This Sunday, Marines will gather at the Beirut Memorial in Jacksonville, N.C., near Camp Lejeune to mark the day 28 years ago when 220 of their brothers were killed in a terrorist attack in Beirut, Lebanon. Also killed in the Oct. 23, 1983, attack were 18 sailors and three soldiers. It was a bright Sunday morning at 6:22 when a man drove a five-ton truck laden with more than 12,000 pounds of TNT straight into the base of the building and…
The new program of instruction at The Basic School will show the Marine Corps’ newest officers what it means to walk to work every day. As they go through the six-month course, the lieutenants will no longer be driven to and from the ranges for their individual field exercises. Instead, they will set out on foot from Camp Barrett aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., and — wearing all the gear they think they need — will stay in the woods for their field exercises before walking home again. Some ranges are five miles away… some are a hearty 15…
I reported it here last month, but TV funnyman Stephen Colbert just caught wind of it. A certain group of Marines in Afghanistan were asked by their leaders to avoid farting audibly around their Afghan partners because they are offended by flatulence. We don’t really know why the Afghans are offended, they just are. On his show last night, Colbert wagged a finger at the Marine Corps, even though it was never an official Marine Corps order. Check it out here: [HTML1] “We owe them the freedom to unleash a loud, proud, cheek-rattling chair-scorcher,” he said. He added: “What do…
There are 65 corpsmen assigned to 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, in Sangin, Afghanistan, the majority of whom are on their first deployments, and it’s the nature of the beast that many will have seen their first casualties on the battlefield on this rotation. The corpsmen in this picture, Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Alberto Cisneros and Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Richard Erfurth, are two of the more experienced corpsmen at the 1/5 Battalion Aid Station. They are treating Afghan soldiers wounded Sept. 8 in a bombing near FOB Jackson, the 1/5 headquarters in Sangin. I met them when I was…
There’s a little Afghan baby in Garmser District in southern Afghanistan whose first few minutes of life began in the hands of a couple of Marines. Sgt. LaJuanna Baker and Cpl. Andrea Moreira-Rios, members of a Female Engagement Team assigned to 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, set out from Combat Outpost Rankel south of Garmser District Center, on a mission to a health clinic to talk with Afghan women and give them a supply of personal hygiene items. When they got there, they were approached by a desperate midwife who asked if they would help deliver a baby for a woman…
Marine Corps Times is a family newspaper and we only rarely have offensive language in our stories. But this week the word “fart” appears in a story I wrote about the importance of trust between Marines and the Afghan national army soldiers they work with. I didn’t want to write this little blog entry about farts. It’s not even on my beat. But my colleague Dan Lamothe, whose byline you have seen here quite often, shamed me into it. “You owe it to all Marines,” he told me. So here’s the news: audible farting has been banned for some Marines…
Forward Operating Base Jackson, Sangin, Afghanistan – During the month of June, when the Taliban kicked off the brunt of its fighting against Marines with 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, members of the Shock Trauma Platoon saw casualties every day, it was a busy time when lives were saved and bodies patched up. Things have slowed a bit, which means fewer Marines are being hurt. But for the trauma platoon it means wide valleys of time… they’re on call 24/7 and not permitted to leave the base or perform any duties that would take them away from the aid station. Time…
Sangin, Afghanistan – Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Richard Erfurth, a corpsman assigned to 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, was cleaning out a storage trailer used by the battalion aid station when he came upon something he knew was special. At the bottom of an ammo can that was stuffed with random care package items like toothbrushes, lip balm and snacks, he spotted what looked like a very personal item – a steel plate about the size of a silver dollar on a brass ball chain. “I knew we hadn’t had these dog tags since the 1940s,” said Erfurth, who took the…
Sangin, Afghanistan — Marines working at and passing through Forward Operating Base Jackson around dinner time today will get a 4th of July menu that includes grilled pork ribs, beef patties and Italian sausage. Rumor has it that someone has got a cake, too. Otherwise, it’s a work day for 1st Battalion, 5th Marines’ 1,000 plus Marines, who will be hauling supplies, going on patrol and monitoring the enemy as they do each day. At the Battalion Aid Station, where the American flag does not normally fly because of the frequency of rotor wash from helicopter traffic on the landing…
Garmser District, Afghanistan – The heat of southern Afghanistan radiates the same way as if you had put your face in front of an open oven door with no room to recoil. It cannot be escaped. The temperature soars to 110 quickly and has spiked to close to 140 from time to time. And while the U.S. may be spending $20 billion on its power bill for operations in Afghanistan, according to a published report, it’s not because all the generators are humming along keeping everyone cool. Breakdowns are routine and generator mechanics are in short supply, so it’s easy…
