Posted on 07/22/2007 6:46:27 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
First the Marine Corps made Chuck Norris an honorary Marine. Now the Corps wants all Marines to follow in his footsteps.
All Marines must now qualify for their tan belt in the Corps' version of martial arts by the end of 2007, Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway said in a recent Corps-wide message.
The move mostly affects those who joined before 2001, when the service made the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program part of basic training and the Basic School, said 1st Lt. Brian P. Donnelly, a spokesman for Manpower and Reserve Affairs.
The Corps originally hoped to have all Marines earn their tan belt by the end of fiscal 2003 and then have Marines attain higher belts by the end of fiscal 2004.
Now the higher belts are no longer goals but requirements for Marines, Donnelly said in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes.
"All infantrymen will be trained to green belt by the end of CY [calendar year] 2008," Conway said in the July 16 message. "All other combat arms Marines will be trained to gray belt by the end of CY 2008."
The changes apply to all Marines, including reservists, said retired Lt. Col. Joseph C Shusko, director of the Martial Arts Center of Excellence.
"A Marine is a Marine," he said.
The tan belt shows that Marines have mastered basic skills such as how to fall, move, throw punches, choke an opponent and counter someone coming at you, Shusko said.
The gray belt is the next step up and shows Marines have learned techniques such as lower-body strikes, chokes and how to get out of a headlock, he said.
The green belt is third in the series and shows Marines have learned skills such as how to rip muscle from bone, Shusko said.
The martial-arts training also teaches Marines how to hone their mental skills as warriors, Shusko said. This involves learning about other cultures such as the Spartans, Zulus and Apaches.
Another component of the training is character development, which ties the physical skills Marine learn with what they do as good citizens, he said.
Conway praised the character development aspect of the martial-arts training in the message.
"It has, at its center, the Marine Corps ethos that includes our core values of honor, courage, and commitment, as well as the legacy of selfless and honorable services passed from one generation of Marines to the next," Conway said in the message.
The switch to mandatory martial arts training came after Training and Education Command recommended revamping the program as part of changes to Marine character training, Shusko said. Those changes include moving the climactic "Crucible" exercise — where Marines march about 40 miles over 54 hours with little food or sleep — to the end of basic training.
Got home last year for my mother’s funeral.
I don’t see a big change of training here. But what I do see is an aggravating display of politically correct warring.
Ordering a more detailed and extensive hand-to-hand combat training regimen means our young Marines have orders to dance more and more with enemy combatants instead of just killing them and moving on, or the USMC mission has changed so much we no longer have a clear path in any conflict.
Obviously winning points via a PC war is all that matters lately and is going to get a lot more of our boys killed.
Training is good. Having to play PC games with your enemy is bad, very bad.
Semper Fi
That story about “it jammed” did seem weird since she also claimed to never have got off even one round.......the one in the chamber always fires.
sun due bu du jitstso’
the art of the open hand.
okinawa 1976
“shows Marines have learned skills such as how to rip muscle from bone”
I find this one a bit hard to believe.
Dan went into organized crime in Japan and Hong Kong. He worked himself up through the ranks of those who were the assassins, henchmen; the thug ranks. Dan Fuji became one of the underworld’s most skilled Martial Arts experts.
Later, Dan was himself converted to Jesus Christ, and immediately left the underworld. We spent time with Dan on several occasions in the late 1980s. We discovered that Dan wrote a booklet called “Karate and Christ.”
“Karate and Christ” was written as a discouragement to Christians from getting involved in the Martial Arts; asking young people to resist the Martial Arts because of potential spiritual dangers in the Arts.
Dan said something to us, and I have read it in his booklet, and here it is: Many of the very best Martial Arts practitioners who ever lived were fighting on the beaches and in the trenches in the Pacific trying to defend against the American invasions of the islands during the Second World War. There were many long bloody bouts of hand-to-hand combat on those islands.
The U.S. Marines were using old-fashioned hand-to-hand combat tactics against skilled Martial Arts belts. Who won those hand-to-hand contests? Overall, the U.S. Marines defeated Japanese black belt Martial Artists on those beaches.
Dan went on to make the point that there is much more involved in war than the style of fighting.
Doesnt matter what his specialty is, I can still kick his wimp butt. /keyboard commando
“Marines have learned skills such as how to rip muscle from bone, Shusko said.”
If they use such skills on the field, then somebody will want to courtmartial them. Just wait and see.
Chuck Norris was an Airman.
Good news.. altho I remember some of the same stuff being part of our Boot Camp routine.
Besides pugil sticks, choking the snot out of one of your fellow recruits with a piece of garden hose were moments one doesn’t forget.
Glad to see they are continuing a tradition.
George Patten described the M1 rifle as a super weapon. Despite all the noise about B29s, aircraft carriers and atom bombs, the rifle is still the most basic weapon of war and any major advantage in that is gigantic.
Kids growing up playing baseball were able to throw hand grenades further than kids growing up with karate. Imagine that....
The most major weapon you see in those films of island invasions appears to be the flame thrower; the most common way Japanese died in WW-II likewise appears to be having been burned to death.
The Germans never had any sort of a counterpart to the Browning heavy machinegun. Again something basic. The only real German advantage seems to have been in tanks.
There were a dozen or so very simple things which Hitler did wrong; doing any two of them right would probably have won for him. The simplest would have been simply not invading Russia. I've had Russians tell me the soviet state would have collapsed within another five or six years and Hitler could have picked up the pieces.
Hot Damn! The Corps is now even more hard core. I love it. I always wondered why the military didn’t take martial arts more seriously. I guess they finally came around.
I think you help make Dan Fuji’s point.
Oh right yeah. I’ve heard of that. It’s mostly just head butting and then kicking people when they’re on the ground.
Do you realize that you are still alive only because that statement amused Chuck Norris?
A second possibility is that the wimp is way too scared to do anything about it. :-)
You and I spent our time running from hogs at Ft. Polk. What belt does that get?
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