Originally Posted November 21, 2024
Good morning Leathernecks, and on this the 21st day of November in the history of our beloved Corps:
In 1775, Marines join in the raid by Hancock and Franklin on Canso Harbor, Nova Scotia.
In 1798, the French frigates L’Insurgente and Volontaire force the outgunned Navy schooner Retaliation and her Marines to surrender.
She is the only ship lost by the United States in the Quasi-War.
In 1856, a landing party of 287 Marines and sailors attacks and captures the first of the Barrier Forts, then repels three assaults by thousands of Chinese.
In 1916, the U.S. declares a military government in Santo Domingo, with the goal of establishing a stable country, thus taking on an extended occupation.
In 1917, the 9th Regiment is organized at Quantico to serve with the Advanced Base Force.
In 1918, the Commandant issues demobilization plans that authorize the immediate release of reservists and those regulars who had enlisted for the duration of the war or who had valid personal reasons for discharge.
In 1933, Major C. L. Forndey and a Navy Commander set a new balloon record with an ascent of 61,237 feet.
In 1943, the 2nd Marine Division launches an amphibious assault against Betio Island in Tarawa Atoll, Gilbert Islands, with the 2nd and 8th Marines leading the way into murderous Japanese fire.
Only the use of amphibian tractors (LVTs) allows the leading waves to get through the shallow water covering the coral shelf around the island.
The Marines establish a beachhead at great cost.
A regiment of the Army’s 27th Infantry Division makes an amphibious assault on Makin Atoll.
Major General Ralph J. Mitchell assumes command of AirSols.
In 1944, VMO-6 is commissioned at Quantico, VMSB-943 is redesignated VMTB-943 at El Toro.
In 1947, Major Bill Hendricks and Marine reservists started Toys for Tots in Los Angeles.
The Marine Corps Reserve adopted the program one year later.
In 1950, the 41 Independent Commando of the Royal Marines (a company sized force commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Douglas B. Drysdale) is attached to the 1st Marine Division.
In 1959, more than 300 Marines from various Camp Pendleton units fight fires in Las Pulgas and Alysso Canyon areas in and near the base.
The 4th Marine Provisional Marine Force is deployed from Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point to stand by to protect U.S. citizens during a period of increasing tensions with Cuba’s Castro regime.
The units remain away from their home bases until 15 February 1960.
In 1962, the United States ends the Naval quarantine following an agreement for the withdrawal of Soviet offensive missiles.
Marine units deployed for the Cuban Missile Crisis soon begin returning to their home stations.
In 1968, during Operation Meade River in support of a South Vietnamese pacification program, the 1st Marines launches a cordon and search operation designed to encircle the entire Dodge City area, 36 square miles of flat farming land south of Da Nang.
The effort involves seven Marine infantry battalions.
It ends on 9 December with 1,023 enemy dead and 123 prisoners.
Marine losses are 108 dead and 510 wounded.
In 1970, a U.S. joint force (Army, Air Force, and Navy) conduct a heliborne raid at Son Tay, about 23 miles west of Hanoi, in an unsuccessful attempt to free American prisoners of war.
The men had been moved a few weeks prior to the operation.
In 1978, Les Nessman of WKRP in Cincinnati, while mirroring Herbert Morrison’s eyewitness reporting of the Hindenburg disaster, hilariously described a promotional “Turkey Drop” the station was holding at a shopping mall. Oh, the humanity!!
In 1979, in Islamabad, a mob burns the U.S. Embassy as seven Marines defend the building and its 137 civilian occupants with tear gas.
One Marine is killed during the attack.
In 2022, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden had a “Friendsgiving” dinner at the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina, with service members and military families, greeting them table by table and then thanking both the “best fighting force in the history of the world” and those at home who, in the words of poet John Milton, “stand and wait.”
Saepius Exertus, Semper Fidelis, Frater Infinitas!
Often Tested, Always Faithful, Brothers Forever!
-Richard W. Pettengill, Corporal USMC
And damn proud of it!