Semper Fi: Marines At 230

NRO: Distinguished Military Force Celebrates Milestone

(National Review Online)  But that is slander. Writing in The American Enterprise several years ago, Jim Webb observed:

"The sizable portion of the Vietnam age group who declined to support the counter-cultural agenda, and especially the men and women who opted to serve in the military during the Vietnam War, are quite different from their peers who for decades have claimed to speak for them. In fact, they are much like the World War II generation itself. For them, Woodstock was a side show, college protestors were spoiled brats who would have benefited from having to work a few jobs in order to pay their tuition, and Vietnam represented not an intellectual exercise in draft avoidance or protest marches but a battlefield that was just as brutal as those their fathers faced in World War II and Korea."

I have recently reestablished contact with two of my comrades from Vietnam: Jack Higgins and Carl Marlantes. Jack was on his second tour when we served together in 1st Battalion 4th Marines. On his first tour, he had been involved in the terrible fight at Dai Do in the spring of 1968, where he earned a Silver Star.

What can I say about Carl? At a time when the Ivy League was not sending many people to Vietnam, Carl was a Yale graduate. He looked like he was 16 years old and with his long hair Carl didn't exactly fit the mold of a Marine officer. But when he went home, he was wearing a Navy Cross, a Silver Star, and two Purple Hearts. In my book, Jack and Carl, as well as Tim Rabbitt, Andy O'Sullivan, Vic Reston, Buzz Fry, Calvin Spaight, Larry Boyer, and many others are the best men I have ever known. They are my "band of brothers," and I will never forget them.

And these Marines did a remarkable job against some pretty tough odds. As Webb writes:

"Dropped onto the enemy's terrain 12,000 miles away from home, America's citizen-soldiers performed with a tenacity and quality that may never be truly understood. Those who believe the war was fought incompetently on a tactical level should consider Hanoi's recent admission that 1.4 million of its soldiers died on the battlefield, compared to 58,000 total U.S. dead. Those who believe that it was a 'dirty little war' where the bombs did all the work might contemplate that it was the most costly war the U.S. Marine Corps has ever fought — five times as many dead as World War I, three times as many dead as in Korea, and more total killed and wounded than in all of World War II."

Significantly, these sacrifices were being made at a time the United States was deeply divided over our effort in Vietnam.

As I always do, I'll be attending the Marine Corps Birthday Ball this year. It's one of the great social events of the year here in Newport, and there will be Marines as old as 90 and as young as 18. What do they have in common? That old and young alike are members of a remarkable martial fraternity — the United States Marine Corps. That those who have gone before have set a high standard. That those who can meet that standard ought to be very proud of themselves.

At the ball, I'll drink all the official toasts, but I'll save a special one for Jack, Carl, and all the rest of my "band of brothers." They lived up to the standard and have now passed it on to the latest generation. Happy Birthday, Marines, and Semper Fidelis!


Mackubin Thomas Owens is an associate dean of academics and a professor of national-security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. He is writing a history of U.S. civil-military relations.