The Marine Corps is big and proud with years of experience. It can be impersonal, but it knows what it wants. It has regulations to be followed. Many may look silly to you. Most, however, are there because they have been proven as effective ways to accomplish the mission; to fight and win wars. Things will be done in the way the Marine Corps wants them done. If you do what you are told to the best of your ability, you will get along and it will be a rewarding experience. Otherwise you will get run over by the system and it won’t hurt the system a bit.

— Colonel Henry Aplington II, USMC, 25 June 1966

April 12, 2013, 1:11am / 21

It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.

—

AP correspondent Peter Arnett on Bến Tre report, 7 February 1968.

In popular memory, the quote has become: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”

April 11, 2013, 3:35pm / 42

On December 6, 1967, the small group of us new guys had been officially baptized into the fraternity of combat-tested United States Marines. Although it was a rite of passage, it didn’t feel that way to me. I hadn’t killed anybody. I hadn’t really even shot at anybody that I could see. It had been eerie, frightening, invigorating, chaotic, and surreal.

Welcome to combat.
It was not like in the movies.

— Jack McLean, Loon: A Marine Story

April 05, 2013, 1:18am / 36