Marines are Marines. As such, Marines have a common Marine trait. The defensive nature to protect themselves from anything, insults included.

However...

People need to realize a few things...

First. EVERY Marine is essential to the mission. And yes, Marines have a mission. That mission is to force an "enemy" to the tables to work out a feasible agreement between the pencil-necked geeks who control everything. Probably simply because they are pencil-necked geeks, and they couldn't fight for anything if their life depended on it. Marines do this through fire and maneuver. It's an old Marine tradition that has lived for centuries, notwithstanding the brief hiccup in time when the Marine Corps ceased to exist for a short period of time.

Second. As for, every Marine is an InfAntryman, this is true, insofar as all Marines are taught the basic principles of not shooting themselves or their teammates, and very little else. To be an Infantryman, is not just a word. It is a way of life. Not glorified, not luxurious, not fun, not comfortable and most certainly not high tech, like the Army or the Air Farce. Back in the late 80's, when I joined the Big Green Machine, the Marine Corps was still employing the M60A3 (introduction to US Armed Forces, circa 1978-79) while the US Army had the more modern (while not necessarily better-at the time) Abrahms M1 Main Battle Tank, which later became the standard for the US military. According to most sources, the M60A3 was phased out of service to the US military in the early 1990's. While this is true of the US Army, it is not true of the US Marine Corps, who were still employing the M60A3 as the main body of the Marine Corps' armor forces.

I wasn't supposed to be, what we called, a Recon Sniper (when I was in so long ago), I wanted to be an MP. Why, you ask? Well, I had this noble intention of changing the world. I was too young to be a cop, so I figured, time to test my METL and see what I'm really made of. Join the Marine Corps. It'll make a man outta me, train me, and show me the world. I also figured that, since PD's were giving extra points on, "The Test", for military service, that I would get extra points for being trained to do law enforcement by the Marine Corps, which was true, I was going to get extra points. Then, when I got out of the Corps, I could be a regular cop.

However. What I hadn't planned on, was exactly what happened.

After completing Boot and then MP school, I was issued my orders. Third Marine Air Wing, El Toro, California.

Well, shit, I thought. I hadn't even heard of El Toro, kinda sounded like some weak John Wayne takeoff, movie location. What the fuck was this bullshit supposed to be? My uncles had all told me to put down where I didn't want to go first, the next place I didn't want to go, second, and where I really wanted to be, last. Ok, I told myself. I want to stay close to home so all the pricks in school can see me whenever I come home on leave and show off my Blues. So, with that in mind, I put West Coast at the top of the list (didn't want to go there), Overseas (wouldn't be too bad, besides, free trip to a foreign country) and East Coast last. Three lines, three locations.

So, I climbed off the airplane, via portable stairs, straight down onto the tarmac of John Wayne International (?!?! International? Were they fucking serious? Here I am getting off the plane via rollaway stairs, rather than into a terminal, but this is International?? Please.) and caught a cab with another Marine to El Toro, sealed SRB in hand. Had I known then what was going to happen, I might have broken the seal on that SRB and took out my page 12.

About a month later, maybe two or three, I can't remember right now. I get called into the Provost Marshall's office to talk to the Provost Sergeant. At the time, he was a Gunnery Sergeant, later got promoted to Master Guns, though we never called him Master Guns, lol. He told me that a Captain wanted to talk to me over in Legal. I got scared. I thought, oh shit, some Marine that we busted made up some bullshit to get off, and now I'm gonna get grilled by his fuckin' lawyer.

So, I get to Legal. And here's this fuckin' Captain, straight out of a Marine Recruiting poster. Big, lean, cut, very intimidating looking. And I remember thinking to myself, shit, he's gonna beat me to see his way! He greets me warmly, and I flashed back to Boot Camp, where the Drill Instructor got on the bus, cordially welcomed us to Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina and then proceeded to let spittle fly downrange as he screamed, at the top of his lungs, for us to get off his bus!

The Captain took a different route entirely, however. I never saw it coming. I never suspected it was possible. Never even entered my mind that this was going to happen.

There on the desk in front of me, was my SRB. Open. Page 12.

He saw me looking at it and picked it up and handed it to me and told me to read it.

There, right in front of my eyes, were the commendations from my Senior Drill Instructor, Senior PMI from Phase II, Lead Instructor from Phase III, Commanding Officer of the Marine Corps Det., Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, and the Staff Sergeant that was in charge of all the ranges I had to re-qualify on upon getting to MCAS Tustin (FAP'ped from El Toro-sheesh, I hadn't even heard of El Toro and here they shipped me off to an even smaller, less known place than that!) "Intimately familiar with the inner workings and actions of all the weapons of training requirements." "Handles weapons as if born to them." "Kind of a smartass, but knows how to shoot, and shoots very well." Stuff like that.

So, the Captain turns to me and says, "You know who I am?"

Of course, I had no idea who he was, all I knew was he was a Lawyer, and I couldn't stand lawyers.

"Sir, no, sir!" I replied.

"Well, who do you think I am?" He asked.

"Sir, the Lawyer for (whatever the Marine's name was that we had busted the week before), here to ask this Marine about the incident on (whatever date/time group), sir!"

He laughed. Then he looked at me a little closer and said, "No, I am not a Lawyer, Private, God save me if I ever become one."

He took the SRB out of my hands, turned around and returned to his seat.

"Sit down."

"Sir, aye aye, sir!" I kneejerk responded.

"And cut out that yelling crap. We're not here for that."

He then relayed the course of events that had unfolded to bring him to MCAS Tustin, to find me. I didn't know what to believe. Was this a practical joke they played on new guys? Was this punishment for some slight I had given to someone in my CoC? What about my testing? What about my MP school? What about a contract I had with the Marine Corps to be a Military Policeman? Cpl. Harris had told me that once I got stationed anywhere else for two years minimum, as sort of a way to pay off the debt of being trained.

I realized that I was in over my head. Everything I had read or been taught about the military was all wrong.

Two weeks later, I was on a CH-46, on my way to lovely, plush, Camp Pendleton for training as a Recon Sniper. I had asked the Captain about being guaranteed to be an MP. He asked me if I had that in my contract. I answered affirmatively. He asked if I had been to MP school. Again, affirmative. Had I started working as an MP yet? Again, I thought to myself-GOT HIM, wrong again. Again, I answered in the affirmative.

"Well, see? There! You have been an MP, now you're gonna be a Sniper!"

Now, in the Marine Corps, it is well accepted that there are pretty much three or four tit jobs that define the Marine Corps and get the most respect from all Marines around the world. Silent Drill Team, HMX, Embassy Duty and Recon/Sniper. I wasn't blind to the fact that I was being offered a tit assignment. I also wasn't completely blind to the fact that if I turned it down, I would be blackmarked for the rest of my life. What was I supposed to do?

I finally decided on the idea of, accept it, make it look like I'm trying, but fail, and then no hard feelings. I tried, I just wasn't good enough. Besides, this was gonna fuck up my whole plan to just be a cop. It was decided.

What really happened was, in my vain attempt to fail without making it look like I was trying to fail, I passed. And off to Pendleton I went.

Now, I tell you all this because it's important to realize something that I have learned over the years. While Marines are most certainly given more infantry type combat training than the Army, they are not to mistake themselves for being a Combat Trained Marine. Yea, all jobs are important in the Corps, no one group of Marines can do anything without help/support from another group of Marines, trained to provide that support. But when it comes down to it, there is one group of Marines who are the tip of the spear, the cutting edge of the blade. Infantryman, 03 series Marines.

It's a life of paranoia, caution, discomfort and pain. And once you live that life long enough, you change. For good. Some have made it back from that way of life, some embrace it, and yet others go off the deep end because of it, especially if you experience combat in that capacity. Personally, I hated it. I hated being up before anyone else on base. I hated a third of my day being gone before anyone else even started their day. I hated the conditions, hated the loadouts, hated the middle of the night wakeups two hours after we hit the rack to go gallivanting out in the middle of nowhere, awaiting ambush. I hated ambush patrol, wondering, is that them? Do I start the ambush? What if it's not them and I blow our position? The Instructors are gonna be especially pissed with me if I fuck that up. The laying in wait, just on Pendleton, to do that one thing I was being trained to do, without moving, without reacting to the bugs or the elements. For hours, a few times for days, with little food or water.

It was brutal. And that was just the beginning. What happened after that was even worse.

BUT.

I look back on it now and realize that, it woke me up. It taught me to be suspicious of everyone, all the time, everywhere. It taught me that life was not this fairy tale where all Americans are fair and good. It taught me to be a man of the world, rather than a small boy with idealistic dreams of how things should be. And it also taught me that I am capable of anything, if I'm pushed hard enough. And now I'm amazed at the things I did. Me. Not some movie hero, not the bully at school that I was so afraid of even seeing. Me. Little ole me.



To those of you who are Marines, we are all Marines together. I may have been taught to be suspicious, but I still take people at their word until they give me cause to think otherwise. Bickering between each other over petty, thinly veiled insults, or hurt feelings, is beneath us all. If you're a pogue, you're a pogue. Period. Marines have insulted other Marines since the inception of the Marine Corps. It's tradition. I'm a real Marine because I went to Parris Island, your nothin' but a Hollywood Marine. First Marines are better than Third Marines. We had it so hard because of ______________. You didn't do real training. You work with Zoomies. It's all the same. It's nothing more than basic competition and Esprit de corps taken to the nth degree.





Glossary:

CoC - Chain of Command. This consists of all the leaders, with regard to position, for the servicemember from the first person with delegated authority over that servicemember all the way to the President of the United States (POTUS).

MCAS - Marine Corps Air Station. One of several different types of Marine Corps military installations, other examples would be, Marine Corps Base (MCB), Marine Corps Logistical Base (MCLB), Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD). While MCAS's are generally oriented towards air operations, they are generally always equipped with infantry combat units not only for the defense of the Air Station, but also for Forward Air/Ground Observers (FAO's) (whose mission is to spot the enemy, lase targets for aerial attack and observe aerial attack results), and Reconnaissance/Sniping operations.

METL - Mission Essential Task List. A list of common tasks, by organizational unit, that defines the basic missions of a unit. In the military, it is common for people to refer to METL to describe whether they can accomplish common, day in day out, menial rigors of being a US servicemember.

Pogue - Pogue is an offensive military slang term used to describe non-infantry, non-combat soldiers, staff, and other rear-echelon or support units. It has been used in the United States Navy and Marine Corps since before World War II, entering Army usage around the time of the Vietnam War. A related term is the acronym REMF, or "rear-echelon mother fucker". The term may be derived from a Tagalog word meaning "prostitute". Originally, the term was a sexual insult, as "pogue" was slang for a young male who submitted to sexual advances.[citation needed] This led to the related term "pogey bait", meaning candy or sweets. Due to having lost contact with its linguistic source, the modern military vernacular has turned "pogue" into a retronym/backronym. "Pogue" is now described as the pronunciation of the acronym POG, or Person Other than Grunt, or Posted On Garrison. This term has generally been replaced by the word Fobbit which refers to non-combat arms soldiers who never leave their Forward Operating Base.

Wikipedia contributors, "Pogue," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...ldid=276749621 (accessed March 18, 2009).

SRB - Servicemember's Record Book. A folder that contains all the servicemember's military history, that can also contain pre-enlistment history, including training, punishments (commonly referred to a page 11 entry), commendations (commonly referred to as a page 12 entry), etc.

Zoomie - Zoomie is an offensive military slang term used to describe non-infantry, non-combat soldiers, staff, and other rear echelon or support personnel typically assigned to, or working with aviation units. Air Force personnel are typically the primary usage for this word, however, this word can also be used to describe aviation personnel in all other branches of US military service, due to the more lax work environment that they work in. Whereas, infantry type personnel are used to a more strict adherence to rules and regulations set forth for everything from uniform wear and appearance, all the way to strict obedience of legal orders. While it may not be entirely true, it is believed by most non aviation personnel in the military that pilots (typically the leadership in aviation units) go easier on their personnel because they require flight time in their respective assigned airframes and therefore can't afford to create a hostile environment with their respective ground crews, which could lead to convenient long downtimes for their airframe, thus preventing use.