This was in the mid to late 80’s. That wasn’t much, especially in hand to hand.
Anyway…
An Army guy and a Marine are using a bathroom. The Army guy finishes up and begins to walk out. The Marine says, “in the Corp they teach us to wash our hands after using the bathroom.”
The Army guy shrugs and replies, “in the Army we know not to piss on our hands.”
Back when, the draft was in effect and college students were exempt. The other way to become exempt was to get married and preferably have a child. At my college there was Air Force ROTC which I tried and hated. Not the Air Force but having to go to class in a uniform and then marching by other students who were shooting you the bird. To get out of that I joined the Marine’s PLC program (which is something like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.) For two summers, I would get on a plane in Atlanta and fly to National Airport in Washington, DC where we were grouped together and put on a bus. For six weeks in Quantico, we ran up and down hills, sat in classes and got yelled at. I believe it was easier than Parris Island and San Diego only in the fact we got leave from noon Saturday to sunset Sunday and usually headed straight for DC. When I graduated from college, I received my commission.
I reported to NAS Pensacola and started flight school. It took them 18 months to discover that “when you auto rotate (a helicopter) you are either feast of famine. So to save the Navy a helicopter and the Marine Corps an officer I am giving you a down”. If I had gotten my wings, I would never have had to go through basic training. Many do go through basic training and then go to flight school.
In my basic training at Quantico, I was the only 1st Lt. taking the course and in my Company there was only one officer who had gone to Annapolis. We thought he was crazy. First of all there are the uniforms. He already had all the uniforms he’d need for the Navy, but now he had to buy Marine uniforms which are the most expensive of all services. Second if you go to Annapolis or West Point there is a tradition of banding together for promotions and if you are not from an academy then it is at least twice as hard to get ahead. The Marines really aren’t impressed with any academy, but rather those officers that came up through the ranks are the ones everyone looks up to as being a little better.
I served my 3 years and got out with no regrets. UncleBill always does the best job of explaining what it means to be a Marine, but he is dealing with an impossible task. I have an analogy that uses experiences that I also had as a Marine to try and explain my feelings. It is as hard to explain what being a Marine means to someone as it is to explain what it was like to do a loop in a T-28, or to have learned to fly formation or to hit a carrier, yeah even one of my good auto rotations. If you’ve done it you know, if you haven’t done it you can only think you understand what it does or doesn’t mean.
I would like to add that it was my experience that Marines recognize that such units as the Rangers, Special Forces and the SEALS are cousins if not brothers in service. I can tell anyone why Navy trained pilots are better than those in the Air Force or the Army. For anyone that has never served in any of the armed forces I can also tell you that there is a respect that all career types in all services have for each other that we civilians don’t and can’t share.
About the Marines and the draft. Maybe things changed after I left the Navy, but I don’t recall any Marines who were drafted directly into that service. Some were drafted into the Army and allowed to volunteer for the Marines (and Navy), but I never knew one Marine who was there against his will. A few Navy guys left boot camp for the Marines too, but rumor was that you had to be exceptional and not in a (MOS?) that the Navy wanted to hold onto.
Becoming a Marine was a real accomplishment. If you couldn’t hack it, you didn’t become a marine. There was nothing to fall back on. But if you couldn’t hack special forces or the other elites in the Army (or Navy) you could usually fall back into some regular job.
The Marine Corps is special, and quite different that the other services (in general). I don’t know why that’s so hard for some people to accept. I lived with them Jarheads for most of my four years in the USN. My respect for them was earned.
That respect in no way diminishes my respect for others who serve. It’s just different.
And I doubt (hope) that you’ll not see the Army and the Marine Corps go into battle against each other any time soon.
How silly.
I know I’m reviving a very old thread, but it’s similar to a topic I just wanted to start.
I have read/heard several reports from Vietnam veterans about how when they were at the induction station, Marine officers would come and single out certain draftees and force them to go into the Marines. On at least one occasion with MPs who were there to assure the person wouldn’t resist. The first report of this comes from the book “There It Is: A Canadian in the Vietnam War” by Les D. Brown (2000). I’ve heard the same story in two or three interviews with Vietnam veterans on Youtube.
But anyway, I was going to ask about two substantial differences about the US Marines vs. the US Army:
-
To what extent are the US Marines today really co-dependent with the Navy? Do they only go where the Navy goes or are they regularly deployed places independently of the latter? I know they still do amphibious roles, but aren’t they largely infantry in practice?
-
Marine Corps basic training is supposed to be particularly brutal (a notion doubtless reinforced by R. Lee Ermey’s perfomance in “Full Metal Jacket”, but as far as I can tell, boot camp in the other armed services is not the Good Ship Lollipop either. What exactly, if anything, happens at USMC boot camp that wouldn’t happen in the Army? Also, is the day-to-day military discipline somehow stricter in the Marines than in the Army once you get out of basic and receive your assignment, and if so, in what way?
The Marines are still to some extent co-dependent. Some Marines are assigned to fleet duty - they actually serve aboard U.S. Naval vessels, providing security, counter-boarding, boarding parties, and such, traditional marine roles. The U.S. Navy actually has all of those capacities organically as well, and smaller ships will usually only have USN personnel, but largely for historical reasons, U.S. Marines still serve in the fleet.
The Marines actually lack some organic capabilities that are still provided by the U.S. Navy. For example, there are no Marine combat medics. Instead, Navy Corpsmen are embedded with Marine combat units.
It’s not a very rational division of labor, but history, tradition, and inter-service rivalries still shape a lot of the organization of the modern U.S. military.
I was U.S. Army Reserves, and I went through Basic 20 years ago, so take the following with a grain of salt.
I served with Reservists, Guardsmen, Active Duty Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, even Coast Guardsmen. The biggest difference, in my personal experience and from talking with other service members, is that the Army and the Marines in theory treat every member as having a secondary Military Occupational Specialty of Infantry (“Every Marine a Rifleman”, less often but I’ve also heard “Every Soldier a Rifleman”). Prior to 9/11, the Marines tended to take that motto a lot more seriously. Every Marine received more infantry-style training, regardless of MOS, than the average member of the other services, and Soldiers received more than Sailors or Airmen. Sailors and Airmen often received only token training (I talked to one Sailor who claimed to have never fired a rifle, and several Airmen who hadn’t touched a weapon of any sort since Basic).
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq changed that considerably. The Army really started re-emphasizing “basic soldiering skills”, both in new recruits, and in continuing training for Active Duty and Reserve Component Soldiers.
To the best of my knowledge, the Marines still receive more infantry-style training, but the difference between Marine and Army Basic Training aren’t that pronounced anymore.
The Marines certainly carry a self-image of being the leanest and toughest service, and to some extent that’s self-fulfilling. Knowing nothing else, if I had to pick the winner of a fight between a Marine finance clerk and an finance clerk of any other service, I’d probably take the Marine over the Sailor and the Airman, and marginally over the Soldier. If I had to pick between a Marine infantryman and an Army infantryman, I’d call it a total toss-up. And even though the Air Force has the reputation in the U.S. military as the softest branch, I’d take an Air Force Pararescue or Forward Observer over either a Marine or Army infantryman.
From what I’ve read, they got rid of the Marine detachments aboard Navy ships back in the 1990s, and now, Marines are only embarked on Navy ships as what amounts to passengers these days.
For those who are wondering what I mean, back in say… World War II, a capital ship of some kind (aircraft carrier, battleship, heavy cruiser) would have had an organic Marine detachment of roughly platoon-size who did stuff like onboard security, boarding parties, landing parties, ceremonial stuff and so on. They were part of the ship’s crew, not part of a Marine unit that was embarked on an amphibious ship like the vast majority are today.
A lot of the organizational weirdness is because in general, the USMC fancies itself more of a lean and highly mobile fighting force, and leaves the rest to the Navy. So while the Army, Navy and Air Force all have their own construction and medical units, the USMC uses the Navy’s. And the USMC doesn’t have the massive logistical organizations that the US Army and Navy have either. So if you have Marines in the field for a long period, it’s likely that their medical care is coming from Navy corpsmen, their base is built by Seabees, and their supplies are probably coming in part from US Navy and US Army logistical infrastructure.
The tradeoff is that the Marines are set up to move considerably quicker than most Army units, save the Airborne units, and they’re even more specialized and small-footprint than the USMC.
Thanks for the correction. Wow, my information apparently was outdated even when I was serving. I was apparently thinking of Marine Detachments, which were indeed discontinued in the 1990s.
The Fleet Marine Force actually has nothing to do with onboard operations, but interestingly they still fall under Navy Fleet Commands.
The Marines also still provide physical security at some U.S. Navy installations..
After reading up on it a little bit, it sounds like the Fleet Marine Force is pretty much the term for the USMC units that are actively deployed in the Fleet; they fall into the Navy structure as a “type” command- meaning that FMFPAC/FMFLANT is on the same level as COMSUBPAC or COMNAVAIRLANT for example.
Operationally, I believe they’re commanded by the pertinent Unified Combatant Command (e.g. CENTCOM), and whatever fleet they’re deployed as part of.
Who provides security for on-board nuclear weapons now?
Did the Marines draft during Vietnam?
Just to clarify, when one is drafted he’s done so into the “Armed Forces.” It was my experience during that era that many who thought they were going to get called (and sent the the Army) joined the Navy, the Air Force and if they could get in, the National Guard. During the mid/late 1960’s the Marines did avail themselves to the draft.
I know this first hand.
On May 13, 1969 I reported for induction along with 112 others. We were advised some of us would be going to the Marines. I believe the number was 10. It was the only raffle I ever won.
San Diego is nice in May. Semper Fi!
The British Royal Marine corps is a much smaller organisation, which, in the Cold War, carved out an Arctic Warfare role for itself on the Northern Flank [Norway]. They also do amphibious landing, again on a smaller scale. The corps has come under threat of disbandment several times in recent years.
The Royals have no artillery or engineers of their own and rely on volunteers from the army who have passed the All Arms Commando Course.
Marines and Paras do not mix well, and fights are common.
So they are each other’s practice scrimmage teams?