Comments by "Evan" (@MrEvanfriend) on "Mark Felton Productions"
channel.
-
76
-
62
-
40
-
29
-
Do you mean the 2nd Marines specifically or do you just mean the 2nd Marine Division?
When you say "Second Marines", it refers to the 2nd Marine Regiment, which is a subordinate unit of the 2nd Marine Division, but not the same thing as the Division itself (my battalion belonged to the Seventh Marines, which is part of the First Marine Division, for example).
The patch for the 2nd MarDiv is a red arrowhead shaped thing with a hand holding a yellow torch with a red 2 on it, and the Southern Cross in yellow stars in the background. I believe that at one point, the patch had GUADALCANAL on it, like 1st MarDiv's patch still does. Interestingly enough, Marines do not wear division patches on any of our uniforms, and have not for some time (though we did in WWII). However, Army personnel who were attached to Marine units or were prior service Marines can and do wear Marine Corps patches. My friend from the Corps who later joined the Army wore a 1st MarDiv combat patch.
29
-
28
-
12
-
11
-
11
-
As a veteran of the Iraq war, a letter is STILL important in wartime. When you're in the infantry, you don't have access to cell phones and internet and whatnot, and written letters from home are the biggest morale booster you can imagine. No matter how bad your day had been, when you got a letter, or two or three, it made that day markedly better. I was lucky, I had a girlfriend who wrote me every day, parents who wrote a couple times a week, and other friends and family who would write occasionally. If we were far enough out that mail was a weekly event instead of a daily one, I'd get a stack of maybe a dozen letters, and as soon as I had a minute of down time, I'd sneak off to as private a place as I could find, read them all, and forget where I was for a few minutes. I had one letter from my girlfriend that even distinctly smelled like her, I kept that one in my flak jacket for a month or two until the scent finally wore off.
The only way I can describe mail call when you're at war is like Christmas morning when you're a little kid. When the mail comes in, it's just like running to look at what Santa left under the tree for you. It's one of the best feelings in the world, in a place where feel-good moments aren't exactly commonplace.
10
-
9
-
8
-
8
-
8
-
7
-
6
-
6
-
When I was in Iraq in 2005-2006, we had something very similar. Even then, we weren't allowed unsecured two-way communication devices, and so letter writing was the best way for us to communicate with people back home and vice versa. So the Marine Corps did something called Moto Mail. Instead of microfilm or whatever, people who wanted to write a deployed Marine could send an email to somebody (I don't know who, I never wrote a Moto Mail, just received them), and then they'd print it out in a format similar to a tax return check and get it to you in a day or two as opposed to about a week. It lacked the personality of a written letter, but it was the quickest way for someone to get in touch with us.
I got Moto Mails from my dad a few times, and a few other family members, including some cousin I didn't know I had who wrote to give me remarkably bad advice (fortunately I knew better) from someone who had never been anywhere near a combat zone. I preferred normal letters.
6
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
I am an American, a US Marine, and an admitted Anglophile. I've seen the Royal Marines, your "Bootnecks", in action and I can say that they are as fine fighting men as any on the planet. Y'all British do more with less than even the USMC does (your L85 is an abysmally bad rifle).
I love the Brits, and I'd be happy to fight alongside you any day, but yeah, your forces are too small. I'd love to see you build them up, because the world knows that there's nothing scarier than facing English speakers across a battlefield. I just hope that if it ever comes to war, our cousins across the pond have the numbers it takes.
As an aside, y'all may not have enough submarines, but you are FAR better at naming them than we are. HMS Vengeance is by far the best named ship on the planet. What better name for a second strike doomsday weapon? Our boomers are named after states, besides one named after some politician. Royal Navy ships in general have proud names, compared to boring US Navy ones, but Vengeance compared to Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson isn't even a comparison
2
-
2
-
Eh, when you're at the level of body counts in the millions, there's really no point in debating who was "worse". Overall, Stalin killed more people than Hitler did, but he also had like 30 years to do so instead of Hitler's 12. Hitler had the death camps, the industrial murder which has never been seen before or since, but Stalin was even more arbitrary in who he murdered than Hitler was (in Nazi Germany, if you followed the rules, you'd be relatively safe, whereas in Stalin's USSR, anyone could end up with a bullet tp the back of the head).
Basically, both of them were at the absolute worst level of humanity, as both oversaw the deliberate murder of millions of people for no good reason. Which of them was worse than the other is an entirely pointless conversation, it's the same as arguing whether terminal lung cancer is "worse" than terminal liver cancer.
2
-
@JeepWrangler1957 I think the big difference is how their respective regimes ended. Nazi Germany was invaded and dismantled, and their atrocities were put on display for all the world to see. We've all seen footage taken by liberators of concentration camps, we all know about the Nuremburg trials, etc.
Stalin, on the other hand, died peacefully (more or less) in his bed, and his regime outlived him by close to 40 years. By 1991 when the USSR fell, most of the perpetrators of the worst Stalinist atrocities were dead, the GULags were long closed, and everything could be quietly swept under the rug.
In the end, we remember Hitler as the embodiment of evil but not Stalin because we got a better look at what he did.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1