The buildings in the “regimental area” of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina are modest, post-war brick buildings that, to the visitor’s eye, look more or less alike.  Yet, each of the Marine Regiments of the Second Marine Division has its own storied history and battle honors.  As Captain J. W. Thomason wrote in his Great War masterpiece Fix Bayonets, these histories represent

“…traditions of things endured and things accomplished, such as Regiments hand down forever.”

There are symbols of these honors for one to see, if you know where to look.  On a thousand trips past those symbols, one never failed to make me pause and reflect.  On the headquarters building for the Second Marine Regiment hangs their unit crest.  The crest contains only three words.  They are in English and not Latin, and they are not a catch phrase nor a bold proclamation of a warrior philosophy.  They are simple and stark.  Across the top of the unit crest is the word “TARAWA”.  And at the bottom, the grim admonition, “KEEP MOVING”.

It was 66 years ago on this date that the Second Marine Division began the assault on Betio Island, in the Tarawa Atoll.  The island, roughly two thirds of the size of my college’s small campus, was the most heavily fortified beach in the world.  Of the Second MarDiv, the 2nd Marine Regiment landed two battalions abreast on beaches Red 1 and Red 2.  The assault began what was described as “seventy-six stark and bitter hours” of the most brutal combat of the Pacific War.   More than 1,000 Marines and Sailors were killed, nearly 2,300 wounded, along with nearly 5,000 Japanese dead, in the maelstrom of heat, sand, fire, and smoke that was Betio.

Assault on Betio's Northern beaches

Marine Dead on Beach Red 1

I will not detail the fighting for Betio here, as there are many other sources for that information.   Nor will I debate whether the terrible price paid for Betio was too high.   What cannot be debated is the extraordinary heroism of the Marines and Sailors who fought to secure the 1.1 square miles of baking sand and wrest it from the grasp of an entrenched, fortified, and determined enemy.   The fighting was described as “utmost savagery”, and casualties among Marine officers and NCOs were extremely high.   As one Marine stated, initiative and courage were absolute necessities.  Corporals commanded platoons, and Staff Sergeants, companies.

Marines assault over coconut log wall on Beach Red 2

The book by the late Robert Sherrod, “Tarawa, The Story of a Battle”,  is a magnificent read.  Another is Eric Hammel’s “76 Hours”.    Also “Utmost Savagery”, by Joe Alexander, who additionally produced the WWII commemorative “Across the Reef”, an excellent compilation of primary source material.    For video, The History Channel produced a 50th anniversary documentary on the battle, titled “Death Tide at Tarawa”, in November 1993.  I also highly recommend finding and watching this superb production.  It is  narrated by Edward Hermann, and interviews many of the battle’s veterans, including Robert Sherrod, MajGen Mike Ryan, and others, who provide chilling and inspiring commentary of the fighting and of the terrible carnage of those three days.

Master Sgt. James M. Fawcett, left and Capt. Kyle Corcoran salute Fawcett's father's ashes on Red Beach 1. MSgt Fawcett's father landed on Red 1 on 20 Nov 1943.

Tarawa remains a proud and grim chapter in the battle histories of the units of the Second Marine Division.  Each outfit, the 2nd, 6th, 8th, and 10th Marines, 2nd Tank Battalion, 2nd Tracks, and  miscellaneous support units, fought superbly against frightful odds and a fearsome enemy.   It is on the Unit Crest of the 2nd Marines, whose battalions paid the highest price for Betio, that the most poignant of those histories is remembered.    Three simple words:  “TARAWA;  KEEP MOVING”.

Posted by UltimaRatioReg in Marine Corps, Navy, history | read comments (0)

For those who are not fully updated or familiar with the latest case of racial discrimination at the USNA, this time involving the Color Guard, please click here to get up to speed, and then come back.

As former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum stated this morning in the Philidelpha Inquirer,

‘It’s not a critical national-security matter when a few white male midshipmen almost get bounced from a color guard. After the Fort Hood killings, however, we should look at the military’s blind commitment to “diversity” and see if it’s blinding us to the obvious – and the dangerous.’

I encourage everyone to read the full article – but the danger he refers to is not the direct danger of an officer with a gun killing his fellow servicemembers wholesale – but is the broader danger an aggressive, exclusionary, close-minded, and corrosive philosophy can have on an institution’s culture – a culture that requires a meritocracy infused with candor to excel in peace and war.

First of all – at the core – what core competency of the Navy is a diverse Navy supposed to represent? One would hope that an organization that serves a nation would reflect its peoples diverse background as a natural by-product of the removal of all barriers to entry based on race, creed, color, or national origin.

The problem is – life is not that simple, clean, or easy.  A percentage-to-percentage reflection of a nation’s diversity rarely occurs naturally, even if it is free of institutional discrimination. For reasons that fill up entire library shelves; socio-economic, cultural, family habits and traditions towards education, careers goals, and family structures vary wildly in such a diverse nation as ours.

Especially in high skilled areas of our economy that require a meritocracy due to the financial, life-and-death, or innate performance requirements of the profession; pure balanced diversity is the exception – not the norm. A simple walk through the Doctor’s lounge at your local hospital, a Silicon Valley research facility, a bio-medical lab in the Research Triangle Park, a Los Alamos laboratory, a nuclear power plant, a NFL locker room, or a hedge fund golf outing will show you that even in an open and fair society – perfect diversity is the exception not the rule – and perfect diversity does not equate with mission success.

Where we run into problems is when we refuse to accept reality – when we game the system – when we sell little bits of our soul in order to buy something that cannot be honestly purchased or to curry favor with important people. In a zero-sum game based on objective criteria used to achieve the best possible outcome, when an external factor – in this case race, creed, color, or national origin - is brought in that has nothing to do with the objective criteria, and is used to select a set-group of personnel defined by the external factors, what must be sacrificed to achieve that external factor’s percentage goals are those objective criteria. You intentionally sub-optimize your organization by dilution – replacing high objective criteria scores with low objective criteria scores.

In the case of Midshipmen – when you take out any pure athletic criteria used to bring in some MIDN – the objective criteria can very broadly be broken down to two areas; academic potential and leadership potential. To expand the number of the external factor driven aspects, you have to decrease the acceptance threshold of your objective criteria for those specific external factor sub-groups. As shown by the USNA’s own data – those tradeoffs have been made and continue to be made – specifically to increase self-identified minority MIDN numbers (in addition to the number of those minority candidates who made it using the objective criteria alone). To meet that external factor requirement – a #1 priority as we have been told – lower academic and leadership potential is accepted on the front end (and can be advertised high and low, far and wide) with the hope that enough of the sub-optimal group can maintain minimum standards and make it out the back end.

Of course, that means that some applicants that met the objective criteria of academic and leadership potential will not be accepted – but we have made the decision that higher percentages of minority MIDN are more important than academic and leadership potential. In the zero-sum game that is admissions – that is the first decision we made to discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin.

As our MIDN have learned in their first few years exposed to the Navy – that is not the only time racial discrimination takes place.

There are organizations at Annapolis that are voluntary and represent USNA and the Navy.  They get their picture taken; this has become a problem.

For instance, the “face of the Navy” that the USNA Gospel Choir and the USNA Crew team show are very different. Is that a problem? No, not really. It is only a problem if, at your core, you see race and racial politics in everything you do – regardless of the reality you live in. The MIDN and their generation don’t care – but they soon learn that those above them do. They care a lot.

This is where we reach another decision point; and we decide to discriminate – selectively.  Where Gospel and Crew get a pass – lower profile perhaps – others do not.

You have in the USNA Color Guard a high profile voluntary organization that individual MIDN have spent years building seniority and experience to provide the most professional military bearing to represent the Navy to the nation. Groups such as the Color Guard pride themselves in being a meritocracy of shared discipline, shared values, and shared rewards. They are good because they are fair. They excel because they function on objective criteria – sustained superior performance. At least – that is what they thought.

In late OCT, we had the uniformed leadership at USNA decide that in order to artificially create something they desired to be true, that they would actively intervene and discriminate against two Midshipmen based on their race and gender.

This is fact. This cannot be defended. USNA has tried to spin it. Sandbag it. Confuse the issue with the now infamous “8v6″ saga. What it has not tried to do is explain its actions in any logical and consistent way.

I think it says a lot about the Navy’s Diversity initiatives when we have to hide them, spin them, sandbag them – and when we get caught out in the open – we do something quite Soviet; we issue a gag-order to those discriminated against and their peers after the story breaks. That should cause a moment of self-reflection.

For three weeks on, this story continues to boil. The fact that the USNA discriminated on the basis of race has not been disproved, and the official denials are self-conflicting and debunked. The MIDN involved are not permitted to speak. The relationship between the Commandant of Midshipmen and his Midshipmen has been drastically changed from one of mutual admiration to mutual distrust.

In a larger sense, why has such a small example of what we have seen so often had so much traction? Well, primarily it is because we can identify a name and a face to the innocent party. As opposed to “X number in the reject pile,” we have two MIDN who are soon to be commissioned and in our Fleet. Two MIDN who know personally that they can be discriminated against on the basis of their race and wonder, “When will I be discriminated against again?”  Argue that point if you wish, but put yourselves in their shoes; it happened to them once, why won’t it happen again?

Is this really where we want to be as an institution? Does this bring great credit upon the Naval Service? Is there another way?

What is the solution? As with most hard and complicated problems, the answer is simple. Live up to our standards. Demonstrate the innate integrity and fairness of our Navy. Implement a policy that is simple for the PAO, Commandant, and the Midshipmen to understand – and then carry it on to the Fleet. Have a policy that is easy to defend. One you are proud to defend and don’t have to hide from. One you can defend directly with simple, basic words.

Have a policy that we do not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin. We do not make selections, limit, expand, or track the professional progress of our Sailors based on their race or ethnicity. Simple. Done. Move forward.  Prove it by removing all reference to a Sailor’s racial or ethnic background.  Remove all pictures from the all boards.  Remove all doubt.  They are of limited utility anyway, as we know – names, pictures, and faces are a poor way to understand self-identified race and ethnicity anyway.

Excise and redistribute the BA/NMP for almost all of our branch of the divisive Diversity Industry to other UICs related to supporting Sailors at sea and Marines ashore.  The UCMJ has all we need to deal with bigots.

Will there be pressure from the larger Diversity Industry and their backers in Congress? Absolutely – they have jobs to keep and grievances to feed. Will there be a change in the ethnic makeup of those selected for officer programs? Probably. Some racial and ethnic groups will go up – some will go down – some may stay the same. If you have objective criteria – then you shouldn’t care. The Sailors don’t care. They just want someone to treat them fairly, do their job, execute the mission, be a leader, and bring them home from combat intact.

In any event, with more and more mixed-race citizens and minority percentages as a result of immigration patterns in the last 50 years – it will mean less and less with each passing year. That is a good thing. Like we did in the Truman Administration – why don’t we get ahead of the curve on this issue. This is not a time to be stuck in 1971 – we need to get ready for the second decade of the 21st Century.

For those who will object to the change, again – look for the reasons brought up at the beginning of the post; socio-economic, cultural, and family habits and traditions towards education, careers, and family structures. None of these are within the control of the US Navy – nor should they. What can we do? We can ensure that we reach out to all communities in the US – something the Recruiting Districts should already be good at. We could expand JNROTC, as is being done – to help local educators build the academic and leadership potential that is in every community.

Most of all – we should have faith in our people and our institution. Create a fair, just, and admirable institution – and the best will come to you. What would their ethnicity and race be? Who cares – they’re the best. The best attract the best of all colors.

If you value performance, potential, and excellence – that is what you will put your efforts towards – and is what you will get.

If you value race and ethnicity and make your decisions based on that – then you will get what all cultures that emphasize race and ethnicity get; strife, conflict, division, and unending episodes of racial and ethnic discrimination.

As a last note, we all know that these little – and large – “Diversity decision” issues are nothing new in the Navy. We have all, myself included, been party to them. With a wink, a nod, and perhaps a taunt-jawed acceptance – we have all gone along with it. With time and progress however, don’t all archaic theories and methods reach the point that they are no longer valid and usefull?

As with segregation in the past, don’t we have to eventually reach a point were we stop and conduct a little self-reflection? When do we reach the point where we say, “No. This must stop. This has gone on long enough. We are a good, honest, fair, and open institution. Discrimination in any form is beneath the honor and dignity of our Service. This will go on no longer.”

Good people with the best intentions made some hard decisions trying to fix a problem they were sold as a requirement. So hard, it seems, that decisions were made to “bend the curve” and take short cuts using methods that, in the end, they cannot defend and cannot survive the light of day.

As we look towards the second decade of the 21st Century, where next year’s class of Midshipmen were born as Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush challenged each other in the 1992 election – can we say, “Enough,” or will we have to wait for the next episode where we hide, mumble, spin, and blanch at what we have become?

Posted by CDRSalamander in Navy | read comments (20)

Click to enlarge

Today as we make our way through the oft touted and oft doubted Deepwater Acquisitions Project in an effort to further our capabilities you’ll take comfort in knowing that procurement time hasn’t really changed all that much. Don’t hold me to this but at the 10,000 foot level our timetable of the current projects could rival that of the acquisition of our first HH-65’s. It was 1979 when the CG selected the Eurocopter Daulphin to replace the Sikorsky HH-52A and nearly six years later, in 1985, it was introduced to service but only after being accepted in 1984… I’m sure we used the year (+/-) to do a little training.

Today we operate, I believe entirely, the “C” model of the Dolphin, and are in the midst of the Deepwater enhancement to give the aircraft its “M” designation. This “M” entitles us to call it an MH-65C- a Multi-Mission Cutter Helicopter. This particular aircraft is also the helo used by our Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON) replacing the Agusat MH-68A Stingray in February 2008- a very corporate looking helicopter in its own right. I encourage you to Google for further information or check out the Wikipedia page on said subject.

One more thing… don’t forget to enjoy your Thursday.

Ryan Erickson is a semi-regular contributor to USNI and can normally be found at ryanerickson.com; this post was written as an original piece for USNI.

Posted by Ryan Erickson in Aviation, Coast Guard, history | read comments (0)

George Vladimirovich Stepanoff was born in Moscow, Russia on April 23, 1893. Little is known about his early years except that his parents were Vladimir and Katherine Stepanoff and, in 1919, he was an Imperial Russian Navy officer stationed on board a Second-class Russian cruiser (destroyer) in Vladivostok.

During the Bolshevik Revolution Stepanoff remained loyal to Czar Nicholas and become part of the White Russian forces in the Pacific. In 1919, American, British, Canadian and Chinese troops occupied Vladivostok. Ships from those countries and France controlled the port. The story, as told by Mike Hall, Capt. USCG (retired), is that Stepanoff and his fellow shipmates seized two Second-class cruisers in 1918 and sold them to the Japanese two years later. The tale gains credibility by the fact that five Tverdi-Class destroyers were seized by White Russian forces and two, Tochni (Tochnyi) and Tverdi (Tviordyi), where transferred to the Japanese sometime between 1919 and 1920.

Apparently Stepanoff used some of his share of the sale to buy passage to the US. He then enlisted in the US Coast Guard on December 5, 1923 as a Boatswain’s Mate First Class. His first assignment was on board the newly commissioned tug Shawnee (WAT-54) stationed in San Francisco, California. By 1941 he had been promoted to Chief Boatswains Mate and was commanding officer of Raritan (WYT-93) based in Staten Island. Shortly after taking command, Raritan became part of the Greenland Patrol Forces based in Narsarssuak. While there he was promoted to lieutenant. After three years in Greenland Stepanoff returned to the States, taking command of USS Might (PG-94), one of the ten Canadian corvettes transferred to the US Navy as part of the reverse Lend-Lease. Following VE Day, Stepanoff, now a Lieutenant Commander, was assigned to Algonquin out of Portland, Maine.

In December 1946, Algonquin was in Cape Cod when a northeaster with seventy-knot winds hit the coast. A message from 1st District alerted Stepanoff that a four-barge tow trying to exit the Massachusetts end of the Cape Cod Canal was losing ground and was in danger of breaking up. When Algonquin reached the scene, she didn’t dare go alongside; she and the barges would have torn each other apart. But something had to be done quickly — the fourth barge with four men aboard was sinking. Bob Wilson, Algonquin’s executive officer, proposed a solution: Get as close to the barge as possible, inflate a fifteen-person rubber raft, float it over to them on a line, pull them back when they got aboard. The raft would be flexible enough not to cause serious damage in collisions with either barge or cutter. Stepanoff quickly agreed. They tried Wilson’s plan, and it worked to save two men of the four men before the barge sank. Nine months later and hundreds of mile to the east, Mike Hall, who had been on board Algonquin during the rescue and was now 1st Lieutenant on Bibb, used the same technique to successfully rescue all 69 passengers and flight crew from the Bermuda Sky Queen.

After Algonquin, Stepanoff went on to command Argo (WPC-10), Laurel (WAGL-291), Spar (WLB-403), and Yamacraw (WARC-333) interspersed with short assignments to Base Boston until retiring on May 1, 1955. In all, he served for twenty-two and a half years, not counting possibly as much as ten years in the Tsar’s Navy. During his service he was awarded the American Defense Service Medal with letter “A”, American Campaign Medal, Asian-Pacific Campaign Medal, WWII Victory Medal, European-African Middle Eastern Medal, and National Defense Service Medal

After retiring, he lived with his wife Valentina in Ayer, Massachusetts. George Vladimirovich Stepanoff, Commander, USCG (Retired), died March 8, 1980, was cremated, and his ashes were buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge.

Author’s Note

I first heard about CDR Stepanoff from Mike Hall, Captain, USCG (Retired), who had served with him on Algonquin; afterwards Mike and Stepanoff became good friends. By the time they met, Mike had been in the Coast Guard for four years, almost all of which was at sea and most of that time was on board Spencer during the Battle of the Atlantic (see Bloodstained Sea for more about Mike Hall). Mike feels he learned more from CDR Stepanoff than from anyone else and still has a deep respect for his one time CO.

From what I know of Mike, he and CDR Stepanoff are cut from the same cloth. Both preferred sea-going assignments to being on shore, are leaders in the best sense of the word, are exceptional seaman, and have little tolerance for incompetence or bureaucracy. Sadly, there are few if any like them left today.

Posted by Jim Dolbow in Uncategorized | read comments (4)

How do you properly honor a war hero who didn’t lead such an exemplary personal life? Can you separate a person’s professional legacy from that of his personal character? Col. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, WWII Marine Corps ace fighter pilot, Medal of Honor recipient and former POW, displaying his skills and bravery on the battlefield, with a record 28 Japanese fighters downed in combat.

He initially served with the Flying Tigers as part of the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company (CAMCO), a civilian organization contracted to defend China and the Burma Road. He later served as Executive Officer and then Commanding Officer of VMF-121, a Marine Corps squadron nicknamed the “Black Sheep Squadron.” It was there that he proved his mettle — with a record number of enemy kills, and it was then that he earned his nickname “Pappy,” since he was almost a decade older than his squadronmates. It was during a flight over the the Pacific island of Rabaul in early 1944 — after his 26th Japanese shootdown — that Boyington was shot down himself, picked up by a Japanese submarine and taken prisoner. He was liberated from Japanese custody in mid-August 1945 and was awarded the Medal of Honor by the president and the Navy Cross by the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

So, what would be so controversial about his birthplace of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, wanting to name the local airfield after their hometown hero? Much of the resistance can be traced to his post-war life, which was marked by battles with alcoholism, multiple marriages and divorces, estrangement from his children and financial instability. As a highly decorated war hero, he was sent by the Marine Corps on a Victory Bond Tour after World War II to give speeches and enlist continued support for war bonds. But, he was frequently drunk, seen cavorting with young female companions and generally considered a PR disaster by the Marine Corps. They medically retired him in 1947. He enjoyed a second round of celebrity when a Hollywood rendition of the Black Sheep Squadron was depicted in the popular 1970s show “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” starring Robert Conrad as Boyington’s character. The show was generally considered a hearty piece of fictionalized entertainment, but the squadron’s characterization as a group of drunks and misfits angered many of Boyington’s fellow squadronmates. So, how do you properly recognize his significant professional feats? Can you ignore his personal failings?

A 2008 documentary that screend at the Navy Memorial on Veterans Day chronicles the grassroots efforts of a group of Marines and their campaign to have the local airfield in Coeur d’Alene renamed the Pappy Boyington Field and the resistance in the community to do so. The film, “Pappy Boyington Field” produced by Kevin Gonzalez, interviews many local Marine Corps League members who were behind the effort to rename the field, as well as local media, Boyington family members and even Robert Conrad. Many guessed that the county government and airport advisory board were dragging their feet on the proposal because of his controversial history, but publicly they cited a “safety issue” in renaming an airfield. (A safety issue?) The Marine Corps League kept up the public pressure and the campaign was eventually successful. The renaming ceremony took place in 2008.

But the question remains: Does public recognition of a controversial figure condone his personal behavior? I’d like to think it doesn’t and that we should judge a person’s career by just that. But, I have to admit that I lose respect for public figures — however reluctantly they become public figures — who have reckless personal lives.

I never knew Col. Pappy Boyington or any of descendents and I have not read his memoirs, but I’m in awe of his bravery. I can only hope that his personal struggles after the war humbled him and made his character stronger by the end of his life. Watch “Pappy Boyington Field” and you decide.

To watch the trailer or to buy a DVD of the film, go to the “Pappy Boyington Field” web site: www.pappyboyingtonfield.com.

Posted by The Bunny in Uncategorized | read comments (9)