NEW YORK – Mounds of garbage and debris are piled along the streets in Staten Island, pick-up being just one of the many services residents haven’t had access to in Hurricane Sandy’s aftermath. Evidence of people living normal lives just a week ago now lines the curbsides of the New York borough devastated by last week’s superstorm. Appliances, furniture, children’s toys and other everyday items are just dumped at the edge of the streets, since residents ran out of garbage bags to pack them into days ago. The smell of rotting trash lingers in the air. Power lines hang down…
Browsing: 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit
Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, commander of Marine forces in Afghanistan, took 30 minutes out of his busy schedule yesterday morning to discuss the state of his area of operations and the progress Marines have made there. Much of it will appear in a story in the print edition of Marine Corps Times next week, but I wanted to post one piece of news now: Marines who split off the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge in January to deploy to Afghanistan won’t likely be there much longer. In an exclusive phone interview, Mills said BLT 3/8 is “going to keep on their…
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…
Navy Times staff writer Phil Ewing shares a fun update on the Scoop Deck blog today, and it falls squarely in the category of intra-service rivalry. The photograph above shows Marine Cpl. Brice Millier helping a patient in Guatemala last week as part of Operation Continuing Promise, a humanitarian and civic assistance mission in Central and South America that includes elements of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, out of Camp Lejeune, N.C. You know, the same operation that caused breathless, moronic news reports saying that 7,000 Marines would be deployed to Costa Rica. In any event, Millier is photographed assisting…
