Inside the Marine Corps Sergeants Major Symposium
July 29th, 2010 | General officers The CMC The Sgt. Major of the Marine Corps | Posted by Dan Lamothe
Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlton Kent sits for an interview Wednesday with staff writer Dan Lamothe. (Photo by Sheila Vemmer/Staff)
When it comes to the movers and shakers in the Marine Corps, they virtually all will visit the same event this week: the Marine Corps Sergeants Major Symposium in National Harbor, Md.
An annual gathering of the service’s most senior enlisted advisers, the symposium frequently leads to recommendations that affect change in the service. Led by Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlton Kent, it traditionally pushes up a handful of suggestion to the commandant each year. Many of those have made their way into Marine Corps policy in recent years, including a crackdown on body-fat standards, the approval of campaign stars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the limiting of forearm tattoos in the service.
I was invited to attend the symposium for a few hours yesterday, my third year covering the event. We’ll have much more in next week’s print edition of Marine Corps Times, but it’s worth sharing the list of speakers set to appear this week. They include:
- Commandant Gen. James Conway and his wife, Annette
- Assistant Commandant Gen. James Amos, the presumed next CMC
- Retired Gen. Peter Pace, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs
- Navy Secretary Ray Mabus
- Lt. Gen. Richard Zilmer, deputy commandant for Manpower & Reserve Affairs
- Lt. Gen. Frank Panter, deputy commandant for Installations & Logistics
- Lt. Gen. George Flynn, deputy commandant for Combat Development and Integration
- Lt. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, deputy commandant for Plans, Policies and Operations
Those are some pretty big names, from Conway right on down to four of his six deputy commandants. A variety of lower-ranking general officers and colonels also are scheduled to brief the sergeants major.
Pieces of the symposium are pretty laid back, and the Marines wear civilian clothing on some days. The week is packed with events, though, and has little downtime for anyone involved.
Behind the Cover: Liposuction, starvation, laxatives and the Corps
July 27th, 2010 | Behind the Cover Military appearance | Posted by Dan Lamothe
This week’s Marine Corps Times cover story focuses on a part of life that keeps some Marines up at night: Facing “the tape.”
Diving into a new study conducted by Marine officers, the story focuses on the extreme measures that some Marines go to meet the service’s tough body composition and military appearance standards — up to and including liposuction. Yes, we have someone on the record sharing his experience with the procedure, and others who say they’ve considered it.
The story also hits on some on how dangerous some of the methods used by Marines to stay trim are, such as starvation using laxatives.
Comic book nerds clown on Westboro Baptist Church
July 26th, 2010 | Westboro Baptist Church | Posted by Dan Lamothe
Sarcasm much? A man in costume mocks the Westboro Baptish Church by protesting outside the Comic-Con International conference in San Diego last week. (YouTube screen grab)
At this point, the Westboro Baptish Church has protested nearly everyone on the face of the planet for not agreeing with their hardliner view of the modern-day world.
Most famously (or infamously), they protest outside military funerals with signs that say thing such as “God bless IEDs,” an activity that will soon be considered in front of the U.S. Supreme Court for its constitutionality. But the small, family-run church from Topeka, Kan., also has ripped everyone from Lada Gaga to the late U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd (D.-W.V.) this summer alone.
Last week, the comic book lovers as the Comic-Con International conference in San Diego learned that the Westboro church would be protesting outside their event with their fervor. The wiseacre response: Protest back. Loudly, ridiculously and hysterically.
Take this video, which shows some of the mayhem:
There’s much, much more on this available on the blog Comics Alliance.
To beret, or not to beret
July 23rd, 2010 | Events Gear Korea Rumors | Posted by Gidget Fuentes
Every so often, it seems, the Marines-wear-beret rumor rears its head. Usually it’s when leathernecks get the chance to question or schmooze with senior brass. Back before the Army in 2001 standardized the beret for all soldiers, every so often some bold and usually gung-ho junior Marine would ask or suggest the wear of berets. No commandant or uniform board approved such an idea, however.
Battle Rattle recalls a day back in the mid-‘90s, when a young Marine joined others greeting then-commandant Gen. Chuck Krulak on a ship’s mess decks asked the four-star general why Recon Marines couldn’t wear the black beret, so they could stand out as being, well, elite, he argued. The general quickly dismissed the question, although Battle Rattle wonders whether that Marine’s staff NCOs were less forgiving.
Even with the Army’s still-controversial adoption of the beret as universal head wear, Marines and the beret remain an ongoing curiosity. Sometimes, the question surfaces in the most unlikely place, at the oddest time. Most recently, it arose in the most unlikely crowd: Soldiers in South Korea.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates talks to soldiers during a short talk and question-and-answer session July 20 at Camp Casey, South Korea.//DoD/Cherie Cullen
Defense Secretary Robert Gates traveled to South Korea, where he would visit the Demilitarized Zone, meet with South Korea defense leaders and announce new U.S.-Republic of Korea “show of force” exercises designed to remind North Korea of repercussions for its March torpedoing of the ROK ship Cheonan. The sinking is the latest act by the North to heighten already rocky tension in the Far East.
Suffice it to say, the Pentagon chief had a full plate of heavy issues, but on his July 20 arrival he took some time to take a few questions from soldiers at Camp Casey, an Army garrison in Seoul. A couple of soldiers – all wearing the black berets authorized by the Army – asked about the Defense Department’s ongoing plans to extend Korea tours to three-year for married service members. One soldier asked about the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. But then came an out-of-the-ballpark question.
“Is there any revelation about our Marines going to patrol caps or berets?” a soldier asked, hinting that “counterparts would like to ask.”
The question surely was unexpected. “First I’ve heard of it,” Gates responded, laughing. “They don’t tell me these things.”
Just what fueled the question isn’t clear. Was it wild speculation or scuttlebutt that’s bouncing around the joint commands and camps in South Korea or perhaps some secret covert plan underway on the peninsula?
Battle Rattle asked a manpower and reserve affairs spokeswoman in Quantico, Va., who chuckled at the notion but said she hadn’t heard of any policy change. Bill Johnson-Miles, a Marine Corps Systems Command spokesman, said the command likewise hadn’t heard and hadn’t gotten any recommendations about berets “to even consider adopting them.”
Getting ready for a Marine dad
July 22nd, 2010 | Afghanistan Camp Lejeune | Posted by Dan Lamothe
Kenneth Berregard, left, and his brother, Kevin, paint a welcome home banner for their father, Gunnery Sgt. Kenneth Berregard, at a Combat Logistics Battalion 6 banner-making event July 17 at the Camp Lejeune, N.C., base stables. (Photo by Sgt. Jeremy Ross/Marine Corps)
It’s going to be a light day of posting here at Battle Rattle, considering that Thursday usually includes Marine Corps Times’ major weekly push to get everything in and settled before deadline for the next week’s print edition.
Before diving into a few great stories I’m working for next week, though, I wanted to share the photo above. It was taken July 17 at Camp Lejeune, N.C., where families are anxiously looking forward to the return of Combat Logistics Battalion 6, which is finishing up a seven-month deployment in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
The battalion is expected to return in early-August, the Marine Corps reported on its Web site.
Arlington burial of late general and Iwo Jima veteran to be star-studded affair
July 21st, 2010 | General officers The CMC World War II | Posted by Dan Lamothe
Maj. Gen. Fred Haynes (Marine Corps)
Thursday morning, the Marine Corps will bury one of its own.
Retired Maj. Gen. Fred Haynes wasn’t just any Marine, though. As a captain, he served as an operations officer for Combat Team 28, participating in the bloody Battle of Iwo Jima that resulted in nearly 7,000 U.S. combat deaths. In 1967, he served as the top operations officer of Marine forces in Vietnam.
Haynes died in March, and will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery following a service at Arlington’s Fort Myer Old Post Chapel. The delay in his burial is likely the result of the time and resources it takes (think horse-drawn caisson) to bury someone with full military honors.
A copy of an informational brief about Haynes’ ceremony shows that good things come to those who wait. The ceremony will be a star-studded affair, with no fewer than three former commandants — retired Gens. Al Gray, Carl Mundy and James Jones — serving as honorary pall bearers. They will be joined by three members of the Haynes family, retired Lt. Gen. Ron Christmas (a Navy Cross recipient) and retired Col. Bill Rockey, a former battalion commander in Vietnam whose father, the late Maj. Gen. Keller Rockey, commanded Haynes’ division at Iwo Jima.
Other dignitaries expected to attend include Gen. James Mattis, the presumed next commander of U.S. Central Command, and Ichiro Fujisaki, Japan’s ambassador to the U.S. The eulogy will be delivered by retired Lt. Gen. Larry Snowden, who was a company commander during the assault on Iwo Jima.
For what it’s worth, Haynes co-authored a book, “The Lions of Iwo Jima,” that was released just last May. In a review, James Bradley, author of “Flags of Our Fathers,” said Haynes was the highest-ranking surviving officer from Combat Team 28.
Rest in peace, sir.
Marines launch new Web site for parents
July 21st, 2010 | Recruiting | Posted by Dan Lamothe
The Marine Corps has always had the reputation for being creative when it comes to recruiting. Now, the service is launching a new Web site that focuses on “influencers” — the parents, mentors and other adults who guide America’s youth — and its prospective Marines.
The site, LifeAsAMarine.com, just went live within the last few days, Marine officials say. It allows parents, friends, and supporters to share their own Marine Corps story, with the obvious intention of allaying fears in parents whose children are considering joining.
The Corps posted a 60-second promotional video on YouTube this week:
The site also serves as a clearinghouse of information for parents, and features a variety of recruiting materials. Perhaps the best feature on the site, though, are the individual stories like this one. Some of them feature parents, some of them feature Marines, and some of them feature both together.
Gen. James Mattis, hanging out in an Afghanistan fighting hole
July 20th, 2010 | General officers Infantry | Posted by Dan Lamothe
Then-Lt. Gen. James Mattis speaks to Marines in Iraq in 2007. (Photo by Cpl. Zachary Dyer/Marine Corps)
In a story published this morning, The New York Times treads over a lot of well-worn ground while examining Gen. James Mattis’ past and considering how he’ll fit in as the new commander of U.S. Central Command.
Most of it will come as no surprise to Marine Corps watchers. Mattis is known for his “impolitic” remarks, the Times reports, and is “a warrior who chooses to lead from the front lines and speaks bluntly rather than concerning himself with political correctness.” Shocker, I know.
The story does contain one great anecdote, though. Nathaniel Fick, a former Marine captain whose profile was raised by the books Generation Kill and One Bullet Away (his own work), offers the following memory from his time in Afghanistan:
It was the first winter of the war in Afghanistan, when the wind stabbed like an ice pick and fingertips froze to triggers, but a young lieutenant’s blood simmered as he approached a Marine fighting hole and spotted three heads silhouetted in the moonlight. He had ordered only two Marines to stand watch while the rest of the platoon was ordered to rest before an expected Taliban attack at first light.
“I dropped down into the hole, and there were two junior Marines,” the lieutenant, Nathaniel C. Fick, recalled of that overnight operation outside Kandahar. “But the third was General Mattis. He has a star on his collar and could have been sleeping on a cot with a major waiting to make him coffee. But he’s out there in the cold in the middle of the night, doing the same thing I’m doing as a first lieutenant — checking on his men.”
And that, of course, is why his Marines love him.
Blog wisecracks get public affairs contractor ousted from RIMPAC
July 20th, 2010 | Pacific issues The blogosphere | Posted by Dan Lamothe
A landing craft air-cushioned, or LCAC, enters the well deck of the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard on July 6 during the joint Rim of the Pacific military exercises off the coast of Hawaii. (Lance Cpl. Orlando Perez/Marine Corps)
Earlier this month, military blogger Gina DiNicolo poked fun at the annual Rim of the Pacific exercise, in which thousands of sailors and Marines participate in 38 days of nation building and joint operations off the coast of Hawaii.
As Military Times colleague Phil Ewing pointed out on ScoopDeck, it was a “broadside,” one in which she mocked RIMPAC as “SNOOZEPAC” and called the action “anything but exciting.”
A key section of her post, up on the Military Officers Association of America blog, Inside the Headquarters:
Despite the size, locale and agenda, these games seem anything but exciting. Take away the French, and really, what’s left? SNOOZEPAC is 38 days of too many visitors gorging themselves on foreign and U.S. naval delicacies. Air assets become personal taxis transporting their fares from vessel to vessel. (Maybe that’s how it got its rep as the world’s largest floating cocktail party.)
Her analysis may or may not have merit, but there’s another key detail: DiNicolo, a medically retired Marine captain, was in Hawaii for RIMPAC. Working for the Marine Corps. As a civilian public affairs representative.
Exactly.
The blog post subsequently got her dumped from her job doing public affairs work for the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, DiNicolo said last week in a phone interview. She returned home to Virginia, and will no longer be at the lab, based at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va. She had worked 40 hours per week for them as a contractor.
DiNicolo, a former Marine Corps public affairs officer, said she believes her work for the Corps and MOAA should be considered separately. She did her job for the lab well, and wrote factually accurate, pointed criticism on the blog, outside of her work with the Corps, she said.
“It’s unfortunate. I think we have a difference in philosophy,” she said. “I think you have a good story, you tell the story. And if you have a marginal story, you tell the story and the good points come out.”
The Corps wouldn’t say much about the incident. In a prepared statement, Marine officials released the following statement:
The contractor was hired to provide public affairs support to the Quantico-based Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory and its Enhanced Company Operations Limited Objective 4 experiment conducted during RIMPAC 2010. An employment action sending the individual home was initiated, because of the contractor’s inability to stay on task and resulting conflict of interest.
That’s a bit cryptic, but if “inability to stay on task” means “openly ridiculing the same event for which you’re facilitating media coverage,” I suppose it counts.
Reached for additional comment, DiNicolo says it simply isn’t true that she couldn’t do her job with the Corps. Her e-mailed response, in part:
I left because Third Fleet was uncomfortable with a member of media or blogging community working in with his PAOs. Fair enough. There is your conflict, as they may see it. Though I thought it an ideal opportunity to get into the field and write some stories, it was pretty clear the lab personnel wanted me gone.
… The hard part in their minds, I think, is reconciling my performance as reasonably talented lab PAO 12 hours a day with this blog pariah for Inside the Headquarters by night… As we discussed, I write what I think readers will find interesting. RIMPAC is not interesting in its natural form. At least I don’t find it interesting, and I rarely write straight news in the blog. I think the RIMPAC blog entry was a solid, accurate piece. It informed, entertained, pointed out a possible shortcoming but highlighted RIMPAC’s strengths. Gee, I’d be happy with that coverage.
Call me crazy, but I’m just not seeing that. At this point, there is nearly a decade of examples that illustrate that running your mouth about your employer on a blog can get you fired. Take this 2005 USA Today piece, which covers the termination of employees at Wells Fargo, Google and other corporations. Or this blog post, which covers the 2008 firing of a Washington Post reporter who posted drunk photographs of himself online and called the Post a “dying medium” on the football blog Kissing Suzy Kolber.
There’s even a word for it: “Dooced.”
Yep: DiNicolo just got dooced.
UPDATE, 10:20 A.M.: ScoopDeck ninja Phil Ewing of Navy Times — the journalist who first drew attention to DiNicolo’s post — weighs in on the mini-scandal here.
Journalism blogs Media Matters and Romensko also provide their two cents.
Behind the Cover: Tragedy and heroism in Ganjgal, Afghanistan
July 18th, 2010 | Afghanistan Behind the Cover Ganjgal Infantry | Posted by Dan Lamothe
It’s every Marine’s worst nightmare.
Your buddies are pinned down in a kill zone, taking fire from three sides. No help is on the way, and every time you try to assist them, you get turned back by the massive amount of firepower unleashed by the enemy.
Cpl. Dakota Meyer found himself in this very situation Sept. 8, 2009. Caught in a battle in Ganjgal, a remote village in eastern Afghanistan, he took matter into his own hands, braving a hail of enemy fire on foot to reach his buddies. Sadly, they were dead when he found them.
The battle, of course, made national news last year because troops on the ground were outraged they didn’t get the air and artillery support they needed despite pleading for it repeatedly. This week’s Marine Corps Times takes it a step farther, focusing on the bravery of Meyer and his fellow Marines, relying on dozens of jarring, first-person accounts provided by troops on the ground to Combined Joint Task Force 82, which investigated the attack after the fact. Meyer’s is among the most painful to process.
I wrote the cover story after poring through hundreds of pages of documents compiled as part of the investigation. The military has repeatedly refused to cough up the entire report, but I obtained a 300-plus page copy — already declassified, meaning it could have been released – after my own recent return from Afghanistan.
The story also focuses on details not published in a five-page summary report of the investigation in February, and how things turned so sideways on the battlefield.
An example: The three Army officers previously recommended for reprimand due to their negligence that day were with Task Force Chosin, which was based at Forward Operating Base Joyce in Kunar province and spearheaded by 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, out of Fort Drum, N.Y. The unit’s identity was redacted by the military in the summary.