| From: TimF | 2/25/2022 6:14:10 PM | | | | | | Paul Douglas went to Marine boot camp at 50. Then he earned a Bronze Star and 2 Purple Hearts in WWII\When he was wounded, he took off his rank insignia so he wouldn't receive special attention.
Jeff Schogol | Published Feb 11, 2022
In late 1944, Douglas served with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment during brutal combat on the small Pacific island of Peleliu. Commanders expected the island to be captured in a matter of days, but the bitter fighting lasted more than two months, providing a preview of how tenacious the Japanese resistance would be in later battles.
Douglas, who was serving as a division adjutant, had been allowed to take part in the invasion on the condition that he stay away from combat, yet he routinely volunteered to be a stretcher bearer to evacuate wounded and fallen Marines from the frontlines, Howard Shuman wrote in a 1979 profile of Douglas for Challenge, an economics magazine.
During one of his trips to the front, Douglas saw that the Marines desperately needed a flamethrower and ammunition for rocket launchers, so he grabbed what was needed and braved heavy mortar and small arms fire to deliver it to the front lines.
He was eventually awarded the Bronze Star for his actions helping those Marines, but the battle went on and Douglas also received his first Purple Heart after being wounded by shrapnel.
At one point in the battle for Peleliu. Douglas killed a Japanese sniper hiding in a cave, after the shooter had killed two fellow Marines. He described his thoughts afterward in his 1972 autobiography, “In the Fullness of Time.”
“As I came out, covered with mud and blood, the thought went through my head that perhaps the fellow was a professor of economics at the University of Tokyo,” Douglas wrote. “What a world it is that causes each of us to seek the other’s life.”
By the end of the battle, 1,336 Marines had been killed and another 5,450 were wounded. The Army’s 81st Infantry Division also lost 196 soldiers, who were killed in action.
As a leader, Douglas was credited with putting his men first. Shuman wrote how during one battle, a Navy corpsman refused Douglas’ order to treat wounded Marines who were under heavy fire.
“He said he was a Harvard Medical School graduate with training too valuable to risk his life,” Shuman wrote. “Incensed by his refusal, Douglas took out his weapon, pointed it at the doctor’s head, and marched him to the front lines. Years later he told me he still shuddered when he thought about it: he had been so outraged that he had been prepared to shoot the man if he refused again.”
Douglas would also routinely pick up garbage so that enlisted Marines would not have to do so, and he refused to skip ahead to the front of the chow line, according to the Marine Corps.
When Douglas was shot in his left forearm during the battle of Okinawa, he took off his rank insignia so that corpsmen would not see that he was a major and prioritize him over the enlisted troops who were wounded.
“If I live to be 100 years old, I will never forget this scene,” Marine Pfc. Paul E. Ison later recalled. “There, lying on the ground, bleeding from his wound was a white-haired Marine major. He had been hit by a machine gun bullet. Although he was in pain, he was calm, and I have never seen such dignity in a man. He was saying ‘Leave me here. Get the young men out first. I have lived my life. Please let them live theirs.”
Following his second combat injury, Douglas spent 14 months in hospitals and left the Marine Corps in 1946 as a lieutenant colonel. His wound at Okinawa cost him the use of his left hand, which he described as a “paperweight.”
After the war, Douglas served in the U.S. Senate for 18 years, where he was a champion of Civil Rights legislation. He is credited with bypassing the chairman of Judiciary Committee from Mississippi to allow the Senate to vote on a 1957 civil rights bill.
He died in 1976 at the age of 84. The year after his death, the Douglas Visitors Center at Parris Island opened in his honor.
“Later in his life many honors came to my husband,” his widow Emily Douglas said at the time. “But there is none that would have so touched him, made him so astonished as well as thrilled, as having his name associated here at Parris Island.”
taskandpurpose.com
cdrsalamander.blogspot.com |
| | The United States Marine Corps | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: TimF | 10/20/2022 5:04:13 PM | | | | | | Marine Corps War Plans Are Too Sino-Centric. What About The Other 90% Of The World?
Loren ThompsonSenior Contributor
I write about national security, especially its business dimensions.
Oct 17, 2022,11:40am EDT
China has long been known in standard Mandarin as Zongguo, the “middle country.” Judging from President Xi Jinping’s remarks to the Communist Party congress this weekend, the idea that China is the center of the world is just fine with him.
However, the Pentagon’s 2018 National Defense Strategy may have gone too far in designating China as the central threat around which future U.S. military preparations must be organized.
The Chinese challenge to America is mainly economic in nature, and Taiwan looks to be the only place where Beijing might undertake a military campaign in the foreseeable future. For all its superpower pretensions, China remains an insular nation hemmed in by geography and its own internal challenges.
Nonetheless, U.S. military services have been striving since the release of the 2018 strategy to demonstrate their relevance to the Chinese threat. Nowhere is this more true than in the Marine Corps, where Commandant David H. Berger has undertaken a wholesale redesign of his service’s formations and plans.
Plans to replace aging amphibious warships with "Flight II" variants of these San Antonio-class ... [+]Wikipedia
Among other things, General Berger has called for eliminating all of the Corps’ tanks and a sizable chunk of its rotorcraft; creating smaller combat units; fielding a new class of light amphibious vessels capable of eluding enemy detection; and increasing Marine support of the Navy’s sea-control mission.
All of these changes have been initiated to bolster Marine relevance in the Western Pacific. They are intended to facilitate “Expeditionary Advance Base Operations” and “Littoral Operations In Contested Environments”—doctrines generated to combat China within the confines of the first island chain along its eastern coast.
And while the commandant states in his 2019 planning guidance that the 31 large amphibious warships the Navy currently operates to lift Marine units “will remain the benchmark of our forward operating crisis response forces,” he also raises doubts about the survivability of such vessels in what is now the most important theater of operations for U.S. military planners.
This has sown confusion in the Navy’s shipbuilding plans, which currently propose truncating a planned buy of 13 new LPD amphibious warships at three while commencing early retirement of the decrepit amphibs they were supposed to replace, and stretching out construction of larger LHA assault warships to twice the preferred interval—up to ten years.
If these proposals were actually implemented, they would leave the Marine Corps with a grossly inadequate lift capacity for dealing with crises in the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and elsewhere, while fielding dozens of “light amphibious warships” likely to prove useless in most contingencies.
Thanks to its amphibious-landing capabilities and training to operate under austere conditions ashore, the Marine Corps has long served as America’s first-responder force, able to insert ground forces into crisis situations before other U.S. services or allies arrive.
According to NASA, over a third of the global population lives within 60 miles of the sea. Most of the world’s megacities, from Jakarta to Karachi to Lagos to Shanghai, are located on or near the ocean. Every country likely to challenge U.S. interests in the years ahead is accessible from the sea.
So, the value of a sea-based quick reaction force such as the Marine Corps is not hard to grasp. Marines have been used to intervene in the Caribbean dozens of times, and may yet do so again in Cuba or Nicaragua or Venezuela. It is a rare year when Marines are not called on to perform critical missions in the Mediterranean.
The problem with redirecting Corps preparations to the Chinese littoral is that the service is called on to develop capabilities that aren’t much use elsewhere—and might not make much difference even there.
The basic idea Marine leaders have advanced is that platoon-size units transported on light amphibious warships and equipped with long-range munitions can hop among the islands off the Chinese coast, disrupting the movement of Beijing’s naval forces and aiding U.S. military efforts to control littoral seas.
Unfortunately, this requires the Marine units to operate within range of Chinese weapons, which is why they need to be highly mobile and generate minimal trackable signatures. Commandant Berger freely admits that current Marine air defenses and reconnaissance assets are not up to the job—which is why money needs to be freed up to buy new equipment such as the light amphibs.
However, in an August 26 report, respected congressional naval expert Ronald O’Rourke raises a series of searching questions about this concept of operations:
Do Marine plans focus too much on China at the expense of other challenges and missions?
Can the Marines successfully gain access to littoral islands and then survive there?
Can the Navy resupply Marine units within range of Chinese weapons once deployed there?
If the proposed force redesign is implemented, would it significantly aid U.S. sea control in the region?
The short answer to these questions is that nobody can say today, because it all depends on what reconnaissance assets Beijing deploys between now and when the Marines are ready to execute their operational concepts in the Chinese littoral. It is not hard to imagine how a combination of long-endurance drones and orbital assets might preclude even small units from hiding in wartime.
The more immediate issue, though, is how this problematic approach to the China challenge might deprive the Marine Corps of capabilities needed to respond elsewhere. We are already seeing evidence that the consensus supporting a fleet of large amphibs suitable for responding to crises in other places is being undermined by confusion over Marine plans.
Getting rid of all the tanks on the assumption the Army can supply heavy armor in a timely fashion seems unrealistic. And eliminating squadrons of heavy, medium, and light rotorcraft is doubly questionable, given the fact that Marines are already breaking up deployed readiness groups to cope with diverse regional challenges. Those rotorcraft may not be needed to fight China, but there are dozens of other places around the world where they could prove more useful than a light amphibious warship.
forbes.com |
| | The United States Marine Corps | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: TimF | 10/29/2022 9:29:47 PM | | | | | | Marines make 6,100-mile trans-Pacific flight in Ospreys
Hawaii-based Marines with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 268 recently concluded their deployment to Australia as part of Marine Rotational Force-Darwin with a 6,100-mile, island-hopping flight home.
Hawaii-based Marines with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 268 recently concluded their deployment to Australia as part of Marine Rotational Force-Darwin with a 6, 100-mile, island-hopping flight home.
They left Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory on Sept. 13, with two Marine Corps V-22 Osprey tilt-rotors and one KC-130J refueling aircraft departing for Royal Australian Air Force Base Amberley in Queensland. Over the next several days, the Marines would land in Fiji, American Samoa and the Republic of Kiribati before completing the final leg to Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay on Sept. 18.
stripes.com
Title makes it seem like it was one straight through flight when really it was island hopping over 5 days. |
| | The United States Marine Corps | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Neeka | 7/17/2024 8:52:37 PM | | | | | | From Afghanistan to Kentucky: The (Almost) Unbelievable Story of Horse Soldier Bourbon
words: Brandon Summers-Miller
illustration: Sara Pinsonault
Returning home from combat often presents soldiers with a long, complex road. Navigating the return to civilian life isn’t always easy, and veterans often search for the sense of community and belonging they had while in the armed forces. Finding a similar bond can be difficult, especially after years spent overseas forging strong relationships with fellow soldiers in hazardous combat zones.
Just hours after the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, a dozen Green Berets assigned to Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595 covertly infiltrated Afghanistan to begin the American response against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Horse Soldier Bourbon, started in 2015 by John Koko, Elizabeth Pritchard-Koko, and Scott Neil, was directly inspired and created by that select group of veterans who served in that operation.
An Unprecedented Origin Story “I’m grateful that our team was the first team selected to go into Uzbekistan and then follow on right into Afghanistan a few weeks later, dropped into the Hindu Kush mountains where we linked up with a warlord named General Dostum,” says Vince Makela, a former member of the original special forces unit that inspired Horse Soldier. “He was already fighting the Taliban from horseback, so he gifted us 12 horses. And the next three weeks we were in combat with them, assisting their efforts.”
ODA 595’s three-week horseback military operation earned them the moniker “Horse Soldiers,” and the name stuck. Makela, who is currently a brand ambassador for Horse Soldier Bourbon, retired from the military 15 years after ODA 595’s special operation. Despite having heard of Horse Soldier’s genesis at the dedication ceremony of America’s Response Monument in 2015, Makela said he didn’t immediately get involved with the brand. Like millions of veterans before him, Makela was adjusting to civilian life after decades of active duty.
But it didn’t take long for Makela to think of Horse Soldier again. The camaraderie and belonging the Horse Soldiers forged while fighting the Taliban remained potent and offered a familiar sense of community. Promoting a superbly crafted product while remaining in close professional contact with his fellow soldiers proved an excellent next step in Makela’s retirement from the armed forces.
“I’ve been kind of blown away by the reaction of the audience and people, especially at events because I didn’t think anyone would want a bottle signed by me,” says Makela. “But I saw that it really resonated with people, and people really got behind it. They loved the story and the military service component of it.”
Award-Winning Bourbon Made by Veterans Horse Soldier Bourbon, now in its eighth year of production, continues to resonate with people not just because of its singular origin story, but also because of the careful and meticulous craftsmanship that goes into every bottle. Koko, Pritchard-Koko, and Neil first decided to create the Kentucky-based American Freedom Distillery — the distiller of Horse Soldier Bourbon — after tasting remarkable whiskey at a distillery in Driggs, Idaho. After talking with the distillers and learning more about the craft, Neil realized that getting involved in such a meticulous, comprehensive, and energetic field could be a great option to help veterans settle back into civilian life after leaving the armed forces.
Horse Soldier’s explicit aim to hire and train veterans is one key reason why its spirits have quickly become known for their outstanding quality. The skills necessary to have a decorated and successful military career directly transfer to making high-quality, carefully distilled spirits that can win over even the most discerning whiskey drinkers.
“One of the great pleasures in life is working with quality people who want to be a team, who want to work together, who want to succeed, and have no problem working through the nights, weird hours, early hours — it’s all about the end goal,” says Steve Kofron, who was also one of the ODA 595 Horse Soldiers and now works as a brand ambassador for Horse Soldier Bourbon. “I tell you what, you work a while with a bunch of Green Berets and you’ll see people understand it.”
Significant factors ensuring Horse Soldier is of excellent quality include the distillery cofounders’ tours to various traditional distilleries to learn from seasoned masters, including experts in Kentucky, Ireland, and Scotland. American Freedom Distillery was also able to import a European yeast culture, which they’ve further cultivated and incorporated into Horse Soldier’s rye and wheat mash bills.
Makela described the distillery’s straight Bourbon, which won the Double Gold Medal at the 2022 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, as full-bodied, smooth, and having more pronounced spicy undertones that are more present on the finish. The distillery’s small batch straight Bourbon, which was also a Double Gold Medal Winner at the 2022 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, features a slightly sweeter profile, including notes of vanilla and cherry. Makela noted that Horse Soldier’s third Bourbon, the barrel-strength Bourbon — another 2022 Double Gold Medal Winner — has unique butterscotch notes that work well with the spirit’s distinct oakiness. The fact that every expression from Horse Soldier won Double Gold in the same year is a testament to the incredible quality of its spirits.
Dedicated to Giving Back As the brand has grown, so has one critical aspect of Horse Soldier’s mission: to give back to veterans. Horse Soldier often partners with the Folded Flag Foundation, an organization that provides educational scholarships and support grants to the spouses and children of U.S. military and government personnel who died as a result of hostile action or in an accident related to U.S. combat operations. The brand has already hosted multiple charity auctions to fundraise in partnership with the Folded Flag Foundation, as well as additional charities, and plans to continue to support veterans through additional work opportunities in the future.
“The transformation from being Green Berets in combat to making three award-winning Double Gold Bourbons is as interesting as can be,” added Kofron. “And it’s real history.”
This article is sponsored by Horse Soldier Bourbon.
Published: August 11, 2023
vinepair.com |
| | The United States Marine Corps | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| |
