stoneroses86 wrote:
Joe Orr Road Rod wrote:
He always said that the Marines were more worried about taking pictures than fighting the war.
I mean no disrespect to your father or his service, but this has to be one of the craziest things I have ever read on this message board. In the Pacific, the United States Marine Corps fought some of the most insane battles EVER in recorded history, against the most intense opponent imaginable.
Not being around during WWII, I don't have much of an opinion one way or another. But I think my father's viewpoint was probably informed by exactly the kind of thing you just said. The U.S. Army fought all kinds of battles in the Pacific theater. It's not like they weren't there. And I'm pretty sure the fighting in France and Germany was also intense. If someone is trying to kill you, it doesn't much matter what he looks like. From where my dad stood, his outfit kicked Hitler's ass across Europe and after VE Day he was ready to ship out to the Pacific before Truman nuked Japan.
Of course, as a kid I was fascinated by war and the military. And when we played soldier in the backyard, we weren't fighting in Vietnam. That was the horrible shit on TV every night. We were fighting Nazis in Europe like Vic Morrow on
Combat. Like I said, my dad never really talked about the war very much. For his generation it was just something everybody did. He wasn't special. He would say, "we all just did what we had to do". I remember asking him if he was scared. And he said there were only two kinds of guys in a war- the scared and the stupid. He was scared. He said the infantryman's most important tool wasn't his carbine. It was his shovel. If he had a choice between keeping the shovel or the M1, he'd pick the shovel every time. Dig it fast and deep.
Anyway, I don't think my old man was alone in his Army enmity toward the Corps. It appears Favre Fan has a little. Maybe the Army instills the rivalry in Basic Training (Don't call it Boot Camp!). But I suspect it has more to do with Marines acting like douchebags. In any case, Marines have a well-earned reputation for the belief that their branch of the military is superior to all others.