(More) Changes at the Marine Corps
I realize that there has been a way of doing things that people are comfortable with, but can it all be done and organized better? …more here
The Schools of Infantry, which train enlisted grunts on both coasts, will begin running “running proof-of-concept courses” for entry-level Marines early next year, Stephenson said. At 14 weeks long, they will be more than 50% longer than the current nine-week course.
More training, shrinking the infantry USMC Military Occupational Specialties to one – rifleman. It means that everyone will be trained in every infantry job.
HMS Defender (D 36)
Northrop XB-35 Flying Wing
Yeah…
The Real Story
Red Army AA emplacement with a quad mount of Maxim machine guns, Neman river, Belorussia, July 1944.
Yes, it’s a Red Army glory shot… I wonder what they’d do if all of that straw caught fire….and the ammo started to cook off? Yeah, run.
IF ->
666 is considered to evil, then technically, 25.8069738 is the root of all evil.
Fun with Maps
Percent of Each State’s Population Born in New York, 2017.
If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for entering and remaining in the country illegally — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.
If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or to take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.
If you MUST show your identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a library book and rent a video, but not to vote for who runs the government — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.
If the government wants to prevent stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines that hold more than ten rounds, but gives twenty F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new leaders in Egypt — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.
If, in the nation’s largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not one 24-ounce soda, because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.
If an 80-year-old woman who is confined to a wheelchair or a three-year-old girl can be strip-searched by the TSA at the airport, but a woman in a burka or a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.
If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.
If a seven-year-old boy can be thrown out of school for saying his teacher is “cute” but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.
If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government regulation and intrusion while not working is rewarded with Food Stamps, WIC checks, Medicaid benefits, subsidized housing, and free cell phones — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.
If you pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big-screen TV, while your neighbor buys iPhones, time shares, a wall-sized do-it-all plasma screen TV and new cars, and the government forgives his debt when he defaults on his mortgage — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.
We had the Greatest Generation. Most are gone. What would they think of 2020?
US sniper Pfc. Edward J. Foley, Co G , 143rd Infantry, 36th Infantry Division cleaning his Springfield 1903A4 rifle, Near Velletri, Lazio, Italy. 29 May 1944. Edward returned to New York after the war and passed in 2004 at the age of 84.
Velletri is hill country near Rome. It’s sited near an extinct volcano. Not tank country by any measure, and the terrain is perfect to set up infantry and artillery ambushes on the small roads that snake up and down hillsides or at the bottom of small valleys. In effect, a step up from Cassino, but a tiny one. There’s a reason why the Italian War lasted all the way from 1943 Salerno landings to the armistice in 1945. It was a brutal infantry fight mixed in with a civil war and the odd Stalingrad (check Ortona). Every hill, valley, town or isolated farmhouse from Salerno all the way to the northern border in Bolzano was a battleground. I’m very grateful to the Greatest Generation. And curse Gen. Clark for not shortening the war, and limiting their casualties. Italy is full of well kept Foreign War Cemeteries for those that gave their all.
If you really want to see the full measure of the fighting, take the time to visit Cassino Abbey. I guarantee that anyone with infantry training or military experience will be shocked at the scale of the fighting. The entire valley is an artillery observer’s paradise; mountain troops are best suited to take the very bloody lead. The Poles richly deserved to have their war Cemetery sited in full view of the rebuilt Abbey.
In many ways, the civil war never really ended, though a political armistice was agreeed on, and time healed some wounds. Your environment and family history determines wether you lean left or right, and switching sides is very difficult.
What’s left of the greatest generation is locked in nursing homes, unarmed, for their own good, while tyrants overrun the wonderful country they gave the ungrateful bastards. As the Lynyrd Skynyrd song waxed eloquent; “give me back my bullets!”
I understand assisted living for those who need it. But I don’t think that I will allow myself to be placed in a nursing home situation. It’s important to have a lethal dose of pills or the means to take your ending into your own hands should you make that decision.
I’m thinking a grenade to take a few with me.
That would work. It’s hard folks to get that pin out. Maybe straighten them out for me for an easier pull.
The idea of living in that shit and Clorox environment is more than I could handle, my friend. Better just to send me on my way. We’re all crossing that same bridge no matter how cool we are or aren’t.
I think the Greatest Generation showed their opinion of political fraud back during the battle of Athens, TN.
We need the same salty attitudes now.
Facing 70, and have a bum knee that gives out on a irregular but frequent basis.
Best I could do would be driving a flimsy target to serve as a distraction….but I suspect a troupe of dancing topless cheerleaders would have me beat in that category.
The topless cheerleaders are a great idea.
The flying wing was a cool looking plane. The YB-49 version was actually deployed during the Martian invasion of 1953 as shown in the documentary War of the Worlds.
Hahahahaha! +1
+1
“Might” live in a country run by idiots? I don’t think there’s much doubt.
No doubt at all, but we (mostly through indifference) allow these scum into office. Then we’re stuck with them. Maybe that will change in the short term, given all that has gone on in 2020, but in the long term – we will (collectively) return to the same bad habits like a dog returning to its vomit.
“Iffin” by L Rudyard Lambert (climbing the NY Times best seller list as we speak, not that we care about their list but hey, exposure is usually a good thing.)
It used to be Washington, DC could be ignored, folly and all, with only a smattering of effect coming to our respective doorsteps. Now, their brand of complete tomfoolery idiotic stupidity grifter-ness and cheatery (redundant? I think not), runs right up to the front door, barges in, then steals whatever it wants, with the help of State and Local “officials” who think like they do. The next week and change will be telling.
WWII men would cringe, probably happy they are already in the great by-and-by, thinking, “What the hell happened to the greatest county on Earth inside of ten months?” (although decades in the making, 2020 is the possibly the last nail in the coffin.)
Will watch the Grinch tonight (because, ya hafta), my take may be slightly influenced by your meme. Makes sense these days.
So much to like about this post, LL. I like to think The Greatest Generation is rolling in their graves; but then I don’t understand how anyone in the military can say they are liberal, so what do I know?
You all be safe and God bless.
Greatest Generation? I’ll give them their due but recognize they were called upon to do it. Most, including my father and uncles were drafted.
I’ve been a dues paying member of the American Legion Post in the town where I graduated High School but have never set foot in the place. While I “missed” Vietnam, I walked out of an American Legion bar after hearing a group of the “Greatest Generation” going on about the pukes who lost the Vietnam War.
Yes, WSF is a contrary old man. Bite me.
The generation that mobilized the country and held the levers of power made the victory of the Greatest Generation possible. They rarely get any credit.
You are contrary, and that’s no lie, WSF. Not many young American men fled the country to avoid the draft during WW2.
True, not much publicity about fleeing to avoid the draft. Where would they go?
From personal knowledge within my extended family, many of the WWII veterans did their best to keep their sons out. My father, for an example, wrote me one of his few letters (that was my mother’s job) saying, “I fought one Asian war and I didn’t raise a son to fight another. Don’t you dare volunteer”.
A lot of WW2 was won by ladies and old men running Warner Swazey turret lathes and the like.
A real eye opener is reading a copy of “Machinery” or “Aviation” from 1942.
The scale of the industrial production was staggering, and none of it CNC.
One of my main gripes with the political class, and most of the educational class, and most of the media class, is they have never built a thing, or been around people who have built the very world they are so certain they know best how to run. They simply don’t have a clue, and their one specialty is manipulating other people. They have no idea what a long hard road was walked to get them a pure drinkable glass of water out of the tap.
I toured Bonneville Dam one time , one of the most amazing structures in the world- the whole thing vibrates.. mentioned it to some leftist and she sniffed- “dam” ( insert eco rant). I asked her quite calmly where she thought the power to make her morning latte came from from and her look was just glazed- it had never occurred to her that power did not just “happen”. It is HARD to build things. Especially a civilization.
” their one specialty is manipulating other people”
Other people? Not at all. Their talent is training animals that happen to speak and have the shape of actual human beings.
Sure, they might say differently for public consumption, but catch them in an unguarded moment, or drunk, or otherwise chemically altered, and you’ll hear the truth soon enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSNFpqcy8v8
The Vietnam war struck me as being too much a politicians playground.
I let my student deferment lapse and spent my year of eligibility for the draft, figuring if I go, I go. Didn’t get called up, but did spend time in a different uniform – but that’s another story.
LBJ used to brag that the Generals couldn’t bomb a shithouse without his approval.
Micromanaged to absurd lengths…..
First map (distribution of NY-born) reminds me of medical images showing the extent of metastatic cancer.
I have some NY stories. I don’t want to suggest that people who live there are a cancer… but, California is quickly taking their place.
Here in Florida, the New York to South Florida pipeline has been running for a long time, so the percentage as high as it is was completely expected. If you’ll notice, there’s a peak in the Carolinas. There’s phenomenon where New Yawkers move to south Florida and find it just too damned hot, or they don’t like the iguanas, pythons or other wildlife and move north but not all the way. The Carolinas are the peak population.
These people are called halfbacks.
That Maxim mount seems amazingly heavy for a .30 cal w/o the range to actually hit 99% of aircraft….
-Kle.
The Founders of this country went to war against one of the most powerful nations in the world over less grievous offences than we currently endure.
If Pfc Foley and his compatriots were still hale and hardy they would likely already be using those rifles on enemies domestic.
“I go to my fathers, in whose mighty company I shall not now feel ashamed” – King Theoden
I wonder how many will be able to say the same.
Like Horatius at the bridge, we might end up putting it all on the line. I hope that it doesn’t come to that.
My bride frequently says she is glad her dad, Dr Andrew Jackson Glaze didn’t live to see this situation we have. He was in North Africa, Italy, southern France, and Germany. Three beach landings. He said the landing in France was the only one that wasn’t unpleasant. Saw two camps cleared. Met the Pope in Rome . Guid d tour of the Vatican . He was a southern Baptist , who was friends with the Head chaplain of the Third Army . That’s a long story. His best friend, said he shot down an M E 109 with a colt 45. Dr. Glaze never made that claim. He was the greatest generation personified . I miss him everyday .
The landing in SOUTHERN France was easy. Normandy, not so much.
The Greatest Generation came, for the most part, from small town America. Those same people who did not vote donkey in 2020. More and more becoming a dying breed. If we are to survive as a nation that curse must be removed and we need to rediscover what it is to be American.
I like your “if” call. Dam straight.
Oh, sorry, straight = hate speech.
Had enough.
Preaching political tomorrow.
I wish I was sitting on the back pew to listen to Sunday’s REAL Sermonette in Hillsboro, TX (followed by lunch at Monte’s)
I don’t have much commemt on the greatest generation or WWII – despite my codgeriness, I remain younger than I am grumpy. Vietnam ended several years before my folks were even introduced to each other.
But I do have a 1903A3 in the safe, and have had the strangest urge lately to take it out shooting again. (Sadly, I lack sufficient ammunition to give it the workout I want too, as do the stores; nor will I use up my meager powders and primers on blasting ammo).
The soldier with the 1903A4 just refreshed all of that again.
There is still ammo available in Arizona, but you need to know where to go and it’s good if you have a local gun store that knows you, because they keep a stash for locals. But I’m with you. At the moment, I buy, but I do not consume.
Comments are closed.