Free Republic

With the conclusion of WW II the years of bloodshed and mind-numbing violence finally ended. But a massive demobilization of servicemen began, the purpose to slash military spending. Liberal Democrats supported an effort to completely abolish the Marine Corps, first established under Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Language of Liberty This effort was supported by the Doolittle Board, created by the Truman Administration and headed by none other than Army General Jimmy Doolittle himself. The Board called for the Marine Corps to be disbanded as a separate military outfit and unified with Army units. As you can imagine, this...

A high school senior headed to serve in the U.S. Marines was surprised with an early graduation after it was discovered he was going to miss the scheduled graduation. Homestead High School senior Jainiel Price sported a smile on his face as he walked on stage before friends and family, Friday. Price and his classmates did a practice run-through ceremony, but for Price, it was the real thing. “I’m very appreciative, I get to see him graduate now,” Price’s mother, Chunkier Price said. Price’s family was in the audience. “I’m proud because it’s always been his dream,” said Price’s younger...

The pilot has been identified in the crash.

At last, Marine private and son of Healdsburg John Saini is coming home. Born to an Alexander Valley grape-growing family in 1923, Saini (sigh-EE-knee) was 20 when he died early on in World War II’s deadly, three-day Battle of Tarawa. He was buried on the Pacific atoll along with more than 1,000 other Marines and sailors and more than 5,000 Japanese and Korean soldiers. Informed of his death, his shattered immigrant parents in Healdsburg, Mike and Mary Saini, awaited word of where he was interred and how they might return his earthly remains to Sonoma County for proper, Catholic burial....

What he didn’t know until then, he said, and what he learned that very instant, was that Marines are not normal. Choking past the emotion he said, “Sir, in the name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what they did.”... “No sane man.” “They saved us all.”... By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only...

THE PENTAGON – The Marine Corps intends to add improved sensors and precision-strike capability to its entire KC-130J Super Hercules tanker/transport plane and MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor fleets, applying the “Harvest Hawk” concept to make both aircraft more multi-mission, the deputy commandant of the Marine Corps for aviation told USNI News this week. Lt. Gen. Jon Davis said the Marines’ next aviation plan would include upgrading all 79 C-130Js into Harvest Hawk-capable platforms. The Hercules Airborne Weapons Kit (HAWK) includes both modifications to the plane – the installation of a new MX-29 sensor ball with a laser designator on the nose...

DES MOINES, Iowa — The Marine Corps says it has begun investigating whether it mistakenly identified one of the men shown raising the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima in one of the iconic images of World War II after two amateur history buffs began raising questions about the picture. The Marines announced its inquiry more than a year after Eric Krelle, of Omaha, Nebraska, and Stephen Foley, of Wexford, Ireland, began raising doubts about the identity of one man. In November 2014, the Omaha World-Herald published an extensive story about their claims and Saturday was the first to report the...

In the summer of 1925, a woman put her 2-week old son in a shoebox and dropped him off with a neighbor because she couldn’t take care of him. James Gleason has been born prematurely, said his daughter, Barbara Korchak. “He wasn’t expected to live,” Korchak said. But he did, and in summer 1943, he turned 18 during a bloody World War II battle on the island of New Georgia, where he was saving lives as a Navy combat corpsman assigned to a secret unit called the Marine Raiders. Gleason earned the nickname “Doc” during his time with the Raiders....

Daniel Torres was an undocumented immigrant when he used a false US birth certificate to join the marine corps. After serving in Iraq, he was found out and discharged. Eventually he returned to Tijuana, where he was born, though he said he was always homesick for the country he had fought for.

The United States of America is in mortal jeopardy and most Americans, tucked away in their beds tonight don’t even understand why or who is responsible for their peril. Those responsible are not from North Korea, China, Iran, Russia or ISIS. They are Department of Defense bureaucrats, members of Congress and senior leaders in the US military. The US military is committing suicide. We are in the first stages of beginning a process that is going to decimate the speed, lethality and combat power of the Marines and the US Army combat arms and special operations. The US military is...

In a victory rare to U.S. military aviation, two widows of Marine Corps pilots have won a 16-year fight to lift blame from their husbands’ shoulders for a 2000 Osprey crash that killed 19 people, including 15 Marines from San Diego County. Test pilots Lt. Col. John Brow and Maj. Brooks Gruber were at the controls of the MV-22 aircraft when it crashed in the Arizona desert during an exercise. The revolutionary aircraft -- which travels like an airplane but lands vertically like a helicopter -- was still in the operational evaluation stage. The Marine Corps had a lot of...

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy has awarded a contract to Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. to build AH-1Z Viper helicopter gunships for the Pakistani government. Under the $170 million Naval Air Systems Command contract, Bell will build the nine AH-1Zs and nine auxiliary fuel kits for the helicopters as a purchase under the Foreign Military Sales program. Deliveries are expected to be completed by September 2018, according to the contract announcement. The approval of the sale by the State Department was made a year ago for a maximum of 15 Vipers. The Pakistani Army will be the first international customer for...

The US military is in mortal danger as I write this article. Americans have no idea that vast social changes forced upon the military are on the verge of destroying it. Americans will no longer sleep peaceably in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. We are in serious jeopardy of losing the one institution that has enabled us to maintain our freedom for 240 years. We are in serious danger of losing the one institution that successfully defeated and destroyed the world’s thugs, maniacs and sociopaths that teed off against us....

BAE Systems’ laser-guided rocket has been rushed into combat on the AV-8B Harrier, seven months after it was requested by the top brass of the US Marine Corps. The semi-active-laser-seeking 70mm (2.75in) rocket, enabled by BAE’s mid-body guidance and control section, is already deployed on US Navy and Marine Corps attack helicopters and was recently acquired by the Army for the AH-64 Apache gunship, but it will soon become a standard tool on the fixed-wing AV-8B jump jet. US Naval Air Systems Command is delivering 80 units initially to Marine Attack Squadron-223 (VMA-223), which is currently deployed to an undisclosed...

Among the memorable television commercials of the 1990s was the one where a couple of mechanics are attempting to force a too-large battery into a man’s car. The owner protests that the battery is too big, but the mechanics bring out a hammer and promise to “make it fit.” The commercial does a flashback to when the two mechanics were children, and one was attempting to force a square peg into a round hole. One boy insists, “It’s not going in!”; but the other responds that the solution is to “Just keep hitting it.” That sums up how the U.S....

The USS America, a Gator Navy amphibious assault ship built specifically to accommodate Marine Corps F-35Bs, has just left port for sea trials after having to be overhauled for ten months immediately following its original introduction into the fleet due to issues over carrying the aircraft it was designed for. The USS America already had its well deck, used for launching and recovering hovercraft and beach landing ships for ambibous operations, omitted in its design to focus on aviation capabilities. In other words, it is an aircraft carrier not an amphibious assault ship. The main problem is that the ship...

The US Marines are the latest casualty in the Maoist Cultural Revolution being shoved down the throat of the military and incinerating the fighting spirit and readiness of the armed forces like a five alarm fire. As reported this week by Military.Com, Marines across the Corps will be challenged on their unconscious prejudices and presuppositions as women get the opportunity to become grunts for the first time. Unconscious prejudices and presuppositions defined as simple facts such as women lack the upper body strength, the aerobic lung capacity, testosterone for aggressiveness, are more prone to injuries, while possessing a myriad of...

Video at link shows the apology yesterday made by the senior Marine Corps brass in Okinawa, Japan over a increasingly hot situation in the form of an alleged rape of a Japanese woman in a hotel room by a Marine stationed in the island. I believe the alleged perp has been remanded to Japanese custody where he will face the Jaoanwse justice system.

Pat Conroy’s family eased him from this life into the next by reading poems, playing country music and singing to him. “We did sing the Marine Corps Hymn,” his sister Kathy Harvey said. “It was the only way to send him out.” This was an appropriate choice. The man whose Marine Corps father had so brutalized his childhood still maintained the utmost respect for the Marines. Marine Corps families, Conroy used to say, eat other families for breakfast. The same dynamic held in Conroy’s relationship with The Citadel, the military college in Charleston whose savage traditions he fictionalized in “The...

Federal authorities on Thursday arrested a New Hampshire man for his role in a standoff by Nevada ranchers opposed to federal control of public lands. Gerald DeLemus, of Rochester, was named in an indictment in Nevada as a “mid-level leader” and organizer of a conspiracy to recruit, organize, train and provide support to armed men and other followers of rancher Cliven Bundy. DeLemus, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and tea party activist, last year signed on as a member of presidential candidate Donald Trump’s New Hampshire veterans coalition. A July news release posted on Trump’s website listed DeLemus as a...