Happy Birthday
It was On November 10, 1775 that the Continental Congress authorized "two battalions of Marines” to be raised for service as landing forces for the new Navy. This established the Continental Marines and marked the birth of the United States Marine Corps. The first amphibious raid on foreign soil was conducted in the Bahamas early the next year, under the command of the Corps’ first Commandant, Capt. Samuel Nicholas, Continental Marines.
This is a big event for the Corps. All over the world, wherever there is one or more Marines assigned, there will be a Ball and dancing and drinking and the cutting of a cake with a sword. Even though I am a Squid by trade, I had a Marine Drill Instructor at Aviation Officer Candidate School, and have been invited to them in Mombasa, Japan, Korea and underway in the Med. They are all different and they are all the same.
They say that the Birthday is so significant that the Marines arranged for the Armistice that ended World War One to be effective on the morning of November 11th, so they could sleep off their hangovers.
I actually got to wish a Commandant an early Happy Birthday last week. General Al Gray, the NSA’s favorite Marine and 29th Commandant, General Al Gray. He was being inducted into the Hall of Honor along with my pal Admiral Mac. I almost didn’t recognize him in his dark suit, but the fire-plug physique and his merry eyes gave him away.
General Gray was a Marine’s Marine. He is a smart guy, much smarter than the bluff Rifleman image he used to project. He was the first Commandant in a long while to go back to wearing cammies in the capital, the complete antithesis of the Class A Eighth and I Marines from the Barracks down the street from the Capitol Dome. He drank his coffee from a canteen liner, just like he was in the field.
He had a point to that- he was getting a message across to his people. General Gray was concerned that the Corps was getting soft, used to technology, and he was determined to bring his Marines back used to wander into our special room in the Pentagon during the height of the air campaign in Iraq- that would be the first war, the one over Kuwait.
I swear, I am starting to sound like a World War One vet these days myself. We need a better way to differentiate the conflicts in the Gulf, or maybe it is all part of the same thing like the war that burned Europe down to the ground.
Al Gray got the lessons from that struggle, and as I say, he is far smarter than he let on in his public persona. At the HQ at Henderson Hall, he devised the scheme for direct support intelligence for Marines in the Field, and in 1962 he took the first USMC ground SIGINT to the field in South Vietnam. Later, he founded all-source fusion intelligence centers to support ground operations- the prototypes of the organizations that are scourging al Qaida fighters in the field.
I thanked him for that in the brief moment that I had his attention, as he turned to make a space for his Marines.
Admiral Mac had a great turnout of friends and family for his investiture. General Gray not only had his family, but a squad of enlisted Marines- kids not born when he went to the field- came over from the Fort to line the halls of the museum for the occasion.
That is just one of the things that make Marines special. Infuriating, sometimes, but special, without doubt. That is one of the things they do best.
Regardless of the rhythms of the Republic, the day is celebrated in good times and bad. I have not formalized my plans for the day, which is Monday this year.
Realizing that I am not going anywhere soon, based on the economic downturn, I have begun to spruce up Tunnel Eight. I spent several hours on overdue projects, re-running cables and fixing cracks in the plaster. As the darkness came in, I realized the last thing I needed to do was check the company mail- see if anything was brewing I needed to be aware of before Monday started.
I opened the company account on the computer and found out that a "request for proposal" had been released only a couple minutes after I signed off for the last time Friday. I had puttered the whole weekend, thinking I was safe.
There was a flurry of activity thereafter, as you might imagine, people all over the national capital region twittering at one another about business opportunities, and in the midst of it, my young friend from her prestigious New England College checked in on Instant Mail.
I had to laugh- the IM string was not much different than the tradition at Marine Birthdays, when the cake-cutting sword is gripped by the oldest and youngest Marines present.
General Gray did it often, usually with an eighteen-year-old Private, still damp from the squad showers at Parris Island. My friend was not celebrating a birthday, not precisely. She is trying to figure out Spring classes, is joyful about her dual major, and is combining her knowledge and appreciation of German culture with a study of the Holocaust, which is the damnedest conjunction of the best of humankind and the most horrific. She is something else, and a wonderful kid.
I asked about how things had been on campus Election night, and got a rush of breathless enthusiasm.
I wish I had been around to see it- or at least to plug into a webcam- since the festival that began after Pennsylvania was declared for Senator Obama was something else. She said the chanting went on for hours and there were high-jinx of all sorts, including streakers flying around campus. It is an all-woman’s school, so it would be the kind of spontaneous display I can get behind. It sounded positively tribal; more than a bit like the Marines.
She was pleased with being part of something historic, since this was her first vote. I congratulated her without irony. Like me, she is unlikely to be a Marine, so this may have to do.
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com