Iraq on the 13th MEU

From a Marine LCpl who served in Iraq

Just wanted to share with you a story of the old stereotype of combatants not wanting to mess with the USMC. A fellow Marine from my unit here in Hawaii just returned this week from Army airborne jump school in Georgia. He was talking to one of the Army Captain instructors there and the Army officer told my friend that he was in Iraq guarding the border to Syria. My friend was in Iraq on the 13th MEU so they got to talking about the war. The Captain was saying how funny it was that at the beginning of the war that they never took fire. then after the war ended little by little they would take more and more fire upon their camp and soon it was to the point that it was almost routine, well after the war was over, and noted how odd it was. He continued on to say that before they left they got a small unit of Marines in there camp and the shots stopped coming in. so this army unit spray painted all there trucks with USMC and according to this army Captain, they never were fired upon again. My friend who is a cpl told the officer that it wasn’t odd that the shootings into his camp were nothing at first and heavy towards the end due to the fact that the Iraqis knew the Marines were still around during the war, and as Marines started leaving after the war the Iraqis wanted to see what they could get away with, so they fired a few times, and it continued. A quick side note here, no one from that small army camp ever investigated those shots fired. I can tell you from my unit that was in Iraq, there’s no way in h*ll I hear shots fired at me and someone’s not going to go check it out. Oh well, that’s just my 2 cents proving the old stereotype that other countries can distinguish between the USMC and the US Army and they wont mess with the Marines. Keep up the good work Marines.

LCpl Mark Neuman, 3rd Radio Bn “Ground Communications