Mt Whitney Zone Forums The Chat Room Happy 237th Birthday, Marines, and Happy Veterans' Day

Happy Birthday, Marines!


The video:

http://www.marines.mil/Marines/2012BirthdayBall.aspx


The Commandant's message:

http://www.hqmc.marines.mil/Portals/142/Docs/CMC%20237th%20USMC%20Birthday%20Message.PDF


The Marines' Hymn

From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli,
We fight our country's battles in the air, on land and sea.
First to fight for right and freedom, and to keep our honor clean;
We are proud to claim the title of United States Marine.

Our Flag's unfurled to every breeze from dawn to setting sun.
We have fought in every clime and place, where we could take a gun.
In the snow of far off northern lands and in sunny tropic scenes, You will find us always on the job, the United States Marines.

Here's health to you and to our Corps, which we are proud to serve.
In many a strife we've fought for life and never lost our nerve.
If the Army and the Navy ever look on heaven's scenes,
they will find the streets are guarded by United States Marines.



Also, Happy Veterans' Day to all of our fighting men and women past and present.


Semper fidelis!

What is a Veteran?

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye.
Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg - or per-haps another sort of inner steel: the soul's ally forged in the refinery of adversity.
Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem.
You can't tell a vet just by looking.
He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel.
He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose over-grown frat-boy behavior is out-weighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.
She - or he - is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang.
He is the POW who went away one person and came back another - or didn't come back AT ALL.
He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat - but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other's backs.
He is the parade - riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.
He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.
He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep.
He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket - palsied now and aggravatingly slow - who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the night-mares come.
He is an ordinary and yet an extraor-dinary human being - a person who offered some of his life's most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.
He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.
So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say "Thank You.” That's all most people need and, in most cases, it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded.
Two little words that mean a lot, "THANK YOU".

--Father Denis Edward O'Brien/USMC


THANK YOU!!

Thank You!

"Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone but only his friends.

He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself and that in secret.

But there are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.”


-- Fyodor Dostoyesvsky, Notes from Underground