Happy Birthday USMC!
Every year for almost 20 years now, I reflect on my time spent working with the Marines during the coordination of the relief in place of the 26th MEU by Task Force Rakkasan at Kandahar Airfield (KAF), Afghanistan in January 2002.
I received this coin from the 26th MEU Sergeant Major. There is nothing positive to add to the rest of this story, like nothing at all not even in the slightest bit.
Task Force Rakkasan would go on to be the Army’s first Brigade Combat Team (BCT) to deploy to Afghanistan and the Global War on Terror (GWOT).
I was lucky enough (sarcasm) to be selected as the advanced party non-commissioned officer in charge (NCOIC).
One cool thing I saw during one of the first direct fire contacts on the wire, was Marine LAV-25s roll up to the wire and engage targets with the 25mm main gun.
I had just got off shift at the tactical operations center (TOC) and was walking to my tent when automatic weapons fire erupted and tracer rounds were zipping all over. You could hear the snap of the rounds going by.
I should have gotten behind cover but instead I just moved to a better vantage point to watch the surreal tracer fire show. It was one of the first episodes of a very bad b-rated war movie that I would experience.
On a separate positive note, during my time with the 82nd Airborne Division’s Long Range Surveillance Detachment (LRSD), we did a bunch of very cool, high speed, waterborne operations training with the USMC’s 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion at Camp Lejeune, NC.
Semper Fi Marines!
Evade & Survive 