Us Marine Corp Quotes

Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid.

War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste... The only redeeming factors were my comrades' incredible bravery and their devotion to each other. Marine Corps training taught us to kill efficiently and to try to survive. But it also taught us loyalty to each other - and love. That espirit de corps sustained us.

The Japanese fought to win - it was a savage, brutal, inhumane, exhausting and dirty business. Our commanders knew that if we were to win and survive, we must be trained realistically for it whether we liked it or not. In the post-war years, the U.S. Marine Corps came in for a great deal of undeserved criticism in my opinion, from well-meaning persons who did not comprehend the magnitude of stress and horror that combat can be. The technology that developed the rifle barrel, the machine gun and high explosive shells has turned war into prolonged, subhuman slaughter. Men must be trained realistically if they are to survive it without breaking, mentally and physically.

Just remember,' a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel told me as he strapped his pistol belt under his arm before we crossed into Kuwait, 'that none of these boys is fighting for home, for the flag, for all that crap the politicians feed the public. They are fighting for each other, just for each other.

Semper Fi! MotherFucker!

Pain is Weekness Leaving the Body

Everyday US Marines make possible the impossible and then go about their business like it's just the way things are supposed to be.

When you’re working with Army and Marine Corps units, you immediately notice a difference. The Army is pretty tough, but their performance can depend on the individual unit. Some are excellent, filled with hoorah and first-class warriors. A few are absolutely horrible; most are somewhere in between. In my experience, Marines are gung ho no matter what. They will all fight to the death. Every one of them just wants to get out there and kill. They are bad-ass, hard-charging mothers.

For those of us who are not members of a biker gang or the Marine Corps, solidarity means little more than the compassionate impulse that leads us to comfort a bereft friend; for Beezer and his merry band, solidarity is the assurance that someone's always got your back.

All right. They’re on our left. They’re on our right. They’re in front of us, they’re behind us. They can’t get away this time’.

Welcome to the real Marine Corps, a bunch of nerds on computers all day. We only go to the gym so the grunts don't eat us.

We must therefore be prepared to cope—even better, to thrive—in an environment of chaos, uncertainty, constant change, and friction.

In practical terms, this means that we must not strive for certainty before we act, for in so doing we will surrender the initiative and pass up opportunities.

The first requirement is to establish what we want to accomplish, why, and how. Without a clearly identified concept and intent, the necessary unity of effort is inconceivable.

The task describes the action to be taken while the intent describes the purpose of the action.

This country has not seen and probably will never know the true level of sacrifice of our veterans. As a civilian I owe an unpayable debt to all our military. Going forward let’s not send our servicemen and women off to war or conflict zones unless it is overwhelmingly justifiable and on moral high ground. The men of WWII were the greatest generation, perhaps Korea the forgotten, Vietnam the trampled, Cold War unsung and Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan vets underestimated. Every generation has proved itself to be worthy to stand up to the precedent of the greatest generation. Going back to the Revolution American soldiers have been the best in the world. Let’s all take a remembrance for all veterans who served or are serving, peace time or wartime and gone or still with us. 11/11/16 May God Bless America and All Veterans.

The essence of the problem is to select a promising course of action with an acceptable degree of risk and to do it more quickly than our foe. In this respect, “a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

Harry Truman, after all, in conjunction with Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, radically cut back American arms following the end of the Second World War. Johnson himself wished to dismantle the Marine Corps and felt nuclear weapons had made all such conventional arms unnecessary.

Retreat, hell! We're just attacking in the opposite direction! - U.S. Marine Corps commander,  Changjin Reservoir, Korea

I am Gunnery Sergeant Cragen, of the United States Marine Corps.” Cragen paused as shouts of 'Oorah' and ‘Semper Fi’ rang out from the crowd. “I am relieved to hear that we have a few qualified riflemen among us. Since the rest of you are Army, I’ll try to talk slowly, so you can understand.” The other Marines laughed at that remark

When the first contingents of U.S. troops were being sent to Saudi Arabia, in August of 1990, Corporal Jeff Patterson, a twenty-two-year-old Marine stationed in Hawaii, sat down on the runway of the airfield and refused to board a plane bound to Saudi Arabia. He asked to be discharged from the Marine Corps: I have come to believe that there are no justified wars. . . . I began to question exactly what I was doing in the Marine Corps about the time I began to read about history. I began to read up on America's support for the murderous regimes of Guatemala, Iran, under the Shah, and El Salvador. . . . I object to the military use of force against any people, anywhere, any time.

The mantra of Phase 4 of Company Building is provided by the war-fighting doctrine of the U.S. Marine Corps: Whoever can make and implement his decisions consistently faster gains a tremendous, often decisive, advantage. Decision-making thus becomes a time-competitive process, and timeliness of decisions becomes essential to generating tempo.

The thick communities have a distinct culture—the way the University of Chicago, Morehouse College, the U.S. Marine Corps do. A thick institution is not trying to serve its people instrumentally, to give them a degree or to simply help them earn a salary. A thick institution seeks to change the person’s whole identity. It engages the whole person: head, hands, heart, and soul.

Understanding the limbic system and its core freeze, flight, or fight responses is the first phase in detecting a threat. It’s important to remember that the enemy stalking a Marine on patrol or a seemingly helpless woman on her way home is under duress. This stress manifests itself in physical actions. If we look for these particular physical actions when our limbic system gives us the “heads up, something’s not right” signal, we’ll be able to operate effectively “left of bang.

Once The Boo roamed this campus fierce, alert, and lion-voiced, and his wrath was a terrible thing. He could scream and rant and call us “bums” a thousand times, but he could not hide his clear and overwhelming love of the Corps. The Corps received that love, took it in, felt it in the deepest places, and now, tonight, we give it back at the school where we started out and we give it to The Boo, as a gift, because once, many years ago, The Boo loved us first, when we were cadets of boys and when we needed it the most.

Adding to the military might of the four ships were members of the relatively new United States Marine Corps, reactivated by President Adams with the birth of the U.S. Navy in 1798. Skilled combatants, the Marines were invaluable during boarding actions and landing expeditions, and they also served to protect a ship’s officers in the event of a mutiny by the crew. The fighters had a reputation for being bold, fearless men—though sometimes a little brash and reckless. Their presence would be invaluable should any of Dale’s ships encounter pirates or need protection on land. Once

We do not claim to be experts. We only claim that we are striving to become experts and are taking the same journey that we hope we have inspired you to take. It isn’t a journey that any of us will ever complete. As soon as you believe that you are in expert in your field, you will no longer have the drive to keep learning. Humans are diverse, adapting and changing; there is always something to learn. The six domains of combat profiling and the content in this book should provide you with the foundation to grow in this pursuit. Good luck. Never Forget. Never Quit. Semper Fidelis.

Sadly, the dark echoes of our time in Iraq still resonate with many of Echo Company, who battle with the effects of post-traumatic stress (PTS). Including me. I never refer to it as a disorder. A good friend of mine, Charles Adam Walker, taught me that. He wrote an article called “Postcombat Residue” in the December 2013 issue of the Marine Corps Gazette. It shaped the way I look at PTS today. Adam uses a prophetic analogy, likening the effects and residue of combat to those on a stained, well-used coffee mug. Indelibly tainted, yet still capable of performing its intended use day in and day out—but the residue will always remain.

Returning home to the postwar housing shortage, Weinstein took out a $600,000 loan, built an apartment complex in Atlanta, and offered the 140 family units to veterans at rents averaging less than $50 per month. “Priorities: 1) Ex-POWs; 2) Purple Heart Vets; 3) Overseas Vets; 4) Vets; 5) Civilians,” read his ad. “… We prefer Ex-GI’s, and Marines and enlisted personnel of the Navy. Ex–Air Corps men may apply if they quit telling us how they won the war.” His rule banning KKK members drew threatening phone calls. “I gave them my office and my home address,” Weinstein said, “and told them I still had the .45 I used to shoot carabau [water buffalo] with.

This is just one version of how the world of successful people actually works. But social capital is all around us. Those who tap into it and use it prosper. Those who don’t are running life’s race with a major handicap. This is a serious problem for kids like me. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things I didn’t know when I got to Yale Law School: That you needed to wear a suit to a job interview. That wearing a suit large enough to fit a silverback gorilla was inappropriate. That a butter knife wasn’t just decorative (after all, anything that requires a butter knife can be done better with a spoon or an index finger). That pleather and leather were different substances. That your shoes and belt should match. That certain cities and states had better job prospects. That going to a nicer college brought benefits outside of bragging rights. That finance was an industry that people worked in. Mamaw always resented the hillbilly stereotype—the idea that our people were a bunch of slobbering morons. But the fact is that I was remarkably ignorant of how to get ahead. Not knowing things that many others do often has serious economic consequences. It cost me a job in college (apparently Marine Corps combat boots and khaki pants aren’t proper interview attire) and could have cost me a lot more in law school if I hadn’t had a few people helping me every step of the way.

Rather than inserting more Marines and engineers to harden and defend the American Embassy—thus sending an unequivocal message that such an assault against American sovereign territory in the heart of Tehran would never be tolerated again—the bureaucrats back at the White House and State Department had panicked. They’d reduced the embassy’s staff from nearly a thousand to barely sixty. The Pentagon had shown a similar lack of resolve. The number of U.S. military forces in-country had been drawn down from about ten thousand active-duty troops to almost none. The only reason Charlie had been sent in—especially as green as he was—was because he happened to be one of the few men in the entire U.S. diplomatic corps who was actually fluent in Farsi. None of the three CIA guys on site even spoke the language.

It is important not to latch onto some strategic fad to justify radical cuts in the U.S. Army or Marine Corps. For two decades, since Operation Desert Storm, some have favored “stand-off” warfare, featuring long-range strike from planes and ships as the American military’s main approach to future combat. But it is not possible to address many of the world’s key security challenges that way including scenarios in places like Korea and South Asia, discussed further below, that could in fact imperil American security. In the 1990s, advocates of military revolution often argued for such an approach to war, but the subsequent decade proved that for all the progress in sensors and munitions and other military capabilities, the United States still needed forces on the ground to deal with complex insurgencies and other threats. A military emphasis on stand-off warfare is some- times linked with a broader grand strategy of “offshore balancing” by which the distant United States would step in with limited amounts of power to shape overseas events, particularly in Eurasia, rather than getting involved directly with its own soldiers and Marines. But offshore balancing is too clever by half. In fact, overseas developments are not so easily nudged in favorable directions through modest outside interventions. One of the reasons is that off- shore balancing can suggest, in the minds of friends and foes alike, a lack of real American commitment. That can embolden adversaries. It can also worry allies to the point where, among other things, they may feel obliged to build up their own nuclear arsenals as the likes of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia might well do absent strong security ties with America. Put bluntly, offshore balancing greatly exaggerates American power by assuming that belated and limited uses of U.S. force can swing overseas events in acceptable directions.

What’s with these things?” Sams asked.  “In the scifi holos, aliens are reptiles, or dragons, or even big bugs, bent on eating all of us.  But when we finally get contact, all we’ve got are teddy bears that just sit around doing nothing?

The way America handled its “first team” differed markedly from Japan’s. The Americans brought them home after their inaugural experience under sustained fire and employed them to train the next wave. The Japanese left them on the front to fight until the inevitable happened, and saw their human assets waste away. It was a gilded luxury that the Marine Corps could send home its first fighter ace, the commander of one of the most decorated squadrons in the Solomons, Captain John L. Smith, give him his Medal of Honor, and refuse his requests to return to combat, “not until you have trained 150 John L. Smiths.

The United States Marines were in Nicaragua in force again. When the United States became a world power after the Spanish-American War it began to concern itself with territorial prerogatives in policy toward Latin America. They point was to keep European powers out of the area. While the ostensible reason for American intervention was to protect American lives and property and the rights of United States creditors, the main concern was maintaining security in the Caribbean and Central America. That mean keeping in power governments that were favorable to United States interests. Each time the United States intervened in Latin America the invaded country's strategic proximity to the Panama Canal was cited. Also publicized, virtually to the point of preaching missionary work, was the fact that the country's finances would be reorganized and a responsible armed force created to ensure democracy and constitutional order. The United States Marine Corps became pistol packing zealots carrying the faith to the infidels. Ironically, the Marines' actual legacy to Nicaragua was one of the most long-lived repressive regimes in Latin American history.

And as workers were empowered to make more choices, their motivation skyrocketed. Just as Mauricio Delgado and the U.S. Marine Corps had found in other settings, when workers felt a greater sense of control, their drive expanded. Word

One grossly overweight young Sergeant I’d put on the PT and Personal Appearance platoon had written a letter complaining to his parents.  They wrote their congressman about how horrible I was treating their son, and we received a “CONGRINT” which stood for Congressional Interest inquiry.  This was a big deal; it got the attention of everyone from headquarters in Washington all the way down to the squadron.       When I showed it to Major Psaros he didn’t even blink.  He said, “Where is this guy?”      “Sir he’s a Sergeant down in radio repair and one hell of a technician.  He’s just a big chunky Italian looking kid and I think he came into the Marine Corps looking like a tub and they slimmed him down in boot camp.  But now he’s just reverted to his natural shape.  I bet his whole family looks just like this.  He’s not going to qualify for reenlistment because of his personal appearance and weight.  He’s one of the most productive technicians, but if he had to saddle up and go into combat I think he’d be a liability.”      “Get his ass up here and let me see what he looks like.”      I brought the Sergeant up to the CO’s office.  The Major took one look at him and said, “Marine, you look like a Technicolor Sea Bag in your uniform.  You’re fat and out of shape.  I’ll give you a month to start showing some major improvements or your career as a Marine will be coming to an end.”      After the Sergeant left Major Psaros told me to take a picture of him in his skivvies, front and side and bring him copies of all the appropriate Marine Corps orders on personal appearance and weight control.      The CO answered the CONGRINT with the pictures of the Sergeant in his skivvies and the copies of the orders.  He didn’t include anything else.  We never heard another word.

the President asked the Admiral if he could smoke out here.  This was normally never done.  No one would even think to smoke on the flight deck.  Today, the rules were different.  The Admiral said, “Well sir, that’s not normally done, but we aren’t fueling any aircraft and nothing’s going to take place out here while you are on deck.  So yes, I guess you can smoke out here.”      With that answer, the President reached into his jacket pocket and produced a metal tin that held very short little cigars called “Between the Acts”.  He started fumbling through his pockets, obviously looking for a light.  The Admiral began checking his pockets and then gave me a panicked look.  I reached into my pocket and handed the Admiral my prized Zippo lighter, the one with the Marine Corps emblem.  The Admiral immediately gave it to the President, who flicked it open and lighted his little cigar.  When he finished the lighting process he snapped the lid shut, rolled the lighter around in his right hand, paused for a second to notice the emblem, and promptly put the lighter into his right coat pocket.  The Admiral looked at me as if to say, “We will work it out later

while the U.S. Marines Corps were well known for being the people to call if you absolutely, positively wanted something destroyed overnight…when it had to be taken out in an hour or your money back, you called the Archangels.

change. I’m sure we’ll need your help from time to time, and maybe one of these days we’ll be able to return the favor.” Higgins felt that bubble of word vomit rise in his throat and spill out of his mouth before he could help himself. “Beirut,” he said. There was a change in the atmosphere as soon as the word slipped out, but he hammered on. “You lost a lot of Marines.” “Higgins.” Zyga’s voice was sharp. Stokes’ voice was colored with sadness as he said, “I keep telling myself we could’ve done something to prevent it.” “That’s why you’re here,” Higgins said. “When Director Thatcher told me about this program, I jumped at the chance to help build a better relationship between the Marine Corps and the CIA. My colleagues aren’t thrilled at the idea of getting into bed with your lot, but I have a great deal of respect for what you do. That’s why I’m here. Like the CIA, some of us in the Marine Corps are planning for the future. Terrorism will only grow in the coming years. Beirut was just the beginning. Lucky for me, your bosses and I agree.” He looked from one team member to another. “I heard about your first mission, and I’m glad it was a success. I’m glad you all made it out of there alive.” “Major Stokes will be stopping by every so often to check on our progress and offer additional advice and support,” Decker said. “I know it’s a bit unorthodox, but this man has seen it all. Don’t let his dumb grunt act fool you. His help will be invaluable to us as we move forward.” “Now we just need to get the Feds on board.” Stokes laughed, and the room joined him. “Good luck with that,” Abrams called out. “They hate us more than you do.” “That they do,” Stokes said. “They’ve been working on their program since the late ‘70s. Same sort of deal. If you can get into the mind of a killer, really understand how your enemy works, then you have a better chance of catching him before he hurts anyone else. We’re usually sent in after it’s too late. I want to change that.” “Might put you out of a job,” Higgins joked. Stokes laughed again. “Honestly, I don’t think that’d be so bad. Maybe I’ll join up with you. Maybe in a perfect world.” “In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be a need for any of us,” Higgins said. “You’re exactly right, Mr. Higgins.” “Doctor,” Higgins corrected automatically. His face flushed. “Ignore him,” Abrams said, reaching across Spencer to whack Higgins in the stomach. “He thinks just because he has two doctorates that he’s better than us.” “I do not,” Higgins mumbled. He felt his face grow even hotter. Stokes held up a hand in surrender. “You earned those degrees, Dr. Higgins. Wear them with pride.” Higgins shot a look at Abrams while the rest of the room continued to chuckle. Thatcher looked down at his watch. “It seems my time is up here,” he said. “I assume you can find your way back, Major?” “I’ll try not to steal any secrets on the way out.” “See that you don’t,” Thatcher said, shaking Stokes’s hand again before exiting the room. Everyone took their turn introducing themselves to Major Stokes, except Higgins, who hung back to observe how this new player interacted with everyone in the room. Where Higgins lacked interpersonal skills, Stokes excelled in the area. He could joke with Abrams in one breath and rein it in to speak in serious undertones with Spencer in the next. He and Johnson exchanged battle scars, and when it came to York, Stokes found a fellow intellectual to converse with. Higgins detected no condescension or disrespect in his voice even though she was the only woman in the room. As the personal introductions were finishing up, Stokes broke off from the group and walked over to where Higgins was still seated at the front of the room and sat down next to him. “More of an observer than a talker, right?” “You could say that.” “Should I be worried?” Higgins smiled.

The Marine Corps was the family I’d never had. And for three years it was home, even though I traveled all over the world. And then I was sure, so sure that Caro would find me. Because after three years, my fucking parents couldn’t touch us—and her ‘crime’ of sleeping with me when I underage was beyond the Statute of Limitations. But she never came. And I hated her. I thought I hated her—I tried.

This is the true story of a remarkable American who, during the early New Deal years, was sought by wealthy plotters in the United States to lead a putsch to overthrow the government and establish an American Fascist dictatorship. According to retired Representative John W. McCormack, former Speaker of the House, if the late Major General Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps had not been a stubborn devotee of democracy, Americans today could conceivably be living under an American Mussolini, Hitler, or Franco.

Played catcher, just like you. We had these dreams that took us far beyond Minor League ball. Reality set in when we faced actual Major League talent. That's when we realized what our hopes actually were—dreams. The Marine Corps became a life we knew we could succeed in. I missed playing ball, sure, but when I think back on it, you kids gave me a life far more satisfying than any dream. That's what I was always meant to be—a father and a coach. That's what made sense.

First, they believe that when trouble comes to our country there will be Marines—somewhere—who, through hard work, have made and kept themselves ready to do something useful about it, and do it at once.

Second, they believe that when the Marines go to war they invariably turn in a performance that is dramatically and decisively successful—not most of the time, but always.

The third thing they believe about the Marines is that our Corps is downright good for the manhood of our country; that the Marines are masters of a form of unfailing alchemy which converts unoriented youths into proud, self-reliant stable citizens—citizens into whose hands the nation’s affairs may safely be entrusted.

Each of our experiences, feelings and views are unique based on countless factors, yet no less valid than those of others. Just because you're not a parent doesn't mean you have no rights to have a view on parenting. Or that you can’t imagine the struggles of parenting within your own mind. Just because you’re born poor doesn’t mean you can’t imagine wealth. If your destiny is such that you’re born into privilege, it doesn’t mean you can’t by free-will have the willingness to help others or imagine their pain. Just because you weren’t in the Marine Corp doesn’t mean you can’t imagine the fear some must face. Just because you are not in a concentration camp doesn’t mean you can’t feel or fight for those who are. Just because you didn’t grow up abused doesn’t mean you can’t feel compassion for those who did. Just because you’re a child doesn’t mean you can’t imagine being a grown-up and just because you’re a grown-up doesn’t mean you can’t imagine being a child. If that were the case, how would any of us ever tap into our compassion? Whatever your circumstances, everyone is 100% entirely entitled to have a view, entitled to help make change happen if it betters the world and no matter what it doesn’t make you less valid or less important just because you can’t control how you were born into this world. That which is out of our hands is out of our hands. While that which lies in our capacity for compassion and imagination, is ours to utilize in the best way we know how to make the world a better place wherever and with whatever cause we choose to take on. We all deserve dignity and respect.

There is among the Marines, to a noteworthy degree, readiness and mobility, there is intensive training, and there is discipline. There is also the tradition and history of the Corps of which every Marine is proud. It means something to us, that history. We have a reputation to live up to, and we do not mean to lower our record or bring disgrace to our insignia

The Marine Corps forced me to come home from Afghanistan. It's up to me to allow myself to come home.

we had the whole history of the Corps behind us, and what a Marine has he holds; he kills or gets killed; he does not surrender; he does not retreat.

Frank Fiorini, better known as Frank Sturgis, had an interesting career that started when he quit high school during his senior year to join the United States Marine Corps as an enlisted man. During World War II he served in the Pacific Theater of Operations with Edson’s Raiders, of the First Marine Raiders Battalion under Colonel “Red Mike.” In 1945 at the end of World War II, he received an honorable discharge and the following year joined the Norfolk, Virginia Police Department. Getting involved in an altercation with his sergeant, he resigned and found employment as the manager of the local Havana-Madrid Tavern, known to have had a clientele consisting primarily of Cuban seamen. In 1947 while still working at the tavern, he joined the U.S. Navy’s Flight Program. A year later, he received an honorable discharge and joined the U.S. Army as an Intelligence Officer. Again, in 1949, he received an honorable discharge, this time from the U.S. Army. Then in 1957, he moved to Miami where he met former Cuban President Carlos Prío, following which he joined a Cuban group opposing the Cuban dictator Batista. After this, Frank Sturgis went to Cuba and set up a training camp in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, teaching guerrilla warfare to Castro’s forces. He was appointed a Captain in Castro’s M 26 7 Brigade, and as such, he made use of some CIA connections that he apparently had cultivated, to supply Castro with weapons and ammunition. After they entered Havana as victors of the revolution, Sturgis was appointed to a high security, intelligence position within the reorganized Cuban air force. Strangely, Frank Sturgis returned to the United States after the Cuban Revolution, and mysteriously turned up as one of the Watergate burglars who were caught installing listening devices in the National Democratic Campaign offices. In 1973 Frank A. Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, Eugenio R. Martínez, G. Gordon Liddy, Virgilio R. “Villo” González, Bernard L. Barker and James W. McCord, Jr. were convicted of conspiracy. While in prison, Sturgis feared for his life if anything he had done, regarding his associations and contacts, became public knowledge. In 1975, Sturgis admitted to being a spy, stating that he was involved in assassinations and plots to overthrow undisclosed foreign governments. However, at the Rockefeller Commission hearings in 1975, their concluding report stated that he was never a part of the CIA…. Go figure! In 1979, Sturgis surfaced in Angola where he trained and helped the rebels fight the Cuban-supported communists. Following this, he went to Honduras to train the Contras in their fight against the communist-supported Sandinista government. He also met with Yasser Arafat in Tunis, following which he was debriefed by the CIA. Furthermore, it is documented that he met and talked to the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, or Carlos the Jackal, who is now serving a life sentence for murdering two French counter intelligence agents. On December 4, 1993, Sturgis suddenly died of lung cancer at the Veterans Hospital in Miami, Florida. He was buried in an unmarked grave south of Miami…. Or was he? In this murky underworld, anything is possible.

The US Marine Corps Historical Division

As Marine Corps aviator Samuel Hynes would observe, “They go to war because it’s impossible not to. Because a current is established in society, so swift, flowing toward war, that every young man who steps into it is carried downstream.

Our Marine drill sergeant was the most professional looking soldier I have ever seen. His uniform was so perfectly pressed and starched that he looked like one of those full-size cardboard Marines propped up in the window of the Marine Corps Recruiting Centers. Our instructor was African-American but wasn’t the least bit intimidated by this unruly and disrespectful group of white guys. He was accustomed to training officer candidates who had no official rank, but instructing a class of commissioned officers who all out-ranked him didn’t seem to soften his techniques. He was extremely serious and barked out all of his commands, which got the attention of even the most disruptive members of our group. He knew we were all officers on paper and that his job was to make us start looking and acting like officers." (page 137)

Experiments in isolation by the U.S. Marine Corps, Dr. John Lilly and others — and the records of shipwrecked sailors, as summarized by Lilly in Simulations of God — show that only a few hours of pure isolation may be necessary before hallucinations begin. These hallucinations, like those of psychedelic drugs, indicate the breaking down of previous imprints and the onset of vulnerability to new imprints.

The first is the motto of the U.S. Marine Corps: Semper Fi. This is short for semper fidelis, a Latin phrase that means “Always faithful

Having the might of the U.S. Marine Corps at your disposal is one thing. Having the 2015–16 Aston Villa squad was quite another. Villa couldn’t win on the road at Norwich, hardly a Premier League minefield. Things fell apart for good on April 16, with a defeat at Manchester United. By then, the Villa fans were so deep into gallows humor that they chanted, “Let’s pretend we’ve scored a goal,” before belting out a rendition of “We’ll Meet Again.

Few things upset Congress more than the idea that someone is trying to take over its lily pad, and Vandegrift had its undivided attention when he moved on to specific Marine Corps interests.

He was disappointed on his first Vietnam tour in 1965 when he’d seen little action. Now, with his own company, he was eager to be put to use. His ears stuck out on either side of his high-and-tight and he wore US Marine Corps–issued glasses in thick black plastic frames. In his wallet, he carried a formal portrait of his wife, Missy, and daughter, Marianne, both wearing pink. The politics of the war didn’t concern him at all. He was a marine; there was a war on.

Unlike all the other combatants in World War II, including the U.S. Army, Smith and his Marines never lost a battle.

... the island had to be taken at almost any cost.

The Army Air Force was doing its part to soften up Iwo Jima for the Marines. Beginning December 8, B-29 Superforts and B-24 Liberators had been pummeling the island mercilessly. Iwo Jima would be bombed for seventy-two consecutive days, setting the record as the most heavily bombed target and the longest sustained bombardment in the Pacific War. One flyboy on Saipan confidently told Easy Company's Chuck Lindberg, "All you guys will have to do is clean up. No one could survive what we've been dropping.

Some optimistically hoped the unprecedented bombing of the tiny island would make the conquest of Iwo Jima a two- to three-day job. But on the command ship USS Eldorado, Howlin' Mad shared none of this optimism. The general was studying reconnaissance photographs that showed every square inch of the island had been bombed. "The Seventh Air Force dropped 5,800 tons in 2,700 sorties. In one square mile of Iwo Jima, a photograph showed 5,000 bomb craters." Admiral Nimitz thought he was dropping bombs "sufficient to pulverize everything on the island." But incredibly, the enemy defenses were growing. There were 450 major defensive installations when the bombing began. Now there were over 750. Howlin' Mad observed: "We thought it would blast any island off the military map, level every defense, no matter how strong, and wipe out the garrison. But nothing of the kind happened. Like the worm, which becomes stronger the more you cut it up, Iwo Jima thrived on our bombardment.

Kenneth Milstead, a 2nd Platoon buddy of Mike, Ira, Franklin, and Harlon, had just dropped into a shallow foxhole he'd dug when a shell landed beside him and blew him out again. Blood streamed from the embedded fragments in his face. "I could have been evacuated," Milstead recalled, "but the Japanese had pissed me off. I went from being scared to being angry. That was the day I became a Marine.

For most of the young boys, it had not fully sunk in yet that the defenders were not on Iwo, they were in Iwo, prowling the sixteen miles of catacombs.

Safety is much more than firearm manipulation; it is deciding what, when, and how to shoot. The entire shooting process is subordinate to safety and requires your mental presence. Do not rush yourself or others. When you don’t know something, stop and call for help. Nobody wants to appear foolish, and it will probably take a couple of months for your fellow shooters to forget that you had to ask for help to unload your own weapon. That is a small price to pay to avoid committing manslaughter.

I smiled and we both just stood there. Neither one of us made a move to go, even though it was late. A mischievous grin crept across her face. “Are you tired?” I liked the glint in her eye and I had no intention of ending this night if she didn’t want to, no matter how tired I was. “No.” “Do you want to go TP Sloan and Brandon’s house?” My laugh made her eyes dance. “I know it’s a little tenth-grade retro,” she said. “But I’ve always wanted to do it. And you can’t TP a house alone—it’s a rule.” “We’ll have to show up there tomorrow and help them clean it up. Pretend it’s just a lucky coincidence,” I said. “Can you borrow a tool from Brandon? I can text Sloan in the morning to tell her we’re going to pick it up. She’ll cook if she knows we’re coming. Then we’ll get breakfast and atone for our sins.” She grinned. A half an hour later I was crouched behind my truck two houses down from Brandon’s, game-planning with Kristen. She still hadn’t taken out her curlers. “If they wake up,” she whispered, “we scatter and reconvene at the donut place on Vanowen.” “Got it. If you’re captured, no matter what they do to you, don’t break under interrogation.” She scoffed quietly. “As if. I can’t be broken.” She snatched her roll and darted from behind the truck. We made short work of it. Operation TP Sloan and Brandon’s was completed in less than five minutes. No casualties. We got back into the truck laughing so hard it took me three tries to get the key in the ignition. Then I noticed she’d lost a curler. I got unbuckled. “No curlers left behind. It’s Marine Corps policy.” We got out for a recon mission on Brandon’s lawn. I located the fallen curler under a pile of TP by the mailbox. “Hey,” I whispered, holding it up. “Found it.” She beamed and jogged across the toilet-papered grass, but when she reached for the curler, I palmed it. “You’re injured,” I whispered. “You’ve lost a curler. The medics can reattach it, but I’ll need to carry you out. Get on my back.” I was only about 50 percent sure she would go for this. I banked on her not wanting to break character. She didn’t skip a beat. “You’re right,” she whispered. “Man down. Good call.” She jumped up and I piggybacked her to the truck, laughing the whole way. Those thirty seconds of her arms around my neck made my entire night.

research by the U.S. Marine Corps revealed “the most successful Marines were those with a strong internal locus of control – a belief they could influence their destiny through the choices they made.

December 1944. The last Christmas for too many young boys. Then off for the forty-day sail to Iwo Jima. The boys of Spearhead had been expertly trained for ten months. They were proficient in the techniques of war. But more important, they were a team, ready to fight for one another. These boys were bonded by feelings stronger than they would have for any other humans in their life. The vast, specialized city of men — boys, really, but a functioning society of experts now, trained and coordinated and interdependent and ready for its mission — will move out upon the Pacific. Behind them, in safe America, Bing Crosby sang of a white Christmas, just like the ones he used to know. Ahead lay a hot island of black sand, where many of them would ensure a long future of Christmases in America by laying down their lives.

It would be forty-four years before physicist Donald Olson would discover that D-Day at Tarawa occurred during one of only two days in 1943 when the moon's apogee coincided with a neap tide, resulting in a tidal range of only a few inches rather than several feet. The actions of these Marines trapped on the reef would determine the outcome of the battle for Tarawa. If they hesitated or turned back, their buddies ashore would be decimated. But they didn't hesitate. They were Marines. They jumped from their stranded landing crafts into chest-deep water holding their arms and ammunition above their heads. In one of the bravest scenes in the history of warfare, these Marines slogged through the deep water into sheets of machine-gun bullets. There was nowhere to hide, as Japanese gunners raked the Marines at will. And the Marines, almost wholly submerged and their hands full of equipment, could not defend themselves. But they kept coming. Bullets ripped through their ranks, sending flesh and blood flying as screams pierced the air. Japanese steel killed over 300 Marines in those long minutes as they struggled to the shore. As the survivors stumbled breathlessly onto shore their boots splashed in water that had turned bright red with blood. This type of determination and valor among individual Marines overcame seemingly hopeless odds, and in three days of hellish fighting Tarawa was captured. The Marines suffered a shocking 4,400 casualties in just seventy-two hours of fighting as they wiped out the entire Japanese garrison of 5,000.

To its acolytes, the Marine Corps was no less than a secular religion-Jesuits with guns-grounded in a training regimen and an ethos that relied on a historical narrative of comradeship and brotherhood in arms stretching over 150 years. In short, if a man wanted to be part of America's toughest lineup, he had best join the institution that had fought at the Halls of Montezuma and Tripoli, Belleau Wood and Guadalcanal, Tarawa and Iwo Jima.

leaders stemming from overboldness are a necessary part of learning.6 We should deal with such errors leniently; there must be no “zero defects” mentality. Abolishing “zero defects” means that we do not stifle boldness or initiative through the threat of punishment. It

Humans have significant cognitive limitations. It has been shown that imposing cognitive load can help uncover liars. A liar must create a story and monitor the fabrication to ensure it sounds believable while attempting to maintain a believable appearance. While telling a lie, the liar must monitor the interviewer’s reaction to assess how he or she is doing; the liar is also taxed mentally because a lie requires continuous effort whereas telling the truth is automatic. So as thoughtful questions are brought to the table, forcing the liar to spend more mental energy creating a lie and keeping the lies straight, the liar becomes vulnerable to leaking emotions and other indicators that can alert us to deception.40 Additionally, humans cannot divide their attention well. The more tasks a person divides his attention between, the poorer he will perform any of those tasks. Another example is short-term memory. Humans can only remember, on average, between five to nine items using their short-term memory. All of this is important

Humans are not generally spontaneous or random. This principle is related to the second principle above. As much as we think we are unpredictable and random, we really are very predictable and follow regular patterns. A study that tracked 10,000 people via cell phone concluded that people display a very high degree of regularity when they travel, because they return to only a few, very frequented locations.43 A more mundane example is the game Rock, Paper, Scissors. Research shows that, even in games that rely on being unpredictable, humans are, in fact, very predictable and not at all random. We involuntarily mimic others, and we predictably attempt to come back from losses—at least in Rock, Paper, Scissors—by doing whatever beat us in the last round.44 This means that our enemy will set patterns that, if we take the time to analyze,

Guys, I’m gonna pretend like all of you are incapacitated or unconscious. And if none of you makes a move, I’ll be leaving you to your own resources. Otherwise, this drone’s detonating its onboard explosives. As the only one of us who’s not physically present, I’ve got zero fucks to give about how that goes. Your call. [Conner]

If you knew your job and you did your job, you could not have a better friend in the Corps than General Krulak.

Krulak wrote back that the United States did not need the Marine Corps; the Army and Air Force could do anything the Marines could. The Marine Corps flourished, he said, because of what “the grassroots of our country believes we are and believes we can do.” He said that America had three beliefs about the Marine Corps. First, when troubles come, the Marines will take care of them and do so at once. Second, Americans had an “almost mystical” belief that when the Marines go to war, their performance will be “dramatically and decisively successful—not most of the time, but always.” And third, Americans saw the Marines as masters of an “unfailing alchemy” that converts “unoriented youths into proud, self-reliant, stable citizens into whose hands the nation’s affairs may safely be entrusted.” He ended by saying that although America did not need the Marines, it wanted them. But, he warned, if Marines ever lost the ability to meet the high, almost spiritual standards of the American people, “the Marine Corps will then quickly disappear.

In his book Joker One, Campbell tells how after the platoon’s first prolonged engagement, one of his Marines came up to him and said, “Sir, do you think we fought well today, sir? I mean, that was our first big fight. Would the Marines who fought at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, you know, be proud of us?” Campbell had to turn away and compose himself before he answered that the Marines had indeed acquitted themselves well. And as time passes, the battle for Fallujah, some of the bloodiest door-to-door fighting in history, will rank among the great battles of the Marine Corps.

The Army guys would be tough, but the Navy Seals would be brutal, I love my Marine Corps, but the SEALS were second to none, not only in the US, but the entire planet.

No lightning bolt comes down and makes you a leader, they told us. You behave like a leader and so you become one. I remain a huge believer in the Marine Corps way. I have said this many times, and it’s no exaggeration: virtually everything I know about being a leader, I learned in the Marine Corps. How to deliver clear messages. How to set standards and stick to them. How to treat other people and how to treat yourself. Those are lessons every leader needs to learn and to live by. Like how the officer always eats last. That may sound small, but it isn’t. Even today, I still can’t go through a buffet line until everyone else has been fed.

Morals   A relative value can become moral when it protects and respects the Life Value of self and others. The great founding values of America, such as truth, freedom, and charity, have one thing in common: When they are functioning correctly—morally—they are life-protecting or life-enhancing for all. But they are still relative. Our “moral” values must be constantly examined to make sure that they are performing their life-respecting mission. Even the Marine Corps core values of, “honor, courage, and commitment” require examination in this context. “Courage” can wrongly be expressed as reckless martyrdom, “commitment” can sometimes become irrational fanaticism, and “honor” can be twisted into self-righteousness, conceit, and disrespect for others. Our enemies believe in their own standard of “honor” (we have all heard the saying “honor among thieves”), their own standard of “courage,” and they are surely committed to their ends. What then sets us apart? Respect for the lives of self and all others sets us apart.

The president called upon the Marine emergency evacuation helicopter that the White House Military Office had stationed nearby in the event of a surprise Soviet nuclear attack. The flight across Narragansett Bay lasted just six minutes, as opposed to the hour Eisenhower would have spent on the ferry—and the helicopter, piloted by Virgil Olson, was nearly triple the size of the Bell Ranger passenger-wise. This, Eisenhower decided, was a much better option. Since the Air Force didn’t possess the large transport helicopters Eisenhower desired, the Marine Corps took over the presidential helicopter fleet. Within two months—lightning speed in government

the defense establishment of the United States of America is so complicated, not to say baroque, that many different agencies can accomplish any given task. Want to invade a small Caribbean island? Who you gonna call: the Army or the Navy’s Army, which is to say, the Marine Corps? Want to call in an air strike? You could ask the Air Force … but the US Navy has lots and lots of fighter jets and tends to get annoyed if they’re left out. And the Army of the Navy has its own Air Force, the USMC Air Corps, and they’ve got aircraft carriers. It

In its first ten months of operation, the Eighth lost 188 heavy bombers and some 1,900 crewmen; those numbers would skyrocket over the next year and a half. By the end of the conflict, the U.S. air operations in Europe would suffer more fatalities—26,000—than the entire Marine Corps in its protracted bloody campaigns in the Pacific. “To fly in the Eighth Air Force in those days,” recalled Harrison Salisbury, “was to hold a ticket to a funeral. Your own.” The savagery of the air war was not due solely to the ferocity of German defenses. Early in the war, when the Air Force brass in Washington were touting the advantages of high-altitude flying, they failed to realize that the extreme atmospheric conditions experienced by the crews could kill as effectively as a Messerschmitt or Focke-Wulf. “There are apparently little things that one doesn’t think about prior to getting into operations,” commented Dr. Malcolm Grow, the Eighth’s chief medical officer. Little things like oxygen deprivation, which could cause unconsciousness and death in a matter of minutes, or extensive frostbite, caused by several hours of exposure to temperatures of 50 to 60 degrees below zero. Until early 1944, more airmen were hospitalized for frostbite than for combat injuries. As

I began thinking about the key insight from chapter one and the ideas that Gen. Charles Krulak used to redesign Marine Corps boot camp by strengthening recruits’ internal locus of control: • Motivation becomes easier when we transform a chore into a choice. Doing so gives us a sense of control.

Understanding the limbic system and its core freeze, flight, or fight responses is the first phase in detecting a threat. It’s important to remember that the enemy stalking a Marine on patrol or a seemingly helpless woman on her way home is under duress. This stress manifests itself in physical actions. If we look for these particular physical actions when our limbic system gives us the “heads up, something’s

The U.S. Marine Corps, for example, advertises itself as a place to build strength and character. In doing so, it’s not advertising only to potential recruits; it’s also reminding civilians that the people who serve in the Marines have strength and character.

Historian Citino’s description is found in his outstanding study titled, aptly enough, The German Way of War: The Germans called it Bewegungskrieg—the war of movement on the operational level.... [I] t meant the maneuver of large units to strike an enemy a sharp, even annihilating blow as rapidly as possible. It could be a surprise assault on an unprotected flank or, better yet, both flanks—or even better than that, his rear. Such a vigorous operational posture implied certain other characteristics ... an army with an extremely high level of battlefield aggression, an officer corps that tended to launch attacks no matter what the odds, and a flexible system of command. 1

It also incorporated the military philosophy of Col. John R. Boyd (USAF, ret.) and the reliance on the Marine Corps’ own former strategies and tactics found in its “Small Wars” DNA. 5 American history and its foreign relations helped to forge the Marine Corps into a military institution that has the unique characteristic of being the only waterborne fighting force in the American military experience. This can be seen in the very DNA of the Marine Corps from its inception and its concomitant history. In foreign actions, both bellicose and humanitarian, from the American Revolution to its present participation in the Global War on Terror, the Marine Corps has transformed itself into a force-in-readiness capable of employing maneuver-type tactics, casting aside the attritional defensive-offensive way of war.

General Gray, the 29th Commandant of the Marine Corps, characterized this evolutionary development this way: You have to understand Maneuver Warfare is really a thought process.... So it was much more of an impact and it is probably not even a good name but that’s what we gave it. The point is, it was all about empowering people and letting people do what they think they had to do, letting people make mistakes and so on, so they learn, and that was one of the big leadership parts of the maneuver thought process. The empowerment of people, and the idea of decentralization, in other words, maybe decentralizing operations so the intent is to understand two echelons up, and two echelons down, that type of thing. So that thought process is very, very important. I think that we in essence turned the Marine Corp loose. So the Marine Corp really did it. I just let them do it. 7

Military education is a major part of this evolution into a MCWW. No new doctrine could have taken hold without the presence of militarily educated warriors. In fact, it has become standard practice for all United States Marines to become thinkers and readers. 11 Required readings encompass the entire Corps, from general officers down to newly minted privates leaving the recruit depots of Parris Island and Camp Pendelton in San Diego. Not only is reading now a fundamental aspect of being a Marine, it is also a socialization process within the Corps itself, for these readings lead to formal and informal discussion groups focusing on various aspects of military history, doctrine, strategy, and tactics. In part, this educational process grew out of the Reformers’ ad hoc meetings for the MCWW development in order get its center of gravity embedded within the Marine Corps. 12

In General Gray’s mind, the Corps needed to change how it would do business in this new battlespace. The impetus behind this initiative can be found in the post-Vietnam analysis of the effectiveness of the American campaign in Southeast Asia. Couple this with the bombing of the Marine 24th Amphibious Unit, Battalion Landing Team, HQ Barracks, Beirut, Lebanon in 1983, and it was obvious that serious and immediate battlespace changes needed to be implemented. 14

The MCWW’s maneuver warfare and its legacy has positioned the Corps and its warriors/ scholars into the future as the nation’s “Force in Readiness” worldwide. No other branch of service in the United States can make that claim. More than lip service has been paid to a transition to Boyd’s maneuver warfare and the advantages derived from this type of thought and engagement by a small amphibious fighting force.

For those of you who may not understand the enemy we face out here let me remind you that the previous week this group of terrorists took two innocent and unwitting women who had Downs Syndrome, rigged them with explosive vest and detonated them 20 minutes apart in a crowded market causing several deaths and hundreds of injuries... For any of you out there who doubt the validity of this war and the evil that resides in our enemy I ask you to study your history again. Over the last 20+ years dating back to the bombing of the Marine Corps Barracks in Lebanon, various factions of radical Islamic Terrorists have been committing heinous acts of terrorism against the free world. We are fighting the same enemy here... While the American media strives daily to erase the memory of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and paint this war as an unjust occupation of a sovereign nation, men... are out here hunting down and destroying the enemies of the very freedom that allows our media to try and discredit us. Terrorism is real, evil is real, this war is real and real men and women are in this fight because righteousness and freedom are worth fighting for... Sincerely, The Angry American

a very strange and brilliant marine major named Earl “Pete” Ellis wrote a paper for the Marine Corps in which he said that Japan was the United States’ greatest enemy and the two would ultimately engage in war. He based his hypothesis on the tactical movements of Japan in the Pacific after World War I and on what he interpreted as its clear goals of expansion under the cloak of secrecy. He predicted with uncanny prescience that the initial strategy of a Japanese attack would be to destroy a great portion of the US fleet. He further predicted that the United States, in declaring war in retaliation, would adopt an island-hopping strategy across the Pacific, building up advance bases and airstrips until the Japanese homeland was close enough to be easily attacked. The only way to fend off the Japanese would be by adopting an amphibious assault doctrine as a new kind of military strategy. Ellis may have been the most brilliant marine in history and also the most tragic. Suspected to be bipolar and hospitalized several times for alcoholism, he never went above the rank of major because of his emotional instability. He died in 1923 at the age of forty-two on the Japanese-controlled island of Palau in the western Pacific while supposedly on a spy mission. No one knows quite how he died. But his amphibious assault theory, now considered one of the greatest

Plainly, by the turn of the century, the Marines' combatant image was etched onto the imaginations of the American people. The recruiting posters told the story. In 1907, when Army posters said, "Join the Army and Learn a Trade," and Navy posters said, "Join the Navy and See the World," the Marine posters came to the point with disarming simplicity, "First to Fight.

On the first run, two bombs landed within fifty yards of the target. We were shocked but still unbelieving. Someone else chose another target, and on this run the bombs made a direct hit! After three more runs, all with similar results, there was no doubt: all-weather bombing had arrived in the Marine Corps. On that day, Dalby earned a chorus of supporters. The support was not, however, universal. In the audience was a brigadier general from Washington. After the demonstration, he examined the equipment and was repelled by its obvious tentative condition. He commented that it had no real combat application, that "rain would short out this maze of wires in nothing flat." I heard Dalby declare that he would "never let a general behind the scenes again until I have it packaged up like a box of candy.

I was confident that we could negotiate the rough coral, having done it several times before. But not this time. A coral head knocked off one of the tracks. There we were, helplessly immobilized some fifty to one hundred yards from dry land, unable to go one way or another, inaccessible by boat. My experience with previous track problems assured me that its repair would be at least a two-hour job. Admiral King, at his best, was not an easy-going man. When he understood the situation it took him only a moment to address a few plain words to me -- words not intended to contribute to my long-term peace of mind. Then, without hesitation, he clambered over the side -- starched white uniform and all -- followed by his aide, who was not happy either. They waded ashore to the accompaniment of the admiral's cursing, thumbed a ride to the dock two miles away, and finally made their way back to the Wyoming. Members of the staff told me later that the admiral was still enraged when he boarded the ship, making his feelings known to General Smith loudly and without restraint. The general, in a living disclaimer of his nickname, "Howling Mad," never reproved me.

Maneuver warfare is a way of thinking in and about war that should shape our every action. It is a state of mind born of a bold will, intellect, initiative, and ruthless opportunism... maneuver warfare is a philosophy...for 'fighting 'smart.