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"What makes Marine infantry special? Asking the
question that way misses the most fundamental point about the United
States Marine Corps. In the Marines, everyone - sergeant, mechanic,
cannoneer, supply man, clerk, aviator, cook - is a rifleman first. The
entire corps, all 170,000 or so on the active rolls, plus the reserves,
are all infantry. All speak the language of the rifle and bayonet, of
muddy boots and long, hot marches.
It's never us and them, only us. That is the secret of the Corps." "If
Army infantry amounts to a stern monastic order standing apart, on the
edge of the wider secular soldier world, Marine infantry more resembles
the central totem worshiped by the entire tribe. Marines have specialized,
as have all modern military organizations. And despite the all-too-real
rigors of boot camp, annual rifle qualification, and high physical
standards, a Marine aircraft crew chief or radio repairman wouldn't make a
good 0311 on a squad assault. But those Marine technical types know that
they serve the humble grunt, the man who will look the enemy in the eye
within close to belly-ripping range. Moreover, all Marines think of
themselves as grunts at heart, just a bit out of practice at the moment.
That connection creates a great strength throughout the Corps." "It
explains why Marine commanders routinely, even casually, combine widely
disparate kinds of capabilities into small units. Marines send junior
officers and NCOs out from their line rifle companies and expect results.
They get them, too." "Even a single Marine has on call the firepower of
the air wing, the Navy, and all of the United States. Or at least he
thinks he does. A Marine acts accordingly. He is expected to take charge,
to improvise, to adapt, to overcome. A Marine gets by with ancient
aircraft (the ratty C-46E Frog, for example), hand-me-down weapons (such
as the old M-60 tanks used in the Gulf War), and whatever else he can bum
off the Army or cajole out of the Navy.
Marines get the job done regardless, because they are Marines. They make a
virtue out of necessity. The men, not the gear, make the difference. Now
and again, the Marines want to send men, not bullets." "This leads to a
self-assurance that sometimes comes across as disregard for detailed
staff-college quality planning and short shrift for high-level
supervision. Senior Army officers in particular sometimes find the Marines
mateurish, cavalier, and overly trusting in just wading in and letting the
junior leaders sort it out. In the extreme, a few soldiers have looked at
the Corps as some weird, inferior, ersatz ground war establishment, a bad
knockoff of the real thing." "'A small, bitched-up army talking Navy
lingo,' opined Army Brigadier General Frank Armstrong in one of the most
brutal interservice assessments. That was going too far. But deep down,
many Army professionals tended to wonder about the Marines. Grab a
defended beach? Definitely. Seize a hill? Sure, if you don't mind paying a
little. But take charge of a really big land operation? Not if we can help
it." "Anyone who has watched an amphibious landing unfold would be careful
with that kind of thinking. The Marines actually have a lot in common with
their elite Army infantry brothers, if not with all the various Army
headquarters and service echelons. True, Marine orders do tend to be,
well...brief. But so do those of the airborne, the air assault, the
light-fighters, and the rangers, for the same good reason: Hard, realistic
training teaches soldiers how to fight by doing, over and over, so they
need not keep writing about it, regurgitating basics every time. More
enlightened soldiers consider that goodness. A three-inch thick order, a
big CP, and lots of meetings do not victory make.
The Marines consciously reject all that. And why not? Despite the
occasional Tarawa or Beirut, it works." "A Corps infused with a rifleman
ethos has few barriers to intra-service cooperation. The Army talks a
great deal about combined arms and does it down to about battalion level,
with a lot of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Marines do it all
the way down to the individual Marine. Soldiers have defined military
occupational specialties and guard their prerogatives like union shop
stewards. Finance clerks don't do machine guns. Mechanics skip foot
marches to fix trucks. Intel analysts work in air-conditioned trailers;
they don't patrol. Marines, though, are just Marines. They all consider
themselves trigger pullers. They even like it, as might be expected of an
elite body."
Colonel Daniel F. Bolger, U.S. Army
USA DEATH GROUND: TODAY'S AMERICAN INFANTRY IN BATTLE pp. 264-266.
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