Accord
09-19-06, 03:46 PM
A Marine by any other name is still a Marine
By JEREMY REDMON
Published on: 01/25/06
QUANTICO, Va. — The Marine Reservist from Valdosta has grown used to the funny looks and sarcastic questions.
No, there is no mistake on Gunnery Sgt. Mike Marine's uniform. His last name really is Marine.
"I get double-takes all the time," said Marine, 43, a native of Setauket, N.Y., who works as a private security guard at Moody Air Force Base in South Georgia.
He said his family name, Marinkowski, was shortened to Marine when his grandparents immigrated to the United States from Europe many years ago.
"I guess when they came through Ellis Island, they decided the name was too difficult to pronounce and they cut the 'kowski' off. That's the rumor," he said.
Marine is among about 50 Marine reservists from a new Marietta-based unit that is headed to Iraq next month. The unit's mission is to collect the remains of U.S. service members, catalogue them and prepare them for transport back to the States. Marine will lead several Marines from his unit at Camp Fallujah, west of Baghdad.
When Marine gets there, he will likely report immediately to the personnel office. He does that each time he gets to a new base so he can introduce himself and let the Marines there know he is for real.
He doesn't want a repeat of the problem he had in the early 1980s when it took about a year for his promotion from lance corporal to corporal to finally go through. Marine said the military kept throwing away his promotion papers, believing they were samples.
During boot camp, he said, Marine drill instructors teased him mercilessly and refused to call him by his last name. Instead, they referred to him as "Laundry 32," the number assigned to his laundry bag.
In his 25 years in the Corps, Marine has come across others with unusual names. He recalls the time he was attending a conference at this base a few years ago and he met a Capt. America in an elevator.
"I told him, 'Sir, you don' have to say a word to me. I feel your pain,'" Marine said.
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news...arineside.html
LMAO!
There used to be a poolee at my RS who shipped off a few weeks ago and his last name was Sargent... I wonder what his Drill Instructors did to him, haha.
By JEREMY REDMON
Published on: 01/25/06
QUANTICO, Va. — The Marine Reservist from Valdosta has grown used to the funny looks and sarcastic questions.
No, there is no mistake on Gunnery Sgt. Mike Marine's uniform. His last name really is Marine.
"I get double-takes all the time," said Marine, 43, a native of Setauket, N.Y., who works as a private security guard at Moody Air Force Base in South Georgia.
He said his family name, Marinkowski, was shortened to Marine when his grandparents immigrated to the United States from Europe many years ago.
"I guess when they came through Ellis Island, they decided the name was too difficult to pronounce and they cut the 'kowski' off. That's the rumor," he said.
Marine is among about 50 Marine reservists from a new Marietta-based unit that is headed to Iraq next month. The unit's mission is to collect the remains of U.S. service members, catalogue them and prepare them for transport back to the States. Marine will lead several Marines from his unit at Camp Fallujah, west of Baghdad.
When Marine gets there, he will likely report immediately to the personnel office. He does that each time he gets to a new base so he can introduce himself and let the Marines there know he is for real.
He doesn't want a repeat of the problem he had in the early 1980s when it took about a year for his promotion from lance corporal to corporal to finally go through. Marine said the military kept throwing away his promotion papers, believing they were samples.
During boot camp, he said, Marine drill instructors teased him mercilessly and refused to call him by his last name. Instead, they referred to him as "Laundry 32," the number assigned to his laundry bag.
In his 25 years in the Corps, Marine has come across others with unusual names. He recalls the time he was attending a conference at this base a few years ago and he met a Capt. America in an elevator.
"I told him, 'Sir, you don' have to say a word to me. I feel your pain,'" Marine said.
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news...arineside.html
LMAO!
There used to be a poolee at my RS who shipped off a few weeks ago and his last name was Sargent... I wonder what his Drill Instructors did to him, haha.