More than 200 years ago, Marines made a name for themselves fighting the Barbary pirates at the shores of Tripoli. Could they be returning soon? The question at least needs to be asked, in light of the Pentagon’s acknowledgement today that they are repositioning naval forces off the coast of Libya — including its capital, Tripoli — as the security situation in the north African country continues to crumble. Conceptually, it’s a made-for-Marines special if ground operations are deemed necessary. Marine expeditionary units aboard Navy vessels are typically among the first involved in humanitarian operations, evacuations and other actions needed…
Browsing: MEU operations
Sometimes, the tail end of a story gets forgotten. Such is the case with sailors and Marines who recently returned from a deployment with the Peleliu Amphibious Ready Group and 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, out of San Diego, Calif. You may remember the sad story of a skiff with about 85 Somalian and Ethiopian passengers capsizing in the Gulf of Aden in September, drowing at least 13 men and women. It’s a sad, but common theme: poor refugees running from economic hardship in African countries are known to brave the pirate-infested gulf to get to Yemen, risking their lives in the…
The Daily Herald in Tennessee broke a sad story yesterday: Lance Cpl. Andrew Carpenter was taken off life support and died Saturday at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany. To be clear, that’s the most important part of this story. He was married last year, and his wife, Crissie, is more than eight months pregnant, the Daily Herald reported. A rifle round severed his spinal cord after he was shot in the neck, the story said. That story appears to have sparked a rumor that needs squashing, however. It says Carpenter was shot in Kandahar province, which falls outside Regional Command-Southwest,…
Apology time: Marine Corps Times has not been as precise in its naming conventions as it could have been. I picked up on that in an e-mail from Afghanistan over the weekend, when public affairs Marines with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., sent the following about its ground combat element, Battalion Landing Team 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines: Note to editors: Changing the unit name to “3rd Battalion, 8th Marines” is factually incorrect. When 3/8 attached to 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit in April of 2010, it became a battalion landing team under 26th MEU CO Col. Mark…
Commandant Gen. Jim Amos met with reporters for breakfast in Washington this morning, and as you’d probably expect, the conversation quickly turned to the war in Afghanistan. Amos declined to discuss specifics about recent M1A1 Abrams tank operations, but said the bulk of them are in northeastern Helmand province, where Marines have been engaged with the Taliban since pushing into violent Sangin district in late summer. While the fighting was fierce this fall, he thinks the area has passed the “tipping point” at which it could easily go back to the way it was. “The Taliban have been driven out,”…
When the Marine Corps acknowledged last month that it would begin using U.S. tanks in the war in Afghanistan for the first time, one of the most obvious questions was simple: Where? We’re starting to clear that up. The Corps has released several photos recently that show that elements of at least two platoons from Delta Company, First Tank Battalion, out of Twentynine Palms, Calif., have joined Battalion Landing Team 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines. The ground combat element for the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, 3/8 was called off Navy ships last month to lock down the upper Gereshk Valley, an area of Helmand…
Is the time coming for Marines in Afghanistan to spread out and fight insurgents in more provinces? Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, commander of Marine forces in Afghanistan, made that case in interviews over the weekend, telling reporters that as the Corps continues to push insurgents out of population centers in Helmand province, they may need to expand where they are operating to places ranging from the Iranian border to neighboring Uruzgan province. He added that a small number of forces under his command Marines already are operating in neighboring Kandahar province, where Army forces have been locked into a struggle with…
In retrospect, it makes complete sense. With 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, and other elements of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit recently called off Navy ships to join the fight in Afghanistan, the battalion has named one of its combat outposts something familiar, according to this news release: Ouellette. The name honors Cpl. Michael Ouellette, who was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross earlier this year for actions with 3/8 in Afghanistan in 2009. A squad leader, he ignored fatal wounds sustained by an improvised explosive device in Now Zad district, directing his Marines’ fire and calling in for fire support. The lower half…
Commandant Gen. Jim Amos is expected to make a major speech tonight in San Francisco that could provide significant new details about what the future Marine Corps looks like. Marine officials obviously don’t want to get out front of their commandant, but the speech has been teased to media as focusing on “his vision” for what the service should do next. It will take place at the Marines’ Memorial Club, where Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last August that he was ordering a broad-based review of the Corps’ mission and purpose. The setting of Amos’ speech is significant. In many…
Well, that didn’t take long. Two weeks after Marine commanders announced that 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, and other elements of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit would deploy from Navy ships in the Indian Ocean to Afghanistan, the unit is conducting operations outside the wire, officials said. In a new news release, Marine officials say Battalion Landing Team 3/8, out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., to exploit progress made by Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 2. The regiment is based in northern Helmand province, and includes 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., Lejeune’s 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, and several other…
