The results are in. According to a new Gallup Poll, Americans overwhelmingly believe that the Marine Corps is the most prestigious branch of the armed services. No word on whether it’s the dress blues, the tough image, or the elite missions undertaken by the likes of Force Recon and MARSOC, but with 47 percent of the vote, the Marines polled nearly three times higher for prestige than the next runner-up, the U.S. Air Force. As you can see from the Gallup chart below, the Marine Corps has been slowly increasing its edge over the other services in terms of prestige,…
Browsing: Battle Rattle
“I’m going to need $100 dollars from each of you,” said medically retired Cpl. Kyle Carpenter with a chuckle. Humor is how the next Medal of Honor recipient opened a meeting with reporters last week at the Pentagon ahead of the White House’s announcement that he will become the second of only two living Marines to receive the nation’s highest valor award for fighting in Afghanistan. He sat down with us to discuss the White House’s announcement, the events of the day he covered a grenade with his own body to save a fellow Marine, his road to recovery and…
Not all working dogs in Afghanistan sniff explosives or walk patrols. Meet Steel. Steel, a three-year-old black Lab, was trained was an Improvised Detection Dog (IDD), skilled at sniffing out explosive devices. But when he arrived at Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan, his trainers realized that his paws were too soft and sensitive for patrols over rugged, rocky terrain. He would never patrol with his infantry unit, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines. Instead of being sent back to the States, however, Steel was sent over to Camp Leatherneck’s Concussion Restoration Care Center–its consolidated medical facility for sick, injured and wounded troops. Steel…
Look at the two pictures below. One is a controller for your average Playstation 2 machine. One flies the $14 million K-Max drone, which the Marine Corps uses to transport up to 6,000 pounds of gear and equipment at a time. Can you tell which is which? Give up? The top one flies the K-Max. The bottom one is just a Logitech controller from Walmart. Here’s the drone itself, a rugged 6,000-pound machine based at Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan that is one of only two like it in the world. While here on an embed, I paid the program a visit.…
By Hope Hodge Seck FOB Sabit Qadam—It’s springtime in Afghanistan, and that means the mercury is already pushing into the triple digits here in Sangin. That didn’t seem to make a difference for Sgt. Sylvester Brooks, who tore through the FOB at top speed on a 45-minute run, wearing a high-altitude mask to make an already sweltering workout more challenging. During a quiet deployment focused on drawdown efforts, the outdoor gym seldom sits idle as Marines bide their time by knocking out endurance workouts and strength training. Marine officials said the gym will remain in place as drawdown efforts continue,…
By Hope Hodge Seck Camp Leatherneck–Greetings from Camp Leatherneck, a once-bustling base in Afghanistan’s Helmand province that is rapidly becoming a ghost town. Leatherneck is home to most of the 4,500 Marines remaining in Afghanistan, down from some 20,000 at the peak of fighting here. While the base still has a sprawling footprint, whole sections are emptying as units and elements complete their mission and go home. Meanwhile, Leatherneck is still home to an array of coalition troops, including Jordanian, Georgian, Estonian, and Danish forces, as well as some 2,500 British troops stationed at Camp Bastion, which borders Leatherneck. On…
Given that Brad Pitt has been cast as the Army’s Gen. Stanley McChrystal in a movie, we felt inclined to ask our readers on Facebook who could possibly play the role of Mad Dog, were he a character to be cast in a blockbuster film (certainly only a matter of time, right)? In completely unscientific fashion, the results are in: #1. James Mattis as … James Mattis The thread was pretty clear and near unanimous: only Mattis can play Mattis. But, clearly there were other candidates who deserved the spotlight as well. #2. Clint Eastwood Eastwood is certainly Hollywood’s gun…
The Marine Corps released a new graphic at the recent Sea Air Space expo that highlighted the way it will respond to future crises around the world. I picked up a copy of this poster at the Sea-Air-Space exposition last week, where several generals discussed how Expeditionary Force 21 will work. The graphic diagrams a Marine expeditionary brigade that is forward deployed and can be scaled to whatever size needed to respond to various crises. The first slide shows a crisis breaking out on land, but not too far from the shore. Expeditionary Force 21 points out that most of…
Before Capt. Christopher Ashinhurst was selected for the Leftwich Trophy, honoring the Marines’ top ground forces captain, he was awarded a Bronze Star with combat valor device for heroism leading his company during a grueling five-day battle against insurgents, and later rallying to the aid of coalition troops at Combat Outpost Shir Ghazay following a suicide car bombing that left seven Georgian soldiers dead. The commander of Delta Company, 1st Tanks Battalion, Ashinhurst proved calm under fire, assessing casualties and directing Marines even after being hit on the head with a wooden divider after a blast destroyed his company office.…
Water scarcity, regional conflict zones, and the “youth bulge:” these are all problems that may become the Marine Corps’ business in the near future. That was the message from Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos this week when he gave an audience at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space expo a glimpse into what’s ahead for the Corps. By 2020, he said, expect two new crisis Marine Corps crisis response forces positioned near potential conflict zones and a rotational force established in Guam like the one already conducting training deployments in Australia. Amos also indicated that the future of the Corps…
