Hard Corps - A great story

[82Marine89]

In all the furor over John Kerry's so-called "botched joke" (that repeated an assertion he's made his whole political career) about how those who don't study in school will get "stuck in Iraq," something was lost in the shuffle.

While conservatives rightly jumped on the chance to point out that this generally accepted liberal cliché shows how little the Left understands the American fighting force—and, indeed the contempt they not only hold for the military, but for the very idea of serving—another point was left unmade: Namely, that for a certain kind of troubled youth, the United States Armed Forces are just the thing. It was once common for a judge to direct someone to join the Marines to avoid jail, a bit of creative sentencing that would make leftists in this day and age reel in horror.

Hard Corps: From Gangster to Marine Hero, a new memoir by Marco Martinez, the first Latino to be awarded the Navy Cross since World War II, proudly reminds us of one basic fact: The Marine Corps will make a man out of you.

Martinez is himself the case in point. A gang member heading for an early grave—despite solid parents, including a father who was a retired Army Ranger—Marco turned his life around, not with the help of a gang intervention social worker, but under the guidance of that worst of all left-wing boogeymen: a Marine recruiting officer.

Hard Corps is more than another fine combat memoir whose narrator's story has a unique twist. Martinez mounts a full-throated defense of the United States Marines and its culture. He takes on the media portrayal of America's fighting forces as victims in general, and the picture painted in the book and movie Jarhead in particular, and he pulls no punches.
He also includes fair warning on the flylef of what's ahead for delicate sensibilities: "A Marine memoir without profanity is like a rifle without ammo. This book is locked and loaded."

Here's a sample to give you a good idea of what to expect—and because this passage really makes me smile.

The Marines I know don't have a lot of patience for bullshit. In fact, a healthy hatred for bullshit is hardwired into us; it's part of our training. Come to think of it, we Marines hate a lot of things: We hate whiny "boots" (new Marines), we hate antimilitary liberals, we hate those patchouli-smelling hippies who denied our Vietnam brothers the honor they were and are due (damn we hate those sons of bitches!), we hate pricks like Senator John "I married rich" Kerry who think their Ivy League diplomas somehow make them better than all us military dum-dums who didn't study hard enough and got "stuck in Iraq" (what an arrogant ass that guy is), we hate those people you always see on TV ranting against the very military that protects their First Amendment rights with guns and guts, and we hate that f---head Anthony Swofford who wrote that stupid-ass book [Jarhead] that got turned into a stupid-ass movie…

You might think that is a lot of hatred to lug around.

Maybe so, but you have to understand Marine Infantry psychology. Grunts are, at base, masochists. We love the crap that no one in his right mind would enjoy....

Click for full text...

 

[Dirt McGirt]

and we hate that f---head Anthony Swofford who wrote that stupid-ass book [Jarhead] that got turned into a stupid-ass movie…

ROFLMAO. Seems to be the general consensus amongst most of the Marines I've ever talked with. I for one thought the movie was pretty entertaining, despite the over-the-top embellishments. The boot camp scenes in Full Metal Jacket will always be the standard bearer when it comes to depicting the Corps though.

 

[Semper Fi]

I bought and read that book within a week. Not because it was short, but because it was simply a great story, told by a great man and role-model. I loved it, I recommend it.

 

[Gunny]

In all the furor over John Kerry's so-called "botched joke" (that repeated an assertion he's made his whole political career) about how those who don't study in school will get "stuck in Iraq," something was lost in the shuffle.

While conservatives rightly jumped on the chance to point out that this generally accepted liberal cliché shows how little the Left understands the American fighting force—and, indeed the contempt they not only hold for the military, but for the very idea of serving—another point was left unmade: Namely, that for a certain kind of troubled youth, the United States Armed Forces are just the thing. It was once common for a judge to direct someone to join the Marines to avoid jail, a bit of creative sentencing that would make leftists in this day and age reel in horror.

Hard Corps: From Gangster to Marine Hero, a new memoir by Marco Martinez, the first Latino to be awarded the Navy Cross since World War II, proudly reminds us of one basic fact: The Marine Corps will make a man out of you.

Martinez is himself the case in point. A gang member heading for an early grave—despite solid parents, including a father who was a retired Army Ranger—Marco turned his life around, not with the help of a gang intervention social worker, but under the guidance of that worst of all left-wing boogeymen: a Marine recruiting officer.

Hard Corps is more than another fine combat memoir whose narrator's story has a unique twist. Martinez mounts a full-throated defense of the United States Marines and its culture. He takes on the media portrayal of America's fighting forces as victims in general, and the picture painted in the book and movie Jarhead in particular, and he pulls no punches.
He also includes fair warning on the flylef of what's ahead for delicate sensibilities: "A Marine memoir without profanity is like a rifle without ammo. This book is locked and loaded."

Here's a sample to give you a good idea of what to expect—and because this passage really makes me smile.



Click for full text...

I like this guy already.

 

[Annie]

I like this guy already.

You're not alone, obviously!

http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.p?ref=/comment/hall_schweizer200508290810.asp

August 29, 2005, 8:10 a.m.
Campus Rads vs. Our Vets
The antiwar unwelcome on campus.

By Wynton C. Hall & Peter Schweizer

As college students hit campuses across the nation this week, a new generation of young veterans will step off the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and onto the ideological battlefield of our university campuses. For those on the frontline in the war on terror, the antiwar hostility of liberal professors and campus activists will assuredly prove unsettling.

Just ask Marine sergeant Marco Martinez, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a full-time psychology major at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Calif.

“A woman on campus had apparently learned I might be a Marine. When I told her I was, she said, ‘You’re a disgusting human being, and I hope you rot in hell!’ ”

Indeed, Martinez, who will be the first male in his family to receive a college diploma, says he is receiving more of an education than he bargained for: “There are a lot of people who don’t appreciate military service in college,” Martinez said. “If someone asks me about it, and I think that they’re not too liberal, I might tell them I was in Iraq. But I don’t tell them the full extent of it or anything about the Navy Cross.”

The Navy Cross — as in second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor. Martinez, formerly of 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, is a bona-fide American hero and the first Hispanic American since Vietnam to receive the Navy Cross. During the Battle of At Tarmiya, one of Sergeant Martinez’s fellow marines had been hit in the legs and left for dead by five terrorists holed up in an adobe garden shed. That’s when Martinez used his body to shield the dying marine from the terrorist before mounting a 20-meter frontal charge at the bunker with nothing but a depleted rifle and a grenade. With enemy bullets pinging off his gear, Martinez unpinned the grenade, slammed his body into the adobe building, and lobbed the device into the window of the structure, killing all the terrorists inside.

But as liberal professors and antiwar activists continue to wage a nationwide campaign to rid university campuses of military recruiters — in some cases going so far as to throw water bottles and scream epithets at them — it is easy to see why Sergeant Martinez would remain tight-lipped about being one of the nation’s most decorated heroes.

Indeed, as one campus newspaper reported, the rift between young veteran college students and their civilian classmates has left those who have served feeling isolated from campus life, “shunned” because of their service...

 

[Annie]

Here's a radio interview about that Navy Cross:

http://www.punditreview.com/2007/09/30/sysk-930/