A Norwegian news outlet posted a call-out to the 16,000 international troops participating in Exercise Cold Response for “selfies” from the field, and the results are pretty amazing. The news site VG Nett posted 51 selfies they received from troops training above the Arctic Circle. They got pictures of fur hats, bearded men, berets and some bloodied mock casualties in return. About 440 North-Carolina based Marines are in Norway for Cold Response, a handful of which threw their own selfies into the mix. Most of the troops are smiling despite the frigid climate and reports of icy rain. The 11-day exercise wrapped…
Browsing: Marines
One of the Iraq War’s hardest hit units, which lost 22 Marines and a corpsman on a single deployment, is being commemorated by a temporary exhibit at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Va. The exhibit, which commemorates the dead of Columbus, Ohio-based Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines — known as “Lucky Lima” when it deployed to Iraq in 2005 — will be open to the public from Feb. 20 through March 3. It consists of oil paintings of each of the 23 casualties created by Columbus-based artist Anita Miller. Together they comprise a touring…
A fallen corporal who is one of two members of the Corps to receive the Medal of Honor for heroism in Iraq and Afghanistan, will have a building named in his honor aboard the base where Marines conduct their predeployment training. A ceremony for the dedication of the Cpl. Jason L. Dunham Hall will be held on Feb. 18, at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif., according to a news release. “The Combat Center dedicates this facility to one of its own Marines, who paid the ultimate sacrifice, saving the lives of his fellow Marines, while deployed…
[HTML1] We’ve uncovered a 2011 interview with Medal of Honor recipient Capt. John J. McGinty, III who recently passed away at age 73 in Beaufort, S.C. In the video by the publishers of ‘Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty’ McGinty recounts the harrowing 1966 battle for which he earned the medal. On July 15 of that year, his company was in Quang Tri Province, Vietnam, when they were assaulted by wave after wave of a North Vietnamese Army battalion. He and his men narrowly survived the hours-long fight after calling in danger-close air support and…
A petition posted on the White House website asks the president to award the nation’s highest award for valor to two fallen Marines who in 2008 stopped a truck laden with explosives from barreling through the checkpoint they were guarding in Iraq,saving dozens of lives. But those who want to sign on must act quickly. The deadline is Sunday. Cpl. Jonathan Yale, a rifleman with 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines, and Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter, another rifleman with 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, were awarded the Navy Cross posthumously in February 2009. But the petition asks President Obama to upgrade the awards…
A Harvard professor is suggesting that bad behavior in the war-zone could be prevented if just one person in the unit stepped forward to say, “Marines don’t do that.” Michael Wheeler, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, posted a piece to his LinkedIn profile examining how someone’s decision-making can be changed in a matter of seconds. He cited the case of British Royal Marine Sgt. Alexander Blackman, who was recently sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty for killing an insurgent at close-range during a 2011 patrol in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. The act was captured on helmet cameras worn by…
Top leaders of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit said they were preparing to put boots on the ground in Syria during their eight-month deployment, which wrapped up last month. Col. Matthew St. Clair, the MEU commander, and Navy Capt. Jim Cody, who led the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group, spoke to a group of reporters at the Potomac Institute in Virginia on Thursday. When President Obama discussed a military strike in September against the Bashar al-Assad regime following an apparent chemical weapons attack on civilians, St. Clair said Marines were preparing for a situation that would require them to make landfall, according to U.S. News…
Veteran Marine Corps Special Operations Command operator Capt. Nick Karnaze, has launched a new beard care product line with a mission. Dubbed “Stubble & ‘Stache,” his first product is a moisturizer and conditioner that helps alleviate pesky beard itch. A portion of the proceeds are donated to organizations that help wounded troops grappling with the fallout of combat. Karnaze is now trying to raise money to expand his business through the crowdfunding web site Indiegogo. Check out his new commercials — one serious, the other hilarious — and pick up Marine Corps Times, on newsstands Monday, for the full story.…
What brings a proud and accomplished Marine veteran with a family to the point of ending it all? In a post this week on the New York Times’ At War blog, medically retired sergeant Thomas James Brennan describes in raw detail how he nearly became a statistic: one of the estimated 22 veterans a day who fall victim to suicide. Brennan, now a military reporter with the Daily News of Jacksonville, N.C., wrote he reached his point of despair Dec. 28, 2012, just days shy of medical retirement. He suffered a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan in Nov. 2010, an…
Late last week, I got to celebrate the 238th Marine Corps birthday in style with living Marine Corps legends aboard the Odyssey, an elegant cruise boat docked at Washington, D.C.’s Southwest waterfront. This was the 13th year that brothers Robert and Scott Shaw have collaborated to host a distinctive birthday celebration afloat, with time-honored Marine Corps traditions and celebrated guests of honor. Robert, a former captain and past president of Odyssey Cruises, and Scott, a retired lieutenant colonel, both follow in the steps of their father, the late Robert W. Shaw Sr., who retired as a lieutenant colonel. They say…
