J.E. McCollough served nine years in the Marine Corps. He fought in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 and is the recipient of a Purple Heart.
US Marines are known for their amphibious warfare capabilities — projecting power from naval vessels onto beaches or littoral zones anywhere in the world. And while leathernecks are forged on the proud naval traditions and legendary exploits of their ...
For many Marines, Marine Corps birthday season — the roughly four-week period beginning in October and covering much of November — is the highlight of the year. It’s the time where Marines forget how much they hate life in the military and suddenly ...
On his professional reading list, the commandant of the Marine Corps recommends some classic science-fiction novels, such as Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Card’s novel is an excellent book about the ...
As many Marines are aware, the lyric “From the Halls of Montezuma” in the opening line of the Marines’ Hymn is a reference to the battle for Chapultepec Castle during the Mexican War. The castle, which served as a military academy, was built on a ...
“I heard somebody dying near me. He was dying hard. Hard. It took him a long time to die … The darkness was impenetrable. The man was lying in some depression within seven feet of me. Every wave, vibration, of his anguish beat upon my senses.” — ...
In December 1985, a hunter in the Chattahoochee National Forest in northern Georgia found a 175-pound black bear lying next to an empty duffel bag and dozens of ravaged cocaine bundles. The peculiar scene seemed too strange to be real. Did this bear ...
Two days before we were blown up by an insurgent IED in Ramadi, my teammate got a letter from his dad — with a Purple Heart postage stamp on it. We looked at that stamp, sitting on Camp Hurricane Point in 2004, with incredulity. It was bad ...
Marines don’t really need an excuse to get together and party, maybe fight a little, and be generally glorious bastards for a night. But every November, Marines everywhere come together for a particularly special night of camaraderie and debauchery ...
