They aren't. Perhaps you are thinking of the terrorist detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay that have recently been described as an "American Gulag" by both Amnesty International and a member of the U.S. Senate? You'd be wrong again.
Welcome to the United States Marine Corps Recruit Depots at Parris Island and San Diego. This is why they are The Few and The Proud.
And if you ask any one of them that has completed recruit training what they think about others enduring such treatment, they will scream back in your face, "OOOOORAH!!!!"
Semper Fi and Carry On…. DJ
Oh the horror! I was a prisoner in one of those camps 39 years ago! I still remember it as if it were yesterday. Even now, I shiver whenever I see a yellow footprint! And I hate to tell you what I do when I see a yellow sweatshirt and red running shorts!
I thought the food was pretty good though. And I got along pretty well with my fellow prisoners. And they gave me a sharp outfit to wear once I was released from my 9 weeks of hell (Yes only 9 - eat your hearts out you 12 weeker’s). I'd say, all in all, the clothes they gave me to wear (or rather what the clothes meant) made it worthwhile. Semper Fi JC
Oh you poor, poor, Marines... at least you didn't have to survive NRTC San Diego. The horrors we squids endured back in '66... so difficult to relate !
They served meals to us on trays! (Then many of us would “feed” the seagulls.) We were wrapped in blue garb, with silly blue ball caps, until we "crossed the bridge" and graduated to those lovely Dixie cups. At one point, due to an outbreak of some malady,
they even forced us to bag our clothes and they took them to the laundry to clean. We had to march everywhere... long marches on a "grinder" ... sometimes over 100 meters even. It was exhausting. And service week at the pool... indescribable! We stood in formation facing East... and forced to view (across a fence) the Marines moving piles of sand back and forth. And squads of Marines double-timing around the perimeter of that "prison camp". It was horrible. We were made to polish our weapons (barrels plugged): 1903 Springfield’s. Also had to learn an umpteen count manual of arms. (Funny, we never used that training, nor ever again saw that particular gun.)
Everything was highly regimented, and humiliating. Upon release after 9 weeks, all those designated for Hospitalman school then trained another 14 weeks (?) before being incarcerated in a Hospital, or going on to ... gasp... FMSS... Field Medical Services Stalag. Most of us wound up being dispatched to the dreaded FMF Gulag. The epitome of cruelty to so talented a group of detainees, oh yes, where we were subjected to inhumanities that cannot be described in this venue. Yessir... it was hell! Navy my arse!
(But the Semper Fi part is proudly engraved in our psyches still!) Doc
Doc, Me thinks the fun started for you in the FMF Gulag and then on to that sweet place called Vietnam attached to a company of Marines. During that time your heart and soul became a Marine, forever & always....
so Semper Fi ...Brother. RC
Me thinks yur right, Rich, but I'll be damned if I'll admit it... would ruin all the fun... ::>) Doc
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Posted By: Doc Rod Hardin Date Posted: Jan 3, 2006 From Omaha World Herald 9/24/05
Description: Leading the fight is Gunnery Sgt Michael Burghardt, known as "Iron Mike" or just "Gunny." He is on his third tour in Iraq. He had become a legend in the bomb disposal world after winning the Bronze Star for disabling 64 IEDs and destroying 1,548 pieces of ordnance during his second tour. Then, on September 19, he got blown up. Date Taken: 09/19/2005 Place Taken: Ramadi Iraq
3/3 RVN Newsletter Vol 1, Issue 6
He had arrived at a chaotic scene after a bomb had killed four US soldiers. He chose not to wear the bulky bomb protection suit. "You can't react to any sniper fire and you get tunnel-visioned," he explains. So, protected by just a helmet and standard-issue flak jacket, he began what bomb disposal officers term "the longest walk", stepping gingerly into a 5ft deep and 8ft wide crater. The earth shifted slightly and he saw a Senao base station with a wire leading from it. He cut the wire and used his 7in knife to probe the ground. "I found a piece of red detonating cord between my legs," he says. "That'swhen I knew I was screw
ed."
Realizing he had been sucked into a trap, Sgt Burghardt, 35, yelled at everyone to stay back. At that moment, an insurgent, probably watching through binoculars, pressed a button on his mobile phone to detonate the secondary device below the sergeant's feet. "A chill went up the back of my neck and then the bomb exploded," he recalls. "As I was in the air I remember thinking, 'I don't believe they got me.' I was just ticked off they were able to do it.
Then I was lying on the road, unable to feel anything from the waist down."
His colleagues cut off his trousers to see how badly he was hurt. None could believe his legs were still there. "My dad's a Vietnam vet who's paralyzed from the waist down," says Sgt Burghardt.
"I was lying there thinking I didn't want to be in a wheelchair next to my dad and for him to see me like that. They started to cut away my pants and I felt a real sharp pain and blood trickling down. Then I wiggled my toes and I thought, 'Good, I'm in business.'
"As a stretcher was brought over, adrenaline and anger kicked in. "I decided to walk to the helicopter. I wasn't going to let my team-mates see me being carried away on a stretcher." He stood and gave the insurgents who had blown him up a one-fingered salute. "I flipped them one. It was like, 'OK, I lost that round but I'll be back next week.'"
Copies of a photograph depicting his defiance, taken by Jeff Bundy for the Omaha World-Herald, adorn the walls of homes across America and that of Col John Gronski, the brigade commander in Ramadi, who has hailed the image as an exemplar of the warrior spirit.
Sgt Burghardt's injuries - burns and wounds to his legs and buttocks - kept him off duty for nearly a month and could have earned him a ticket home.
But, like his father - who was awarded a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts for being wounded in action in Vietnam - he stayed in Ramadi to engage in the battle against insurgents who are forever coming up with more ingenious ways of killing Americans.
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