Video: Canadian grunts tackle PTSD, get help from Marines
April 12th, 2012 | Afghanistan Battle Rattle Infantry Marines Wounded warriors | Posted by Gina Cavallaro
In this week’s Marine Corps Times, you may have read with disgust the story of a man who lied his way into a circle of trust in Canada by posing as a Marine with PTSD.
Behind the story about the unscrupulous faker was the story of the REAL infantryman who became his victim. He is Cpl Chris Dupee, a GRUNT with eight years in the 3rd Royal Canadian Regiment who actually has PTSD. He is a combat vet and is on a mission to help others deal with it, too.
His organization is called Military Minds and his Facebook page of the same name is up to almost 5,000 likes — and climbing — after only three months. The video you just watched (above) has gone viral with more than 25,000 hits in two days. The struggling artists who performed the song are in awe of the response.
“It went full-retard,” said Dupee, who believes the popularity of the song, the web site and the Facebook page “shows people are listening.”
Dupee, who is on duty in Toronto now, started a mobile power washing company as a way of employing soldiers returning from Afghanistan, and when he realized that so many of his buddies needed a place to go where they could talk about their war zone experiences, he started the web site.
It’s not unlike so many of the organizations that have sprung up in the U.S. with wounded warriors helping other wounded. Stepping outside the traditional channels available for mental and emotional help, he said, “is what’s working for us, we’re being human about it, there’s no script, it’s a grassroots effort. We didn’t wake up one day and say, ‘hey, let’s start a PTSD movement.”
Canada’s regular force is about 65,000-strong (that includes navy, army and air force). In the more than 10 years since operations began in Afghanistan, 158 Canadians have been killed in action.
The people who pose as Marines always get caught because real Marines are like rabid pit bulls when it comes to digging them out. Those dogs alerted Dupee to the poser after Military Minds posted a video of him whining about his “war experiences.”
If there is one thing Dupee has learned from the experience of being stung by one of these dirtballs is that Military Minds is the only organization he fully trusts. He didn’t see this one coming, but he will see the next one… and he’s got some new friends in the Marine Corps who are only more than willing to help.
Military Minds, he said, “started as a Canadian movement, but it’s borderless. I built the stage for people who need a voice.”
Marine fakers and the Marine who took them down
April 6th, 2012 | Marines | Posted by Gina Cavallaro
By the end of this week, this picture had circulated widely, and all I could think of was Chuck Schantag, a retired Marine infantryman whose mission was to expose people like this.
This “Marine-SEAL-EOD master gunnery sergeant,” a man of fantasy who has not yet been identified by name, has been called plenty of names by those who’ve sen the picture. Troops, supporters of troops and probably even some hippies are incensed.
He’s wearing almost every ribbon in the inventory including World War II, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a Navy Cross, a SEAL trident, the EOD “crab,” an aiguillette, marksmanship badges, an aviator badge, etc., etc.
Thousands of impostors like this have been exposed by P.O.W. Network, a web site launched in 1989 by Chuck Schantag and the woman he would marry four years later, Mary.
For years, Chuck and Mary and their vast network of countless vigilant supporters, have dug up pictures, documents, videos and other evidence against posers and then posted it all on the site: www.pownetwork.org.
P.O.W. Network and the fight against stolen valor are still going strong, but Chuck is gone. He died Feb. 23 in his “man cave” near Branson, Mo., where he and some buddies planned to make hamburgers with a steer they had butchered.
“It’s a pigsty hunting camp where they’d go out and chase armadillos, come back, reload and go out again,” Mary told me a few days after Chuck’s death.
Charles “Chuck” Patrick Schantag, Jr. served in Vietnam and was there during the Tet offensive in 1968. He was a Purple Heart recipient. He was 64 when he died.
Fakers angered Chuck, Mary said, because they claimed what his buddies earned “and some didn’t make it back, they didn’t have a chance to survive and raise their own families.”
Mary said talked to Chuck on the phone about 30 minutes before he collapsed of a heart attack while sitting at the table with his friends.
“The last thing we said to each other was ‘I love you.’”
Mary and Chuck Schantag
At Sywanyk’s, you get Marine Corps lore with every pour
March 13th, 2012 | Battle Rattle Camp Lejeune History and heritage Marines | Posted by Gina Cavallaro
A swing through Jacksonville, N.C., just wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Sywanyk’s. It’s a bar in a building that is so filled with Marine Corps memorabilia that it almost defies description. In fact, retired Sgt. Maj. Ihor Sywanyk, owner of the one-of-a-kind bar/museum can only describe it this way:
“You just come on right in, I won’t charge you and I might even buy you a drink… you will be impressed and amazed and if you don’t like it, don’t come back… but they always come back,” he told me on my third visit.
Sywanyk (pronounced swah-nick), an immigrant from the Ukraine, joined the Marine Corps in 1964 and served on active duty for more than 32 years and in dozens of different jobs from machinist to drill instructor to grunt and beyond. In 1995, a year before retiring from Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C., Sywanyk established his nightclub and began installing his collection of tens of thousands of Marine Corps items and memorabilia he has collected over the decades, mostly at gun shows.
Visitors will see a staggering number of weapons, patches, stickers, movie posters, recruiting posters, flags, medals, musical instruments, plaques, figurines, uniforms, documents and other collectibles in the two-story club, which has hosted countless weddings, Marine Corps birthday balls, hail-and-farewells and reunions.
Among his prized possessions are a uniform worn by Lt. Col. John William Thomason, Jr., author of Fix Bayonets, among several other World War I era books; and, a letter handwritten by Archibald Henderson, who was the longest serving commandant from 1820 to 1859.
Next time you’re in Jacksonville — or even on your way through the area — don’t miss Sywanyk’s Scarlet and Gold Traditions. It’s at 222 Henderson Avenue in Jacksonville. And don’t be surprised if you see me there on my fourth or fifth visit. It takes at least that many to see everything and toss a couple of Guinness back.
Largest explosion ever at Army post … courtesy of Marines
February 15th, 2012 | Afghanistan Battle Rattle Marines Marjah Training Weapons | Posted by Gina Cavallaro
Soldiers at Fort Benning, Ga., an Army post about 90 miles south of Atlanta, were treated to a gargantuan BOOM recently by the Leathernecks who train there.
An Army TV news correspondent starts her report by saying the U.S. Marine armor school detachment there, “made history… by detonating some of the largest explosions Fort Benning has ever seen.”
A group of combat engineers was having some fun… er, conducting a training exercise with their mine clearing line charge, known as the MCLC and pronounced mik-lik, from their assault breacher vehicle and set off the kind of awesome explosion that makes boys and girls want to be in the military.
The 10-week assault breacher vehicle crewman’s course is new at Benning for Marine and Army combat engineers, who learn to use the machine that’s already shown its value in operations in Afghanistan, where it was used for the first time in combat in 2009. The Maine Corps had it first… now the Army’s getting it.
In the video, lead instructor Staff Sgt. Bobby Stone describes how he saw the MCLC in action in Marjah when he was there with 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines. Said it saved lives.
“We’ve definitely made our mark today,” Stone says of the giant explosion at Benning.
Behind the Cover: Female Marines in combat arms battalions
February 13th, 2012 | Behind the Cover Marines women | Posted by Gina Cavallaro
With an exception to a long-standing Pentagon policy, female Marines in the ranks of captain, gunnery sergeant and staff sergeant will be permitted to serve in combat arms units below the division level.
But don’t expect to see women in infantry battalions yet. The Corps is only cracking the door open for women at this point and will place them in units through the normal assignment process in staff positions for select military occupational specialties newly opened up for female officers and enlisted women.
Marines assigned to combat arms battalions will begin seeing women occupying these staff positions sometime in May and after an unspecified period of evaluation, more positions could open up.
Also in this week’s issue, find out more about the possibility of extra Korea deployments, the cuts in bonus money for pilots and read the story of one grunt’s six hours of hell and the award he earned for going through it.
Video: Marine ‘screams like a little girl’ on amusement park ride
January 23rd, 2012 | Afghanistan Marines | Posted by Gina Cavallaro
Making the rounds today is a video posted on You Tube by Matteroni2 that made us laugh our butts off. It shows a guy screaming in sheer terror on a giant slingshot ride in Orlando, Fla., while his friend tells him “it was worth it just to hear you scream like a little girl.”
Apparently the screamer is a Marine, but it’s hard to tell for sure.
Before the slingshot hurtles him and his friend into the sky he says he’d rather be in Afghanistan than sitting there on the ride with the anticipation of waiting to take off. His buddies in Afghanistan probably heard the scream from there.
If you’re the Marine in the video, thanks for the laugh… and way to let it all hang out!
Gunnery Sgt. R. Lee Ermey blasts ship captain… in Italian?
January 20th, 2012 | Marines Pop culture | Posted by Gina Cavallaro
A Facebook page dedicated to the tar and feathering of ship’s captain Francesco Schettino, who appears to have fled the $45 million cruise ship Costa Concordia and its passengers and crew after grounding it off the coast of Italy’s Tuscany region, has turned to a famous Marine Corps icon to express its disdain for the man some Italians have named “chicken of the sea.”
Among dozens of satirical illustrations created using well known images from movies, music albums and other pop culture, is the famous shot of retired Gunnery Sgt. R. Lee Ermey shouting — in Italian — at a superimposed profile shot of Schettino.
The photo illustration is headlined with the words “Get back to your ship immediately” in Italian. Ermey, who has a propensity for telling it like it is, no doubt would have some choice words for Schettino if he ran into him.
The Facebook page ridiculing Schettino, who, among other excuses for having fled the sinking ship, has said he tripped and fell into a life boat, has close to 62,000 followers.
Marine paints his way into history
January 3rd, 2012 | History and heritage The CMC Washington | Posted by Gina Cavallaro
Gen. James Amos and artist Staff Sgt. Kristopher Battles on Jan. 1, 2012 at the Home of the Commandants in Washington, D.C. (Gina Cavallaro/staff)
The Home of the Commandants at Marine Barracks Washington is a living museum where all who enter or are fortunate enough to live there are surrounded by artists’ renditions of some of the most famous faces, places and battles in the Marine Corps’ history.
Completed in 1806, the historic landmark is the oldest continuously occupied home in Washington and the names of many of the artists whose works adorn the walls have long since faded into the past.
So, when Staff Sgt. Kristopher Battles was chosen to create the home’s newest painting, he knew it would be one for the history books — and that he’d be around long enough to see it hung on the wall.
“I haven’t done anything with this level of exposure,” said Battles, a Reserve Marine who has been mobilized for five years and works in a studio aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va. “I mean, it’s the commandant’s house.”
The oil painting is a faithful replica of the Home of the Commandants after a snowfall and is based on a photo taken by Amos himself in 2009. A reproduction of the work was used by Amos, and his wife Bonnie, for their 2011 Christmas card.
To show his appreciation for Battles’ superb work, and for his contribution of more than 60 studio works for the Marine Corps in the last year alone, Amos awarded Battles the Navy Marine Corps Commendation Medal following the painting’s unveiling in the home’s living room on Jan. 1.
Battles, who was invited with his wife to the traditional New Years Day “surprise” musical serenade for the commandant — a tradition that dates to the Civil War – thought he was just another invited guest and was surprised by the award. He hadn’t even met the commandant until that day.
The painting of the Home of the Commdandants, Battles said, is now one of his favorites. But there is one painting he did during a deployment to Iraq that is his favorite of all time. It’s called A Little Light Reading, Marines Enjoy the Morning.
A Little Light Reading, by Staff Sgt. Kristopher Battles
“I like it because it shows what it’s like to be in Iraq, and that’s something for future reference,” Battles said.
A Christmas message from the Commandant and Mrs. Amos
December 14th, 2011 | General officers Leadership The CMC | Posted by Gina Cavallaro
Marines, Marine families, Marine supporters and anyone who’s ever worn the Marine Corps uniform get a Christmas salute from Gen. and Mrs. Bonnie Amos in this 4:43 minute video shot at The Home of the Commandants in Washington, D.C.
With “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” playing softly in the background, the commandant sends a “special shout out” to the “more than 30,000 Marines and sailors forward deployed and forward engaged in the defense of our nation in Helmand province, aboard ships at sea, at embassies and in detachments around the globe.”
Taking turns addressing viewers, Bonnie Amos points out the loneliness felt by Marines away from family at Christmas time and notes that she and the commandant have endured such separations over time.
The video was released by the commandant’s office on Dec. 14. Here’s a link.
Behind the Cover: A Marine Corps workout to rival CrossFit
December 12th, 2011 | Behind the Cover Fitness Marines | Posted by Gina Cavallaro
The certified trainers at Semper Fit — the Corps’ in-house health and fitness promotion group you see at the base gyms — have designed a kick-ass workout program that they think will satisfy even the most demanding physical fitness disciple in the Corps.
The program is called High Intensity Tactical Training, or HITT, and it will be ready to go in about three weeks. It’s got a library of more than 600 exercises that have been combined into 60-minute workouts meant to be done three times a week. Marines who took part in the beta test done this past fall are already believers and some say they expect to do much better on their next PFT and CFT because of it.
The Semper Fit trainers are not discouraging the use of programs like CrossFit, but they do have some really good points to make about HITT and the differences between it and commercial workout programs. The story starts on Page 22 in this week’s issue and even has an example of three of the workouts.
Also in this week’s issue you’ll read about new rules for backpacks, Bold Alligator 2012 and there’s a story that will tell you even more about what expect if you get an assignment to Australia.