Happy Birthday Marines!

[Geee]

American Spectator:

Two hundred and thirty-nine years ago today, they were born at the Tun Tavern in Philadelphia. The news of their birth traveled far more slowly than they did. A short time later, according to their lore, their first man reported for duty aboard a US Navy ship. The officer of the deck barked, “What the hell are you?” and said, “You go aft and sit down ’till I find out.” The Tripolitan pirates didn’t know who they were when a handful marched across five hundred miles of Libyan desert in 1805. Led by a fiddle-playing Irish-American lieutenant named Presley Neville O’Bannon, they attacked Derna under a fierce barrage from three U.S. Navy ships, overcame odds of more than ten-to-one. and seized Derna in less than three hours.

 

The first American body armor, a leather collar, was added to their uniform to protect against saber cuts, so they were soon labeled the “leathernecks.” When about fifty of them led the attack and scaled the heights of Chapultepec in 1847, the Mexicans probably didn’t know who they were. Led by men such as Sergeant Major Dan Daley, they earned a new nickname from the Kaiser’s army in the First World War battle of Belleau Wood. Daley led them in one charge shouting, “Come on you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?” For their ferocious bravery, the Germans named them “teufel hunden” — devil dogs — a name they wear proudly to this day. Before the end of World War II, everyone knew who they were: the U.S. Marines.

 

Those of us who grew up in the ’50s and ’60s knew them as a breed apart. All my friends’ fathers had served in World War II, and they all had the same odd reaction to my father. He never shouted or growled (well, not that often), but when the veteran of Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima spoke, his peers maintained a respectful silence. He was a Marine, and nothing trumped that credential. At Iwo Jima, it was said of them that uncommon valor was a common virtue. Americans understand that is still true today, but too few have a good idea why. What is a Marine? Let me suggest a definition.

[Valin]