I’ve got a question for all you experts out there
As most of you probably know, I’ve been busy editing Gerard’s book. Quite a task, and one of my activities has been to find appropriate photos that are not copyrighted. In line with one of the essays, I’ve looked for a non-copyrighted photo of Marine basic training, and I came up with a lot of Army stuff instead. But this one seemed as though it might be of Marines, and my question is: is it Marines?
Thanks.
Does look like a Corps emblem on the instructor’s hat, but the picture is too blurry to be certain.
Yes those are Marines.
1. Different Camo pattern than the Army.
2. When soldiers roll their sleeves up, they generally do it so that the outside of the fabric ends up on the outside of the roll. Marines do it so that the inside of the fabric is on the outside of the roll as seen in the photo.
3. The Drill Instructor’s cover (hat) has the Marine Corps emblem on the front. Click the photo to open it in another window and then zoom in a couple of steps and you can see it pretty clearly.
Sailorcurt:
Thanks. That’s good news.
It had a Marine “feel” to me, but I wasn’t sure what to look for.
Do Army and Marine drill instructors have different techniques of criticizing their recruits’ performance (if that is in fact what’s occurring in the photo)?
This appears to be Marine stuff. As far as yelling at soldiers, when I was in Army Basic trying in the summer of 1966 I was surprised that we were not yelled at much at all. I was expecting a lot of yelling an harassment but our sgts. had a good sense of humor, they just ran us to death and we did a lot of physical stuff from early morning until it was dark at night.
The Army was slamming people through in the mid 60’s building up to meet the requirements for Viet Nam and like our First Sergeant, Sergeant McCord, a lot of them had been in the end of WWII, the Korean War and some had already done a year in Viet Nam and they were not interested in the chicken shit stuff, they just wanted to get us in shape, teach us how to shoot, march and run a lot and then move us on along to our next training. I had been through two years of ROTC in college where shiny stuff was good and those old soldiers did a real nice job at Fort Leonard Wood teaching us youngsters a little bit about being a soldier. Your mileage may have differed.
This photo was recently captioned as a joke, re: Ukraine volunteers.
Instructor: Did you come here to die?
Soldier: Nay, mate, got here yester die.
They are wearing Marine Pattern ( MARPAT ) cammo. The DI is wearing a Marine fatigue cap.
OldTexan,
Summer at Fort Leonard Wood?! Mother nature takes care of the punishment and makes the drill instructors’ jobs easy!
“Gunnery Sergeant Shawn D. Angell is a Platoon Sergeant (correct U.S. Marine Corps term) at the Officer Candidate School aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., dedicated to training, educating, evaluating and screening the many candidates who go through the course and turning them into Marine leaders.“
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drill_instructor_at_the_Officer_Candidate_School.jpg
Neo-
The reason you might be having a difficult time finding photos (and keep finding Army photos) might be your search terms. The Army and Air Force call enlisted initial entry training “basic training.” The Marines and Navy call it “boot camp.”
My Google image search for “USMC boot camp” turns up plenty of photos.
The photo above, as Naught has provided the source link and caption to, is actually OCS – training for enlisted Marines to become officers. In both Army basic training and Marine boot camp, the drill sergeants (Army term) and drill instructors (Marine term) would be wearing campaign hats, aka the “round brown,” in any uniform other than PT uniform. The DI in the photo is wearing an 8-cornered Marine fatigue cap.
I do find it interesting that the while the candidates are wearing the woodland/temperate MARPAT uniform, the DIs in the picture appear to be wearing the desert pattern.
Dave L.:
I searched for “Marine boot camp.” But I cannot use photos that Google turns up, because most of them are copyrighted. In a book that is being sold for money, that’s commercial use, and I need to go only to sites that have photos that are completely open to being used by anyone. There are a lot fewer photos of that type.
Have you looked at different sites that offer stock royalty free images?
I think these guys are just flat-out free:
https://www.pexels.com/
These, you pay a monthly fee (or a fee for the number of images you want), but you’d probably only need to pay for a month, once you’d decided what images you needed.
They also seemed to have a lot of military pix, under “USMC Boot Camp” as a search term.
https://www.shutterstock.com/pricing
More options:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=inexpensive+stock+photos&atb=v317-1&ia=web
Everything is auto copyrighted by way of Berne Convention. From the wikipedia page linked above:
This file is a work of a United States Marine or employee, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, it is in the public domain.
DVIDS https://www.dvidshub.net/ may be a useful source.
OldTexan:
In those days, it seemed everybody’s father was a veteran. When I was growing up and a couple of fathers got together when we boys were around, they’d talk about their military experiences.
Thirty years later, I asked my father if they’d been talking to us by talking to each other. He said yes.
So we figured we knew a lot, but since the Army was paying us and all, it seemed only considerate to do it their way. Seeing as they set such store by it.
I don’t know what the subject of Gerard’s book is, but I have often thought that a collection of his poetry would be very desirable.
Yep, dvids is where I go to look for pics of my son (currently at MCRD in San Diego).
https://www.dvidshub.net/search/?q=Mcrd+boot+san+diego&view=grid
Summer at Fort Leonard Wood?!
That is where my dad trained starting August of 1941.
i remember plenty of yelling in AF basic in 1980. I reminded myself that a million people had been here before me, and it wasn’t personal. One of our Training Instructors had been marching us here and there, and he looked really bad. His eyes were streaming and he must have had a real fever–and it was hot, hot in San Antonio that summer. The moment we got back to our (thankfully, air-conditioned) barracks he collapsed on the bed in the TI office. I don’t think we saw him again.
A female friend who was at Lackland AFB at the same time told me about marching practice. For it to work right, the whole formation must step out 30 inches on the first stride, and every one after that too. But it’s the first step that is more difficult as we naturally take smaller steps when we start walking.
Her TI was letting her have it. “30 inches! Every time! (her last name) do you know what 30 inches is?”
“Yes, sir. One dick short of a yard.”
Marching was paused for five minutes or so while the TI and the whole flight of gals rolled around laughing.
}}} Her TI was letting her have it. “30 inches! Every time! (her last name) do you know what 30 inches is?”
“Yes, sir. One dick short of a yard.”
Marching was paused for five minutes or so while the TI and the whole flight of gals rolled around laughing.
Very Nice. 😛 LMAO, too.
My brother finished four years of college in 1967 without quite enough credits for his degree. The army didn’t care how close he was to finishing, the deferral was over. He got a note from his neighbors and went down to the AF recruiter post haste. He spent a couple years in Thailand watching water buffalos and downloading spy satellite data for transport to Ft Meade and then finished his enlistment at Ft Meade.
A few months after he joined the AF, we got a letter saying he had been chosen Airman of the month at whichever base in Texas he was training. Whenever he got leave to come home (maybe Christmas?) I couldn’t wait to hear the story of what great feat he had achieved to get such an award.
He was actually a little embarrassed. It was a lot like Forrest Gump being a G– d— genius in the movie. Our dad was in the army in WWII (fought in the Bulge).
“Dad told me to turn off my brain and do whatever they told me no matter how stupid or nonsensical it was. I went weeks without thinking. Just say, “Yes sir! and do it.” It worked great because there’s always some smart ass that has to ask questions. That’s how you get to be Airman of the Month.”