I’m very aware of Navy corpsmen, having worked with a former corpsman. My point was that corpsmen, though working alongside Marines, were officially Navy people. Similarly, if Marines needed computer support, it could be provided by Navy people.
Oh, okay, got it. I didn’t quite get your meaning before.
Funny how a lot of people don’t know the Navy and Marines are practically joined at the hip. Everyone knows about aircraft carriers but I was stationed on the Tarawa which has been decommissioned. It held a compliment of 800 sailors and 2200 Marines while on mission underway. It was the next size down from an aircraft carrier and had a flight deck and hanger just like a carrier. The difference was it held helicopters and Harrier jets; both Marine manned and supported. It also held beachhead attack craft to get the Marines from the ship to the beach. As a corpsman I worked in the built-in hospital complete with an operating room and rotated as the ship rolled and pitched so the surgeons could still do their work in a storm or just heavy seas.
I guess that kind of mission readiness is outdated now with drones and other unmanned aircraft. If that ever changes though; I suspect it’s sitting somewhere in mothball condition so it could be put back in service if needed within a year or so.
By the way, when deployed, you can’t tell the difference between a corpsman and the Marines he’s assigned to. For all practical purposes that corpsman is a Marine. I regret not taking on that kind of duty or following through with BUD’s training I qualified for in Boot Camp. The Navy was a great life when some of the idiotic peacetime rules and crap weren’t making it a pain to stick with but maybe it was that way to root out those who shouldn’t stay in anyway.