PDA

View Full Version : Any Raiders left out there??



lovdog
12-16-05, 07:07 PM
I've always been facinated with the stories about the Marine Raiders. Although there was an old movie about them years ago -that I can remember, showing Edson and Carlson and what they had to go thru to convince everyone how necessary it was to have a Marine group that could give the Japanese a definite "run for their money"! They finally got the okay from the President! There was a movie in 1976 that starred Michael Jan Vincent called "Baby Blue Marine", that depicted a "Marine Boot Camp Washout" going home to his folks dressed in a baby blue colored uniform that apparently in WWII days was the "ultimate embarrassment" for a recruit! On route by bus he stopped to get a drink in a bar and ran into a Marine Raider (played by Richard Gere) and they got to talking and struck up a friendship. A couple of hours later, Gere was walking Vincent thru a dark alley and knocks him out, changing uniforms with him. Now Vincent becomes the Raider and Gere is now the deserter who was destinied to return to combat (in which he had seen enough already)! Anyway, its a great flick!! Back to my post though - I remember one guy I was with during jump school that told me that his dad was a former Marine that had been thru Guadacanal and a few other beach landings in the Pacific. During one of their talks years later, he mentioned about what they called the Raiders back then - "Paramarines". He said when regular Marines saw a Marine in his uniform get off a bus and they saw his trousers were "bloused" - it was like the "parting of the Red Sea", aside from the Skull & Crossbones they bore to distinguish them from the rest of the group. They were kept separate from the regular Marines behind a hugh barbed wire fence and said politely that they were trained as a real "killing machine". I've always wanted to talk to one, even for a moment, but the opportunity never arose. Anyone remember these gentlemen??