Why do people always done the Marines?
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  1. #1

    Why do people always down the Marines?

    How come when people ask what are your plans after high school, and you tell them that you are going to enlished in the Marines, they give you all this crap like "in the Marines you dont make rank as fast as the other branches", "if you join the Marines your going to the front line?. Oh heres my favorite one, "Your gonna die if you join because your going straight to Iraq."

    Last edited by jinelson; 10-04-06 at 05:23 PM. Reason: done to down

  2. #2
    Well, those are valid points in some regards. Some of it is because people are jealous. Some is because people have made their decisions based on what is best for them, which may not be best for you. And some are probably just stupid kids bound to be idiot liberals on some college campus.


  3. #3
    You like baseball, right? Would you rather get advice on how to play baseball from someone who never played before, from someone who knew someone that played once, from someone who's watched it on TV, or a pro? Watch where and who you get your advice from and you'll be able to make a good, sound decision about your future.


  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Kegler300
    You like baseball, right? Would you rather get advice on how to play baseball from someone who never played before, from someone who knew someone that played once, from someone who's watched it on TV, or a pro? Watch where and who you get your advice from and you'll be able to make a good, sound decision about your future.
    I never looked at it like that befor,


  5. #5
    Marine Free Member Marine84's Avatar
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    Everytime I got down in bootcamp and thought that I just couldn't take any more of what was being dished out, I would think about all the people that told me that I wouldn't make it and it gave me the inner power to push harder and get that Emblem.

    Most folks down us because they're jealous - that THEY never had the guts to do it.


  6. #6
    Marine Free Member J-Ro's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kegler300
    You like baseball, right? Would you rather get advice on how to play baseball from someone who never played before, from someone who knew someone that played once, from someone who's watched it on TV, or a pro? Watch where and who you get your advice from and you'll be able to make a good, sound decision about your future.
    True...

    Great advice MasterGunns!


  7. #7
    Well said..and I agree...talk to the MARINES here, and not the knuckleheads on the street or in the locker room. They can't hang, they'll never be able TO hang, and, quite frankly, are now skeered ****less that you will be cooler than they will ever hope to be. My standard response to those types of individuals (who ask me why I joined at 17...and then went back in as a retread at 35..) is:

    "It's not my fault I'm cooler than you".


  8. #8
    I am now going to do a school research project with this topic. So could i get more people to post there replys please.


  9. #9
    Marine Free Member J-Ro's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sgt Leprechaun
    Well said..and I agree...talk to the MARINES here, and not the knuckleheads on the street or in the locker room. They can't hang, they'll never be able TO hang, and, quite frankly, are now skeered ****less that you will be cooler than they will ever hope to be. My standard response to those types of individuals (who ask me why I joined at 17...and then went back in as a retread at 35..) is:

    "It's not my fault I'm cooler than you".
    Yep, you said it
    "Don't hate me, cause you ain't me"



  10. #10
    It's quite simple. Because the Marine Corps is something they can not understand and comprehend. Many can be closed minded and not even try to understand. This doesn't just apply to the Marine Corps or to military service but it can apply to religion or lack there of, alternative lifestyles such as homosexual or kink, motorcycles, and many other area's of life. When there is one person or group that does things different then it is an "unknown factor" that makes some people think, act or react negatively.

    I'll give an example closer to something you may relate to better. I'm sure you have clicks at your school. {They all did way back in the stone age when i was in high school.} Jocks, cheerleaders, geeks/nerds, goths, druggies, and some that just don't fit in anywhere and end up together. There are the rare individuals who may have friends in more than one group. But I'm sure you'll find some jocks that just can't relate to the geeks/nerds and pick on one or more of them. And the girls that are into cheerleading just don't understand the goth girls. These examples can be used vice versa as well. People tend to be drawn to others of likemind and interests. Thus many will not tend to find out more about the groups, clicks or individuals that think, act, or dress differently.

    So it all boils down to human nature. Many people tend to dislike and even fear the unknown. Rather than try to understand whatever the unknown is, many generally just tend to support their fear with negative comments or actions.


  11. #11
    His_Angel, I'm not sure it's as simple as that. I think that is part of it, but I think it goes a little beyond understanding and comprehension. I would agree with your point on the cheerleader vs. goth thing though. Good way to explain the concept.

    I think it is what you said AND a tinge of jealousy.


  12. #12
    Marine Free Member J-Ro's Avatar
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    Who gives Sh$* what others say... were the Marines and or poolees and their civilians, Somebody has to do it!

    "In the end, I found that I simply didn’t care."
    ~unknown




  13. #13
    My Point Of View Might Be A Little Deferent . A Marine Really Doesn't Give A Dam What People Think . He Does His Or Her Job To The Best Of His Or Her Ability And Never Looks Back . You Will Have Done What They Will Always Wonder What It Would Have Been Like . And Let Me Say Your Not Going To Die Cause We Wont Give You Permission End Of Story . { I Like Yours To Angel } I Just Cant Remember That Far Back .


  14. #14

    Your answer is here, from all of us Marines!

    Esprit de Corps
    Daniel E. Sims
    GySgt, USMC (Ret.)
    Ask a Marine what's so special about the Marines and the answer would be "esprit de corps", an unhelpful French phrase that means exactly what it looks like - the spirit of the Corps. But what is that spirit, and where does it come from?

    The Marine Corps is the only branch of the U.S. armed forces that recruits people specifically to fight. The Army emphasizes personal development (an army of one), the Navy promises fun (let the journey begin), and the Air Force offers security (it's a great way of life). Missing from all of these advertisements is the hard fact that it is a soldier's lot to suffer and perhaps to die for his people, and to take lives at the risk of his own. Even the thematic music of the services reflects this evasion. The Army's Caisson Song describes a pleasant country outing over hill and dale, lacking only a picnic basket. Anchors Aweigh, the Navy's celebration of the joys of sailing, could have been penned by Jimmy Buffet. The Air Force song is a lyric poem of blue skies and engine thrust. All is joyful and invigorating, and safe. There are no landmines in the dales nor snipers behind the hills, no submarines or cruise missiles threaten the ocean jaunt, no bandits are lurking in the wild blue yonder.

    The Marines' Hymn, by contrast, is all combat. We fight our country's battles, first to fight for right and freedom, we have fought in every clime and place where we could take a gun, in many a strife we've fought for life. The choice is made clear. You may join the Army to go to adventure training, or join the Navy to go to Bangkok, or join the Air Force to go to computer school. You join the Marines to go to war.

    But the mere act of signing the enlistment contract confers no status in the Corps. The Army recruit is told from his first minute in uniform that "you're in the Army now, soldier". Navy and Air Force enlistees are sailors or airmen as soon as they get off the bus at the training center. The new arrival at Marine Corps boot camp is called recruit, or private, or worse (much worse), but not Marine. Not yet; maybe not ever. He or she must earn the right to claim the title, and failure returns you to civilian life without hesitation or ceremony.

    My recruit platoon, Platoon 2210 at San Diego, California, trained from October through December of 1968. In Vietnam the Marines were taking two hundred casualties a week, and the major rainy season operation, Meade River, had not even begun. Yet our drill instructors had no qualms about winnowing out almost a quarter of their 112 recruits, graduating eighty-one. Note that this was post-enlistment attrition; every one of those who were dropped had been passed by the recruiters as fit for service. But they failed the test of boot camp, not necessarily for physical reasons (at least two were outstanding high-school athletes for whom the calisthenics and running were child's play). The cause of their failure was not in the biceps nor the legs, but in the spirit. They had lacked the will to endure the mental and emotional strain, so they would not be Marines. Heavy commitments and high casualties notwithstanding, the Corps reserves the right to pick and choose.

    But the war had touched boot camp in one way. The normal twelve-week course of training was shortened to eight weeks. Deprived of a third of their training time, our drill instructors hurried over, or dropped completely, those classes without direct relevance to Vietnam. Chemical warfare training was abandoned. Swimming classes shrank to a single familiarization session. Even hand-to-hand combat was skimped. Three things only remained inviolate: close order drill, the ultimate discipline builder; marksmanship training, the heart of combat effectiveness; and classes on the history, customs and traditions of the Corps.

    History classes in boot camp? Stop a soldier on the street and ask him to name a battle of World War One. Pick a sailor at random to describe the epic fight of the Bon Homme Richard. Everyone has heard of McGuire Air Force Base, so ask any airman who Major Thomas B. McGuire was, and why he is so commemorated. I am not carping, and there is no sneer in this criticism. All of the services have glorious traditions, but no one teaches the young soldier, sailor or airman what his uniform means and why he should be proud to wear it.

    But ask a Marine about World War One, and you will hear of the wheat field at Belleau Wood and the courage of the Fourth Marine Brigade. Faced with an enemy of superior numbers entrenched in tangled forest undergrowth, the Marines received an order to attack that even the charitable cannot call ill-advised. It was insane. Artillery support was absent and air support hadn't been invented yet, so the Brigade charged German machine guns with only bayonets, grenades and indomitable fighting spirit. A bandy-legged little barrel of a gunnery sergeant, Daniel J. Daly, rallied his company with a shout. "Come on, you sons a *****es! Do you want to live forever?" He took out three of those machine guns himself, and they would have given him the Medal of Honor except for a technicality. He already had two of them. French liaison officers, hardened though they were by four years of trench bound slaughter, were shocked as the Marines charged across the open wheat field under a blazing sun and directly into enemy fire. Their action was so anachronistic on a twentieth-century battlefield that they might as well have been swinging cutlasses. But the enemy was only human; they couldn't stand up to this. So the Marines took Belleau Wood.

    Every Marine knows this story, and dozens more. We are taught them in boot camp as a regular part of the curriculum. Every Marine will always be taught them. You can learn to don a gas mask anytime, even on the plane en route to the war zone, but before you can wear the emblem and claim the title you must know of the Marines who made that emblem and title meaningful. So long as you can march and shoot and revere the legacy of the Corps, you can take your place in the line.

    And that line is unified in spirit as in purpose. A soldier wears branch of service insignia on his collar, and metal shoulder pins and cloth sleeve patches to identify his unit. Sailors wear a rating badge that identifies what they do for the Navy. Marines wear only the eagle, globe and anchor, together with personal ribbons and their cherished marksmanship badges. There is nothing on a Marine's uniform to indicate what he or she does, nor (except for the 5th and 6th Regiments who wear a French fourragere for Belleau Wood) what unit the Marine belongs to. You cannot tell by looking at a Marine whether you are seeing a truck driver, a computer programmer, or a machine gunner. The Corps explains this as a security measure to conceal the identity and location of units, but the Marines penchant for publicity makes that the least likely of explanations. No, the Marine is amorphous, even anonymous (we finally agreed to wear nametags only in 1992), by conscious design. Every Marine is a rifleman first and foremost, a Marine first, last and always. You may serve a four-year enlistment or even a twenty-year career without seeing action, but if the word is given you'll charge across that wheat field. Whether a Marine has been schooled in automated supply, or automotive mechanics, or aviation electronics, is immaterial. Those things are secondary - the Corps does them because it must. The modern battle requires the technical appliances, and since the enemy has them, so do we. But no Marine boasts mastery of them. Our pride is in our marksmanship, our discipline, and our membership in a fraternity of courage and sacrifice.

    "For the honor of the fallen, for the glory of the dead", Edgar Guest wrote of Belleau Wood, "the living line of courage kept the faith and moved ahead." They are all gone now, those Marines who made a French farmer's little wheat field into one of the most enduring of Marine Corps legends. Many of them did not survive the day, and eight long decades have claimed the rest. But their action has made them immortal. The Corps remembers them and honors what they did, and so they live forever. Dan Daly's shouted challenge takes on its true meaning - if you hide in the trenches you may survive for now, but someday you will die and no one will care. If you charge the guns you may die in the next two minutes, but you will be one of the immortals. All Marines die, in the red flash of battle or the white cold of the nursing home. In the vigor of youth or the infirmity of age all will eventually die, but the Marine Corps lives on. Every Marine who ever lived is living still, in the Marines who claim the title today. It is that sense of belonging to something that will outlive your own mortality that gives people a light to live by and a flame to mark their passing.

    Marines call it esprit de corps !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




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