With his new movie “Hercules” coming out today, Dwayne Johnson, better known as the Rock, has been on a media blitz. One of his stops was at Camp Pendleton, Calif., where he met a few Marines and snapped a couple of selfies with fans. Marine Corps public affairs officers said that thousands of people showed up to see the actor/ professional wrestler/ football player, and some showed up as early as 3 a.m. Here’s what the scene looked like.
Browsing: Camp Pendleton
Edit: Updates to correct caption credits Last week, we wrote about one Marine’s valiant mission to save a beloved Camp Pendleton memorial site from the wildfires that were burning through the base. Cpl. Marvin Arnold of Mike company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines organized a team of seven Marines for a trek up First Sergeant’s Hill at Camp San Mateo within the base, rescuing the nearly two dozen wooden memorial crosses just before the fires burned over the hill. The crosses are each specially marked and decorated to remember a fallen Pendleton Marine, frequently carried to the site and installed by…
The Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation has created a new scholarship to honor four explosive ordnance technicians killed during a November training accident at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and has pledged up to $30,000 for each of their seven children to help them pursue higher education. Their children, now all under 10 years of age, will be eligible for aid to attend an accredited college or university as part of the foundation’s existing Heroes Tribute Scholarship Program for the Children of the Fallen, according to a foundation press release. The program provides dependents of those killed in the line of duty with…
UPDATE, Aug. 8, 8 p.m.: The White House has fixed the transcript online. See it here. ————————— President Obama addressed a crowd of about 3,000 Marines, sailors and military family members at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and the speech went off without any major hitches. There was no major gaffe, for example, like mistakenly saying Army Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti was alive to receive his Medal of Honor. In fact, the president’s speech was short on details, but hit on a lot of meat-and-potato issues. He correctly named Marjah, Sangin and Now Zad as districts in which Marines have faced…
If you haven’t seen the photographs yet of a Navy corpsman feeding baby bunnies, it’s probably a matter of time. A Reddit user with the handle TokyoManeater69 posted them online, and they have since gone viral after the website Buzzfeed picked up on them. Several sites have said he is a U.S. Marine, perhaps confused because he was based at Camp Pendleton, Calif. In comments on the site, however, he says he is a corpsman: He posted a video online recently here: [HTML1] On Reddit, the corpsman offered the following: I live in Camp Pendleton, Ca. And as I was…
[HTML1] Take a look at what Marines are doing around the globe in our newly updated Status of Forces map! Highlights include: Marines in Darwin, Australia conducting squad-attack exercises at a place called “Kangaroo Flats” Some lucky Marines doing coalition exercises with French partners in kayaks in the Mediterranean Urban crisis contingency training with local counterparts at Mihail Kogalniceanu Military Base, Romania. Major moves: About 160 reserve troops from Camp Lejeune’s R4OG (Retrograde and Redeployment in Support of Reset and Reconstitution Operations Group) deployed to Afghanistan this month, replacing an R4OG from Camp Pendleton. About 200 Marines with Special Purpose Marine Air…
[HTML1] Status of Forces (as of April 19) Active duty: 194,370 Selected Reserve: 39,705 Reservists on active duty: 2,477 It’s been awhile since we did a blog update on the status of forces around the Marine Corps, but we’re going to start in again on making this a weekly feature. The positions above are as of April 19. Of note, the 26th Marine Expeditionary Units and 15th MEU are moving through their areas of operations, with the 26th MEU’s Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group near the Gulf of Aden, at the eastern tip of Africa, and the 15th MEU’s Peleliu ARG…
Members of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Pendleton, Calif., joined Japanese Ground Self-Defense Forces for this year’s “Iron Fist” exercise, held in Southern California. The three-week interoperability training exercise has the combined forces training on this side of the Pacific along the coast, in the desert, out at sea and back ashore as the Marines and soldiers hone their warfighting skills with patrolling, assaults, mechanized attacks and live-fire and maneuver drills. This is the eighth year for the bilateral training, which “promises to be bigger and better than in previous years,” Maj. Gen. Melvin G. Spiese, the I Marine Expeditionary Force deputy…
When the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit sets sail aboard three Navy ships from San Diego, Calif., on Monday, its departure will mark the start of the final stateside MEU deployment for the Marine Corps’ fleet of CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters. The tandem rotor helicopter, nicknamed the Battle Phrog for its quirky silhouette, is getting replaced by the MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor, and the Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based 15th MEU will be the last stateside MEU to deploy with the Phrogs as part of its aviation combat element. The next unit that follows, the 13th MEU, is slated to have an Osprey squadron…
No doubt a Friday afternoon ceremony, especially held outdoors on a beautiful sunny day, gets a crowd relaxed and eager for the weekend to begin. But make mention of “beer,” or any word hinting of a brew, and surely thoughts wander to the bar or six-pack at home. It’s good reason why reporters try to avoid any such mention in Friday interviews with Marines, at least not until the end. In his speech during a Sept. 7 change-of-command ceremony at Camp Pendleton, Calif., Lt. Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser praised the work and sacrifices of the Marines and sailors with Marine…
