Books chosen for the drawing are selected by Marine Corps Gazette, and each week’s prize book title will be posted on this page.
If you are our lucky winner, you will be contacted by e-mail, and your name will be posted to this page as “Last Week’s Lucky Winner.”
To enter the contest email gazette@mca-marines.org with the subject "Book Drawing".
Make sure to provide your name and mailing address.
Colonel Michael A. LeSavage
The next drawing is Oct. 29, 2012
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Sep. 25, 2012:
First, read Marine Captain Jonathan Rue’s recent piece for the Guardian looking at how we’re doing in Afghanistan.
It’s tough to argue with his conclusions, especially with regards to the advisory effort. Developing effective Afghan security is, for all intents and purposes, developing an indigenous Afghan counterinsurgency capability to combat a threat that only time will kill. It is the last, best hope for Afghanistan after our departure, whether that occurs in 2014 or 2024. The idea that we can exterminate the Taliban is, of course, an infantile fantasy. We either build enough capacity to stave off the Taliban without significant US troops, or we allow their return.
Sep. 24, 2012:
After noting the loss of Lt. Col. Raible and Sgt. Atwell in the attack a week ago, it is natural for many to point out the irreplaceable nature of the AV-8B+ Harriers that were destroyed – our greatest loss of aircraft since the Tet Offensive in Vietnam.
While true, that is just the background. It is also true that every loss of life is significant, but in time except for those who know them – losses become a number or perhaps a thumbnail picture.
Aug. 28, 2012:
Over the weekend, news broke that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has recommended General Joseph Dunford, currently Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, to replace General John Allen as Commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Although this recommendation must be approved by both Congress and President Obama, it has already drawn fire since General Dunford has yet to serve in Afghanistan.
Doug Ollivant pointed this out in Time’s Battleland blog. Andrew Exum, also known as Abu Muqawama, contrasted the appointment with Julius Caesar’s eight year tenure as governor of the Roman provinces of Cisalpine Gaul, Illyricum, and Transalpine Gaul where he faced a Gallic insurgency for much of those eight years.
July 16, 2012:
In the most recent issue of Infinity Journal, retired Marine Lieutenant General Paul van Riper, of Millenium Challenge fame, wrote an excellent article on the foundation of strategic thinking. In the article, he brings up Hew Strachan’s appropriate critique of the operational level of war: that it sets up a “firewall” of sorts between the political considerations that pervade strategy and the tactics that must support that strategy.
Regrettably, introduction of the operational level of war did not bring about the desired results. Rather than center attention on operational art, too many officers focused on mundane issues like what types of units were to deal with the operational and tactical levels, and the creation of new and more complicated planning techniques based on formal analyses.
July 9, 2012:
Yesterday I was catching up on my reading when a single sentence inthis recent blog post by Daniel Blumenthal at Foreign Policy’s Shadow Government blog caught my eye.
Concurrently, details of a new operational concept called Air Sea Battle were released, that despite protestations to the contrary, is more or less about how to defeat China in a conflict.
This sentence is both right and wrong. Despite protestations to the opposite, of course ASB is about beating China. Amongst our potential adversaries, China has the most capability to develop effective A2/AD systems and indeed, has already begun to do so. They also have the most motivation to do so because of their extensive Pacific coastline. If ASB is not about China, what good is it?
According to LtCol Rathvon M. Tompkins' article To War by Air the next amphibious campaigning of the Marine Corps will probably have a third dimension added to the attack. "Vertical envelopment" is not new to the Corps, but was shelved in early 1944 because the Pacific theater offered little opportunity for the employment of paramarines or airborne troops.
The blast of the Bomb and its tremendous potential made our amphibious planners take time out for another look at the "book." Those of you who are pondering, and who are planning ways and means of circumventing the effect the Bomb might have on present tactical and logistical amphibious concepts, might do well to pause a moment and take a look at Who Said Impossible? (Pg. 10, Jan. 1955 MCG).
With military aviation currently emphasizing jet-propulsion, the fighter planes of the war's beginning seem archaic by comparison. But before too condescending an attitude is developed toward such planes as the Grumman Wildcat, it would be well to look over the record. The record in this case is very vividly described in Capt DeChant's Devil Birds.
This month marks Maj Houston Stiff's debut as a Gazette cover artist as well as his first issue as editor and publisher. The double spread illustrates a small patrol operating on Choiseul. The Marines were from a parachute battalion and that explains the presence of the Johnson weapons.
Maj Houston Stiff's cover drawing depicts a small segment of the fierce action on Betio.
"Mark Fifteen!" Judging from his elated expression, the boot in the prone position seems to have black disks before his eyes. Marines from coast to coast and beyond, are wearing shooting jackets this spring; and the crack of small-arms fire becomes a familiar part of post routine. No live targets this year, but Marines are bound to burn powder, whether or not the targets shoot back.
Marines have patrolled many streets in their time, but none more fascinating than those in China. Maj Houston Stiff depicts two MPs strolling along what might be a hutung in the native quarter of any North China city.
Back in the days before fiber helmets, master sergeants and SSNs, there was a breed in the Marine Corps known to the files as "Gunny." He was a man of dignity, this "Gunny," and had the Marine Corps Manual in his head, a ramrod down his back, and authority in his voice. He's still around, here and there, but mostly he wears bars and leaves instead of chevrons.
In June 1944, the V Amphibious Corps broke away from atoll stepping stones and made a giant stride across the Central Pacific. There was a hot welcome at the beaches there for the 2d and 4th Divisions, and final victory was 12 miles and 25 days away. Long remembered will be Saipan's cane fields and cliffs, caves and civilian suicides.
The lanky captain with the microphone is delivering a running commentary on the demonstration you see in progress in the background. What you don't see is the careful staging and rehearsing which preceded the exercises; for in the Quantico schools, the hours of preparation are far more numerous than the hours of execution.
The scene of the cover will not be familiar to Marines, since the Japanese tanks we met were mostly rather flimsy affairs. Moreover, the Japanese were fortunately somewhat less than clever in their employment of tanks, which was probably very lucky for us. But will it be the same in future wars? LtCol Arthur J. Stuart thinks not, and he's frankly a little worried. His article begins on page 18 of the October 1947 issue.
On the tenth of November, Marine gather for a family ceremony. They hear familiar words-- Article 1-55, Marine Corps Manual. And because the words are familiar, it may be that some of the significance will be lost. Familiar words: "...all that is highest in military efficiency and soldierly virtue... Marines will be found equal to every emergency in the future as they have been in the past..." This is a time when such words should have a meaning.
In the last two great wars the United States has been forced to impose her will on the continent of Europe. Now with planning done on a tri-dimensional, global scale, even this huge target is over-limited. Borrowing a page from the geopolitician's book we must learn to think in terms of heart lands and peripheries. Maj Guy Richards has done this thinking very well in his Target Eurasia and the Next War, starting on page 10 of the December 1947 issue.
It may not be warm and balmy where you are, but you can bet there are Marines in other parts of the world who are sweating out troop and drill and field problems in tropical climes. Of course the daily grind of training is always interspersed with a welcome "take 10" -- time for a smoke, a drink of water, or time to read that letter again. But hovering in the background will be that voice of authority ready with "Saddle up" when the sand runs of the glass.
Before you dash off a letter to Message Center regarding the weird looking 782 gear being carried by the Marines on the cover please check In Brief on page 40 (Mar. 1955, MCG). It will give you a resume and description of the equipment we borrowed from the Equipment Board so TSgt Stanley Dunlap could do a graphic illustration of what tomorrow's best dressed Marine will wear in combat.
The English longbow and the clothyard shaft sounded the death knell of body armor at the Battle of Crecy in 1346. The advent of gunpoweder and changes in tactics completed the coup de grace, and armor lay forgotten as a decadent relic of the age of chivalry. Six centuries later, at the Naval Medical Field Research Laboratory, Camp Lejeune, a man stood up in a vest made of plastic plates and nylon fibers--his colleague fired a .45 at him. The vest and the pioneer withstood the test, and soon after Marines were wearing the new body armor in Korea.
The pyrotechnics you see the evening of the July 4th celebration will pale in comparison with the spectacle afforded by the night firing exercise demonstrations planned for the thousands of Marine Reserves who will attend camp this summer at Marine Bases from coast to coast. Tanks of Charlie Co, 3d Tank Bn, firing on Combat Range #3 in the Fuji Maneuver Area, Japan, produced the unusual color transparency that furnished our cover this month.
The National Matches at Camp Perry, Reserves at summer camp firing the range and the regular run of Marines shooting for annual qualification--all striving to stay in the black. But for all the shooters' ills, the wart-fours and the "Maggie's drawers," there's only on panacea--hold 'em and squeeze 'em.
Although the Geneva Conference is now history, the defense of the Free World is still the paramount issue. Associated with this, therre are other problems which face us--the external threat of the rise of Russian sea power as one of the dominant factors in the alignment of world strength and, likewise, one of the greatest enigmas facing us internally--the allegiance of captured military personnel.
Through an interpretive design, TSgt D.W. Kiser compares the stalemate of positional trench warfare of WWI, the concentrated thrusts and pincer movements characteristic of the mechanized warfare in WWII and Liddell Hart's proposed concept (page 10-Oct. 1955, MCG) for the thermo-nuclear era--"an offensive fluidity of force." Today, with tactics in an evolutionary state, is the time for forward thinking and stimulating military thought. Those who have progressive ideas and encouraged to air their tactical concepts.
Back when battleships had basket masts the Marine in the field shouldered a Krag rifle and ate his meals from a condiment can. But even then, out of the experience that stemmed from the problems of defending advanced bases in the far-flung seaways, was born the amphibious doctrine that led to victory in WWII. The doctrine proved sound and the Corps had its raison d'etre. Today the planning and testing go on--the helicopter replacing the whaleboat and new tactics replacing the old.
In a little over three decades, Marine Air has progressed from using lumbering "Jennies," Fokkers and Ford Tri-Motor aircraft to speedy jet Furys, Panthers and Banshees. Back in the days when wooden "props" pulled wire-strutted "crates" over Nicaraguan jungles, air support for the infantryman was a haphazard, hedge-hopping affai. But the men who experimented with "skivvy" shirts for air panels and "clothes line" communications' pickups, set the pattern and doctrine that has given us the precision teamwork required for our integrated close-air support today.
The facts are stark. Twenty years ago, very early at 0622 on 23 October 1983, a lone suicide bomber drove a Mercedes truck-packed with the equivalent of 12,000 pounds of TNT-into the building housing many of the Marines of the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit (24th MAU) killing 241 Marines and members of other U.S. Services. Most of Headquarters and Services Company of Battalion Landing Team, 1st Battalion, 8th Marines (BLT 1/8) was wiped out. At the same time, another suicide bomber drove a van into the barracks housing the French Foreign Legion killing several doxen Legionnaires. Read the entire article.
On 23 October 1983, two suicidal drivers, representing interests which are totally hostile to the United States of America and the Republic of France, conducted unprecedented and massive terrorist attacks-not against American Marines, sailors, and soldiers and French airborne troops-but against the free world... Read the full report.
The men who served with 24th MAU during the final, grim months of 1983, have taken their place alongside earlier Marines who endured at Samar, Wake Island, Chosin Reservoir, and Khe Sanh.
The "Beirut Bombing," as the terrorist attack on 23 October 1983 has become known, is now a part of Marine Corps historical lore. But the event will serve to remind future generations of military planners and political policymakers to consider even the unthinkable when they conceive future commitments. Read the entire article.
Comments
With the Old Breed by: E. B.
With the Old Breed by: E. B. Sledge underscores the above post. Sledge should be requried reading for all who wear the eagle, globe and anchor.
Required Reading?
I have an odd hobby of collecting book lists and choosing my reading material from those. I don't know about required reading for all Marines, but With the Old Breed is listed on the Marine Corps Professional Reading Program Reading List.
PELAU PAcific
PLEASE note that We lost Thousands On Iwo JIMA in Days but lost as many on the Island of PELAU over months please let more MARINES of the PResant day know of those losses too ................
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