United States Marine Corp

1.             We stole the Eagle from the Air Force,

                The Anchor from the Navy,

                The rope from the Army,

                And on the seventh day when God rested,

                We overran His perimeter and stole the Globe

                And have been running the show ever since.

2.             To err is human,

                To forgive Devine,

                Neither of which is Marine Corps policy.

3.             “Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they’ve made a difference to this world….

                The Marines don’t have that problem.”  President Ronald Reagan, 1985.

4.             When you’re the finest, it’s hard to be humble.  Anon.

5.             These comments are not necessarily supported by non-Marines.

Nothing irritates non-Marines more than comments similar to the above – that’s why Marines do it!  But every so often an outsider says or writes something that illustrates his understanding of the Marines and their philosophy.  A recent article in The Record, a major North Jersey newspaper, reported the death of Cpl. Sean Kelly, USMC, of Pitman, New Jersey in Iraq.  However, the writer, Bob Ivry, staff writer for The Record, displayed unusual understanding of the Marines and what makes a Marine.  His article is repeated here, verbatim, without editing or further comment.

“Marines take the hits.  That’s what they do.  Any Marine will tell you that.  These guys didn’t join the Corps for a vacation.  They didn’t expect to be ladling gruel in Kuwait or pushing paper in Qatar.  The U.S. Marines came to see action.  They came to kill the bad guys.

“They came to fight.

“In Iraq, the Marines have the grittiest, bitterest, bloodiest sector assignments.  While English troops patrol southeastern Iraq and the Polish get the south – relatively peaceful places – the U.S. Marines nail down Al Anbar province, where four of them were killed Wednesday.  And when it comes to action, the grunts have caught the brunt: Najaf, Ramadi, Fallujah – the three fiercest battlegrounds in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“When a Super Stallion carrying 30 Marines went down in a sandstorm Wednesday morning in Iraq’s western dessert, Cpl. Sean Kelly of Pitman among them, the tally of Marine dead climbed to 437.  When another Marine was killed Thursday, that made it 438.

“That’s 31 percent of U.S. casualties – for a branch of the service that makes up only 20 percent of U.S. forces in Iraq.

“Nobody’s complaining.  Not even close.  Seeing action is why you became a Marine in the first place.  Asked about the higher proportion of Marine dead, Marine Corps spokesman Capt. Dan McSweeney said, ‘The Army and the Marine Corps are both making significant sacrifices over there.  In this joint world we live in, with the Army, the Air Force, the Navy and the Coast Guard, it doesn’t make sense – its not a very good thing – to make comparisons.’

“A Defense Department official didn’t mind comparing.  Speaking anonymously, the official pointed out that the Marines operate ‘with smaller tooth-to-tail ratio than the Army,’ meaning the Corps brings along less support staff. 

“More warriors stoked for combat.  More chances to die.

“The rivalry is downplayed these days.  But measuring the Marine Corps against the Army is natural.  They’re the two ground forces of the U.S. military.  They fight side by side a lot.  While the Army is a behemoth with 700,000 personnel, the Marines number 172,000.  They’re flexible, quick-strike, designed to be the ‘aggressive tip of the military spear,’ as the saying goes.  And while the Army is mostly landlocked, the Marines can come at you any way they want – by air, land or sea.

“The Army has plenty of allure to a kid dreaming of military glory.  But acting as that aggressive tip of the spear appeals to a certain kind of kid.  Maybe it’s something they’re born with, this moth-to-flame attraction to danger.

“Kelly, the sixth Marine from New Jersey to die in Iraq, always wanted to be a Marine, according to his dad.  Not a soldier.  Not a sailor.  A Marine.

“‘He did what he wanted to do,’ Alexander Kelly said.

“It happened with Bob Stefanow.  He’s 80 now, living in Maywood, but when he heard about Pearl Harbor, the only thing on his mind was going into the Marines.

“His father went half-mad.  ‘Don’t you know,’ he told Stefanow, ‘the Marines are the first to fight and the last to eat?’

“At Guam, 61 years ago, Stefanow found himself fighting with the 77^th Army Division at his right flank.  While Stefanow and his fellow Marines went into battle with just their combat packs and ‘four days of chocolate bar rations,’ the Army had kitchen equipment and ‘a whole setup.’

“‘Even at that young age I could see the difference,’ Stefanow said.  ‘They dug deeper foxholes.’

“Stefanow doesn’t want to put the Army down.  They were fighting their butts off, too.  But they were older.  A lot of them had families.  Stefanow remembers his fellow Marines as being younger, crazier – crazy enough to feel as if they would never die.      

“You bet that gung-ho attitude comes with its share of bravado.  The Marine spokesman, surrounded by sailors and soldiers in his workplace, the Pentagon, may not want to say it, but Marines think they’re something special.  Maybe because they are.

“‘No pun intended, but these people are the hard core,’ said Jim Storozuk of Fair Lawn.  ‘They’re looking for trouble.  And knowing Marines, they’re happy when they find it.’

“Storozuk served in Army Special Forces in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970.  Around that time, he was waiting at the Fayetteville, N.C. bus station when an older man saw his crew cut and asked Jim if he was a Marine.  ‘I was a Green Beret, but I was proud the guy thought I was a Marine.’” 

Hey, why fight facts!

2002
LFC