Posted on 06/30/2025 2:42:03 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Incompetent leaders misled the Marine Corps into ‘force design.’ It badly needs to return to conventional combat power.
In the Marine Corps of my father and uncles, the term “Feather Merchant” referred to marines who were considered to be lightweights. These usually were folks who were “in the rear with the gear,” such as clerk-typists and supply types along with staff officers with no front-line combat experience.
The term generally fell out of use during the Vietnam War and the War on Terrorism when marines found other, more colorful ways to describe anyone who wasn’t on the front lines. In many cases, this was unfair. Every marine is trained to be a rifleman. In many emergency situations from WWII to Vietnam, most Feather Merchants used their rifles to devastating effect on Japanese, North Koreans, and Vietnamese Communist forces in emergency situations.
However, there is a new breed of Feather Merchants, those being the three and four star generals who have turned the Marine Corps from the nation’s 9-1-1 force to a China-oriented missile force that has failed the nation’s call three times in the last six years, leaving the other services scrambling to make up for their lack of availability. And the Corps doesn’t even have the missiles to accomplish the new mission yet.
The last commandant told the nation that amphibious operations were obsolete and the Navy could get by with fewer amphibious ships. Consequently he released it from the commitment to maintain enough ships to maintain a 24-7 amphibious presence in the world’s most likely trouble spots (the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, and the Western Pacific).
Now, the current commandant says we need more big deck amphibs to maintain the 24-7 commitment; but he enthusiastically supported the last guy’s position when he was the Assistant Commandant. When asked how...
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
I'd echo those here who say that you go where they send you and, in the overall scheme of things, it's all a vital part of the Big mission. I served as a Cold Warrior in both MAC and SAC, and they both had their missions. There's just a lot less edge in your mission when your main resource is giant cargo planes as opposed to being a SAC trained killer with Alert aircraft and missiles.
The Navy thought of Merchant Marine ships as feather merchants, their ships weren’t for waging war, they were for commerce and transporting merchandise.
Semper Fi brothers.
I had a Battery Commander who was a great staff officer, and should've stayed where he was at. He reminded me of Captain Sobel from Band of Brothers, and couldn't read a map to save his life.
I thought my accounting degree would have me commanding a desk in Finance Corps, but it didn't quite work out that way. The Army made me an Air Defender, and I'm glad they did. My tour in Germany (77-81) was served at two NATO air bases, Hahn and Spangdahlem.
The closest thing I saw to combat was during Nuclear Surety Inspections at a nearby Nike Hercules battery. One of my extra duties was to lead a 40 man platoon deployed to battle terrorists, such as the Baader Meinhof gang, should they overrun the battery. We issued live ammo before leaving our motor pool, and fortunately, we never had an injury, accident, or round discharged.
During those NSIs, I experienced real pucker factor. The outbriefings were attended by the chain of command, up to the Deputy CG of 32nd AADCOM. He was there to relieve them all should the battery fail its NSI.
My last NSI (of 6) was noteworthy, at least to me. I really got into it with the team chief, an LTC. He just couldn't understand why I took 3 1/2 hours to get my platoon to the site. We beat our mission time by 30 minutes. My guys were air defenders, and I gave them a couple hours of small unit infantry tactics. That training played a big role in our success.
Our conversation got pretty heated, I didn't appreciate the tone he took with me, and my men. He pointed that out the next day at the outbriefing. I was really pissed at being singled out, but it also meant the battery passed with flying colors, it was closed book.
Alls well that ends well. BG Archie Cannon was the first to speak after the evaluation team left. He found me in the audience, pointed his finger at me and said, "LT NHN, I'll take that hit for you. Anytime you want to give your soldiers extra training, you have my express permission!"
I knew a guy who didn’t want to get drafted during Vietnam, so he joined the USAF. One year later he was guarding aircraft at a forward airbase in Vietnam. He was at the outer perimeter of the base on the night that Tet started with a rifle and a dog.
The fun part is that if you are 800 yards ahead of someone else, they are now a REMF! The unreasonable childish unfairness is part of the good natured comedy. Like an 0311 calling a mortarman rear echelon support.
Like the Tun Tavern joke. in 1775, Samuel Nicholas enticed the first man to sign into the USMC with a promise of a uniform and a musket. So he signs...
The after a few hours and no one else signs up, Nicholas has to sweeten the deal and offers the next guy a uniform, a musket and a large cup of rum also.
The first guy says “we didn’t have it that easy in the old Corps”.
“Then the Marines are obsolete. That is their raison d’etre.”
You wish.... their reason de eter is to be absolutely freakin unreasonably good at any kind of combat they are tasked with.
Wet finger in the air.
With all due respect, the Marines have a unique, and very important, mission. If it is merely to be bad-ass, there is no need to for a separate service from the Army. Any organization gets into trouble when they forget what their mission is. I am not advocating getting rid of the Marines; only that they return to their proper mission.
Late 80s, I went to Little Creek for a different school, but they had Amtrac school there. That wasn’t what it was called, but that’s what it was.
Lol - exactly.
talk about bad karma...
I have a couple of interesting bad karma related stories
- I was drafted into the USMC. 2 years active - 4 years inactive reserves.
At the induction center, there were 8 of us that had a blue 8x11 blank piece of paper on top of our records.
We get herded into a room and a Marine 2nd Lt. starts to give the oath.
One guy jumps out of line and says “I’m joining the (whatever branch he said.”)
Friend of mine from the hood peeks into the room and says “Hey...what are you doing ?
2nd Lt. goes into a drill instructor voice and says “You, get your ass into the line” or some thing to that effect... my friend is now drafted into the USMC.
We went to Boot Camp\ITR(Infantry Training Regiment)\Artillery School together and got our first assignment together @ 29 Palms.
We separately went to Vietnam at the same time. Ended up together briefly.
Here’s the kicker...a Marine’s Vietnam tour of duty was 13 months.
My friend and I had 11 months left of active duty left. We both got sent over.
Coming out of boot camp,(some say it was out of schools) a Marine’s SRB(Service Record Book) may have been tagged with a white 3x5 card or a blue card or a red card or no card at all. (The color had meaning)
At 29 palms, I applied for a change of MOS to be in the data processing dept as that was my career at the time. Marine in charged loved my resume and I had an interview. I gave him my SRB he took one look and pushed it back saying “I can’t touch you”. My SRB was red tagged - that meant I was definitely going to Vietnam.
Good Luck looking for sources to back-up the color-coding. If i had to prove it, I can’t other than the say-so of another Marine.
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