There are few Marine Corps legends like that of Carlos Hathcock. If there's a pantheon of Marine Corps gods somewhere, Hathcock is definitely among them. He served the Corps and his country for 20 years, including two tours as a sniper in Vietnam, where he racked up what was then the world record for confirmed kills at 93 - although he believed the actual number was somewhere around 300.
"Carlos just really believed in what he was doing out there. He was saving Marines; that's how he really saw it. He was just doing his job, his duty. Now, Carlos is kind of a folk hero to a tremendous number of people," his boss in Vietnam, retired Maj. Jim Land told Leatherneck Magazine in a 2010 profile.
Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1942, Hathcock taught himself to shoot as a young boy, just like his boyhood idols Alvin York and Audie Murphy. It was the foundation of what would become his lifelong dream: to join the United States Marine Corps. Little did he know, as he took aim and fired that first shot, that he would one day become the standard of service and brotherhood to which many future Marines would aspire.
In 1959, at the age of 17, Hathcock finally got the opportunity to fulfill that dream. He enlisted in the Marine Corps. The shooting and hunting he'd done all his life up to that point would serve him well in the coming years. As a boy, he hunted to feed his family. As a Marine, he would hunt to keep his fellow Marines safe - and he would leave behind a legacy of incredible stories.
Hathcock first deployed to South Vietnam in 1966 as a military policeman but saw his best chance of surviving would be to go out in the bush on his own, where raw recruits new to the wilds wouldn't get him killed. Already an expert marksman and a Wimbledon Cup winner in the 1965 long-range shooting competition, Hathcock volunteered for combat duty and trained to become a sniper. Between 1966 and 1967, Land's team trained 600 snipers, including Hathcock.
Land's only problem with Hathcock was the sniper spent way too much time out in the bush, stalking his prey.
"The thing that made him different in Vietnam wasn't the marksmanship skill, but he just had this ability to totally integrate himself into the environment, and he noticed everything. He had a total awareness of his surroundings," Land said. "We all developed an edge, but Carlos took it one step further. He was like a mountain man. He noticed every breeze, every insect."
He was also deadly. So deadly, in fact, that the Viet Cong gave him a name, "Long Tr'ang," which means "white feather," so-called for the white feather Hathcock wore while out on patrol. The VC also put a significant bounty on his head, $1,000 - a lot of money for the average Vietnamese civilian.
The stories of his deadly accuracy are both astounding and true. The movie trope of shooting an enemy sniper called through his own scope is something Hathcock actually did at a distance of several hundred yards. While facing off against a communist sniper nicknamed "The Cobra," the Cobra made a critical error: the sun glinted off his own scope, revealing his position. An accurate shooter like Hathcock simply shot the glint, driving the bullet right through his scope.
Perhaps his most famous moment came against a female Viet Cong sniper nicknamed "Apache Woman" or "The Apache." This character had been skinning young, captured, or wounded Marines since long before Carlos Hathcock arrived in Vietnam. After hearing her torture a man within earshot of his base, Hathcock saw the boy make his way back to base, dying as he reached the wire. Hathcock took it personally and set out to kill her. He tracked her VC unit for as long as was necessary, and when she squatted down to pee, he knew he'd found her.
"I put one extra in her for good measure," Hathcock said.
The enemy never put a bullet in him. The only time they came close to killing White Feather was when a personnel carrier in which he was riding hit a mine. Despite his own significant burns, which covered 40% of his body, he managed to pull several Marines out of the burning wreckage. It would be another 30 years before he received recognition for the action, accepting a Silver Star in 1996. After he recovered, he helped establish the Marine Corps Scout Sniper School in Quantico, Virginia.
It wasn't the enemy that got Carlos Hathcock in the end. It was Multiple Sclerosis, which affects the brain and spinal cord and causes damage to nerve cells. It can be debilitating, causing difficulty with balance and coordination, as well as fatigue and muscular problems. It was MS that forced Hathcock to leave the Marine Corps in 1979, forced him into a wheelchair, and ultimately took his life in 1999.
Politics, they say, makes strange bedfellows. But it wasn't politics that brought an unlikely group of military forces together at the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul between 2016 and 2017 – it was the Islamic State. The band of terrorists, otherwise known as ISIS (or ISIL), captured the Iraqi city in 2014 after a battle that lasted just six days. ISIS fighters then executed captured Iraqi defenders, consolidated their gains, and continued their stunning but tragic advance.
The success of the ISIS offensive in Mosul led its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to declare the beginning of the group's self-proclaimed caliphate as the leader of Muslims all over the world. He proclaimed Mosul's Great Mosque of al-Nuri, a unique holy site that was first constructed in the 12th century. The mosque, like tens of thousands of Iraqis, would not survive the Islamic State.
It also led to military interventions by the unlikely (and unofficial alliance) between Kurdish Peshmerga, Russia, Iran, and its Hezbollah allies, as well as the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Turkey.
In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Mosul, the United States and Iraqi governments began planning to take it back. By October 2014, the U.S. would launch Operation Inherent Resolve, which flew more than 45,000 sorties against ISIS positions in its first year. At the same time, Kurdish Peshmerga forces began a counteroffensive to liberate surrounding villages and cut ISIS supply lines to Mosul.
The world's support came pouring in soon after. As the Iraqi Army began preparations to make its assault, suicide bombers struck a Paris suburb, leading French President François Hollande to deploy the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Mediterranean Sea and increase the intensity of French airstrikes. Russia, Syria, Iran, and Iraq set up a coalition headquarters in Baghdad to coordinate efforts against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In all, 60 nations were set up in 2015 to defend Iraq against further ISIS gains and push back its advance. Even Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party faithful joined the call for residents of Mosul to rise up against their captors.
On October 16, 2016, the Iraqi Army's attack on Mosul finally began. It got off to a great start but bogged down in the urban combat that followed. Iraqi and Kurdish troops claimed to have captured 77 miles of ISIS-held territory and villages on the first day of fighting. Revolts against ISIS rule broke out in the city but were quickly put down as suicide bombers, improved explosive devices, and oil fires slowed the Coalition's advance. Since ISIS also controlled a large area, it began counteroffensives of its own from places like Kirkuk, diverting much-needed attention away from the attack on Mosul.
As the Iraqis and Kurds fought to recapture Iraq's second-largest city, Coalition airstrikes and artillery pummeled ISIS defenses, not only in and around Mosul but across Iraq and Syria. American troops in Iraq numbered some 4,400 at the time, and some came into direct contact with ISIS fighters during the fight for Mosul. After U.S. troops took ineffective mortar fire on the outskirts of the city, they inflicted heavy casualties in turn.
By December 7, 2016, Coalition forces still controlled less than half of Mosul. Building by building, house by house, and airstrike by airstrike, anti-ISIS troops advanced toward the Tigris River that bisected the massive city. It wouldn't be until January 25, 2017, that the east bank of the Tigris was completely liberated by Iraqi security forces. By March 1, the remaining ISIS fighters inside the city were finally cut off from the rest of Islamic State territory as Coalition forces surrounded Mosul and restored the area to government control.
The battle to retake Mosul and turn the tide against the Islamic State would take two full years, and in that time, the U.S.-led Joint Task Force would kill some 70,000 terrorist fighters in Iraq and Syria. In those two years that ISIS ruled over Mosul, the city's population fell by one million people as the group persecuted and executed religious and ethnic minorities. At the time of the Islamic State's greatest expansion, it controlled 90,000 square kilometers of oil-rich Middle Eastern territory, an area roughly the size of Portugal. It also controlled the lives of an estimated eight million civilians.
Without the airpower and training provided by the United States and other Coalition members, it's unlikely the Iraqi government would have been able to stem ISIS expansion in 2014. It was the world's largest military operation since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and one of the fiercest battles since World War II. Mosul also joined an elite club of historical cities, places like Stalingrad, Hue, and Aleppo, that have been destroyed by combat. The damage done to the city totaled more than 50 billion dollars and included the ISIS demolition of the Great Mosque.
It has been great to help me organize my military life and hopefully will help others to do the same through my example. I have been able to put down my memories of this time in my life so others, too, can read about my history.
AQ1 Enest Burdick US Navy Veteran
Served 1971-1987
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the belligerent armies fighting World War I finally laid down their arms and stopped killing each other for the same pieces of blown-up mud they'd been fighting over since 1914.
The First World War killed as many as 22 million people worldwide and left some 23 million more wounded. An estimated 53,000 of those killed were American service members. Another 204,000 Americans would return home wounded.
World War I ushered in a new age of warfare: industrial and mechanical innovations killed, wounded, and maimed troops on the battlefield in ways previously unimaginable. Tanks, machine guns, and poison gas forever scarred the men in the trenches in ways they could never forget - and Americans back home took notice.
On the anniversary of the armistice, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first commemoration of Armistice Day, saying:
"To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations."
From that day until 1926, Armistice Day became a day Americans recognized unofficially, closing shops at 11 a.m. so people could line the streets for parades, public meetings, and prayer. By 1926, 27 states had already recognized the day as a holiday, so Congress decided to call it Armistice Day for the entire country. In 1938, November 11th became an official public holiday.
But "The War to End All Wars" didn't end any wars. It was just a prelude to World War II, the largest and costliest war in human history, in terms of both money and lives spent fighting it. World War II didn't end wars, either. After the Allies defeated the Axis Powers, the Cold War began, and in 1950, its first battles were fought on the Korean Peninsula. The United States, less than 40 years after the end of World War I, was suddenly filled with millions of war veterans, all of whom had fought for American freedoms and ideals.
In 1954, a year after the end of the Korean War, veteran service organizations lobbied Congress to amend the Act of 1938 to change "Armistice Day" to "Veterans Day" and make November 11th a day to honor all veterans.
"I have today signed a proclamation calling upon all of our citizens to observe Thursday, November 11, 1954, as Veterans Day," President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in a letter to the administrator of Veterans Affairs. "It is my earnest hope that all veterans, their organizations, and the entire citizenry will join hands to ensure [sic] proper and widespread observance of this day."
So it was not until 1968 that President Richard Nixon signed the Uniform Holiday Bill, which intended to create three-day weekends for federal employees by moving four holidays to Mondays: Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Columbus Day. The first Veterans Day under this bill was celebrated on October 25, 1971, but it was short-lived. Most states didn't recognize the new day, and the historical significance of the day was overwhelming.
In 1975, President Gerald Ford signed a law to return Veterans Day to November 11th, beginning in 1978, where it has remained ever since.
The Coast Guard vessel, Point Orient, was stationed at Fort Pierce, FL, from 1961 to 1965 and was first used for law enforcement and SAR (Search and Rescue). On 15 January 1965, she towed the disabled M/V Sally 120 miles southeast of Corpus Christi, TX, to safety. She was assigned to CG Squadron One, Division 12, Vietnam, from July 1965 to May 1970. On 15 July 1967, Point Orient captured an enemy trawler. The Point-class cutters were 82-foot patrol boats designed to replace the United States Coast Guard's aging 83-foot wooden hull patrols being used at the time. 
The design utilized a mild steel hull and an aluminum superstructure. Following the Coast Guard custom in place in 1960 of not naming vessels under 100 feet in length, the first 44 Point-class patrol boats were only identified by their hull number using the scheme of WPB-823xx, where 82 was the design length of the hull. Beginning in January 1964, the Coast Guard started naming all vessels 65 feet long and over. The 82-foot patrol boats were all given geographical "Point" names, e.g., Point Glover, Caution, Hope, Slocum, Jefferson, etc. This cutter was named after the USCG Orient Point Lighthouse (active 1899-present) in Suffolk County, New York.
To reduce manning requirements, the Point-class patrol boat was designed to accommodate an eight-man crew, a reduction from the 15-man crews of Cape-class cutter. Production started in early 1960 at the Coast Guard Yard at Curtis Bay, Maryland, and continued through late December 1963, producing 44 boats. Controls and alarms located on the bridge allowed one-man operation of the cutter, thus eliminating a live engineer watch in the engine room. Because of design, four men could operate the cutter; however, the need for resting watchstanders brought the crew size to eight men for normal domestic service. The screws were designed for ease of replacement and could be changed without removing the cutter from the water. A clutch-in idle speed of three knots helped to conserve fuel on lengthy patrols, and an eighteen-knot maximum speed could get the cutter on scene quickly. Air-conditioned interior spaces were a part of the original design for the Point class cutter. Interior access to the deckhouse was through a watertight door on the starboard side aft of the deckhouse. The deckhouse contained the cabin for the officer-in-charge and the executive petty officer. The deckhouse also included a small arms locker, scuttlebutt (i.e., potable water source), a small desk, and a head. Access to the lower deck and engine room was down a ladder. At the bottom of the ladder was the galley, mess, and recreation deck. A watertight door at the front of the mess bulkhead led to the main crew quarters, which were ten feet long and included six bunks that could be stowed, with three bunks on each side. Forward of the bunks was the crew's head complete with a compact sink, shower, and commode. Accommodations for a 13-man crew were installed for Vietnam service.
At the request of the U.S. Navy, twenty-six of the Point-class cutters were transported to Vietnam to serve with Coast Guard crews under U.S. Navy control during Operation Market Time. Coast Guard Squadron One was commissioned at Alameda, California, on 27 May 1965. Crews immediately began training and preparation for overseas deployment. All USCG Point-class cutters in Vietnam were later turned over to the South Vietnamese Navy as part of the Vietnamization of the war effort. Point Orient was transferred to RVN as RVNS Nguyễn Kim Hưng (HQ-722) on 14 July 1970.
U.S. Naval Forces Vietnam (USNAVFORV) was patrolling near the north end of the shore at Tam Quan harbor in Binh Dinh Province. Point Orient approached five sampans in restricted waters, two of which escaped into the Song Tam Quan River. The other three turned off their engines and prepared for boarding by the approaching Coast Guardsmen. As Point Orient neared the sampans, heavy automatic weapons fire erupted from the shoreline to the north and west. A crewman on the cutter was killed instantly by the first hail of bullets. The Vung Ro Bay Incident in February 1965, proved categorically that North Vietnamese smugglers were infiltrating men and smuggling weapons and matériel for the communists in South Vietnam by sea. General William C. Westmoreland, commander of Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), convened U.S. military commanders in the Pacific to determine how to handle the problem and stem the flow of people and contraband. As a result, Operation MARKET TIME was born.
In April 1965, Secretary of the Navy Paul H. Nitze formally requested Coast Guard assets join the U.S. Navy in their quest to cut off all seaborne communist smuggling and infiltration into South Vietnam. President Lyndon B. Johnson noted in an April 29 memorandum that the Coast Guard was particularly suited to the task, had the expertise and experience to participate effectively in the effort, and directed them to join the Navy in their interdiction endeavors. Coast Guard Squadron One (RONONE) was formed that same day. Of the "Point" Class 82-foot patrol boats, 26 were assigned to help U.S. and South Vietnamese navies patrol a 1,200-mile stretch of shallow waters off the coast of South Vietnam. The stretch began from the 17th parallel at the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and continued down to the Brevie Line in the Gulf of Thailand, which separates Vietnamese from Cambodian territorial waters. The United States Coast Guard's Squadron One and Squadron Three participated in Operation Market Time. The U.S. Coast Guard operated, under U.S. Navy command, heavily armed 82-foot (25 m) patrol boats and large cutters armed with 5-inch naval guns, which were used in battle and gunfire support. Radar picket escort ships, based in Guam or Pearl Harbor, provide a long-term presence at sea offshore to guard against trawler infiltration. Originally built for World War II convoy duty and then modified for distant early warning ("DEW") duty in the North Atlantic, their seakeeping capability made them ideal for long-term presence offshore, where they provided support for Patrol Craft Fast (PCF) boats, pilot rescue and sampan inspection. There were two or three on station at all times. Deployments were seven months in duration, with a four- or five-month turn-around in Pearl. When off station, they alternated duty as Taiwan Defense Patrol, with stops in Subic and Sasebo for refit mid-deployment. Operation Market Time was one of six Navy duties that began after the Tonkin Gulf Incident, along with Operation Sea Dragon, Operation Sealords, Yankee Station, PIRAZ, and naval gunfire support.
Over a period of five years, approximately 8,000 U.S. Coast Guardsmen served in Vietnam. Not all of their activity was interdiction. During their service in Vietnam, the Coast Guard provided gunfire support missions, buoy tender duties, port security and waterways details, and explosives loading detachments. They also built and manned Long Range Aids to Navigation (LORAN) stations, and supplied the U.S. Air Force's 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron at Da Nang with highly skilled Sikorsky HH-3E Jolly Green Giant combat search-and-rescue helicopter pilots.
From 1965 to 1970, RONONE cutters cruised over 4 million miles up and down the South Vietnamese coast, detected more than 800 thousand vessels, boarded more than 200 thousand, and inspected nearly 300 thousand junks, sampans, and trawlers. Incredibly, in all that time and throughout their perilous missions, the U.S. Coast Guard lost seven men killed in action and 59 wounded. In addition to providing patrols and illumination, Point Orient captured and killed numerous NVA enemy. Their service was deemed vital to the U.S. war effort in Vietnam. On 24 July 1965, the Point Orient became the first Coast Guard cutter to engage the enemy when she exchanged fire with a Viet Cong shore position.
COSDIV-12, based in Da Nang in I Corps, patrolled the South Vietnamese coastline from the DMZ down to Qui Nhon in II Corps. Their efforts had been noteworthy and successful, and by 1969, patrol missions had become relatively predictable and routine. On March 22, 1969, communists disrupted the status quo.
Point Orient—which in July of 1965 had been the first Coast Guard cutter to engage the enemy in combat since World War II - sighted five suspicious sampans together in restricted waters. The sampans were near the sea entrance to Tam Quan, about 56 miles north of Qui Nhon. The Point Orient crew instructed them to halt. Two of the five sampans raced off into the mouth of the Song Tam Quan River and made their escape. The other three turned off their motors and drifted toward the shoreline.
Point Orient's small boat, a 13-foot Boston Whaler, headed over to inspect the sampans. As it drew near, automatic gunfire erupted from three different shoreline positions to the north and west, on either side of the river entrance. Fishermen caught in restricted zones habitually tried to evade the Coast Guard, but the three sampans, which had dutifully cut their engines, apparently had ulterior motives to lure the Whaler into an ambush.
The first burst of gunfire struck and killed Chief Engineman Morris S. "Bee" Beeson, Point Orient's Engineering Officer. Beeson was born on March 8, 1932, in Pitkins, Louisiana. He died two weeks after his 37th birthday. He was a career Coast Guardsman, married, and had a son. He had served a previous tour in Vietnam from April 1967 to January 1968 aboard USCGC Halfmoon (WHEC-378). Beeson Hall, the U.S. Coast Guard Division 12 headquarters in Da Nang, was named in recognition of his service and sacrifice. The incident occurred at Tam Quan Point, which forms the northern border of Tam Quan Harbor, Binh Dinh Province. Beeson Hall, the USCG Division 12 headquarters in Da Nang, was the only Coast Guard facility named for any of the Squadron One Coast Guardsmen killed in action in Vietnam. Bill Wells, a Guardsman who served in Vietnam, maintains an informal Coast Guard Vietnam site where the photos of Chief Engineman Morris Beeson are found. They were taken by, and belong to, another Point Orient sailor, Bill Ross. The Coast Guard TWS remembrance of CPO Beeson, composed by BM2 Hugh McManus, describes the incident as follows:
"On the 22 Mar 1969, the small boat from the USCGC POINT ORIENT was checking fishing craft close inshore 56 miles north of Qui Nhon. While proceeding to board the three sampans caught in a restricted zone, heavy automatic weapons fire was received from three positions to the north and west. A crewman was struck and killed instantly by the first burst of fire. In the incident, three of the five sampans hailed by the small boat stopped their engines instead of evading up the river with the other two. Because restricted area violators had frequently been evading, the incident appeared to be a deliberate ambush with the sampans luring the small boat close to the shoreline."
When North Vietnam eventually overtook the South, the then-South Vietnamese Navy cutters had varied fates. Some were captured and incorporated into the Vietnam People's Navy. For this article, Jim Ellis, Point Orient's last commanding officer, confirmed that in the Spring of 1970, the boat, one of six stationed at Da Nang, was turned over to the South Vietnamese Navy. Some USCGC/South Vietnamese boats were eventually scuttled. Others were sailed by fleeing South Vietnamese military and civilians successfully escaping to the Philippines; at this time, it is not known if Point Orient was among those. Cutters that did get there were used by the Philippine Navy, and were eventually decommissioned and sold for scrap or to the private market. Therefore, it is plausible that the boat may still be in service. Nine currently registered members of Coast Guard TWS served aboard Point Orient, one of whom, the late LCDR Chip Gillespie, is said to have written the boat's instruction manual.
TWS has permitted me to build a profile that illustrates the accomplishments that I achieved during my career. In the process of building my profile, I am also afforded the opportunity to connect with other veterans that I served with or who participate in the same organizations as I do.
America's most recent presidential elections may seem like the most contentious in history, coming at a time when the country appears more divided than ever before. However, we tend to forget that the United States held a critical presidential election in the middle of the actual Civil War. The election of 1864 pitted President Abraham Lincoln against one of his former generals, George McClellan, and it was one no one thought Lincoln would win - including Honest Abe himself.
It's easy to look back and see Lincoln's reelection as a foregone conclusion, but with the way the Civil War had progressed during his administration, the outcome wasn't as clear back then. He struggled to find an aggressive General when the fighting began and failed to bring an early end to the war. It turned out that Lincoln's own troops did belie
ve in their Commander-in-Chief. When the states allowed those soldiers to vote from the battlefield, it may not have turned the tide of the election in the President's favor, but it did set a precedent for future American troops at war.
When the Civil War began in 1861, the Army was headed by Winfield Scott, one of the United States' most esteemed military commanders. It was Scott who developed the Anaconda Plan, the Union Army's strategy at slowly squeezing the Confederate States into submission. Lincoln accepted this plan but then surprisingly stopped taking the 75-year-old General's advice.
Scott recommended Henry Halleck to lead the Union forces, but Lincoln chose Irvin McDowell. Scott believed the Union Army needed time to train as a professional fighting force, while Lincoln decided to make an immediate attack on Richmond, the rebel capital. When McDowell was soundly defeated at the first Battle of Bull Run, Lincoln chose Gen. George McClellan to lead the Union and began meeting with him without Scott. Incensed, Scott resigned and recommended Halleck to take his place. The President chose McClellan to serve as both Commanding General of the U.S. Army and Commander of the Army of the Potomac.
Simply put, Lincoln made mistakes early in the war, and ignoring the advice of a seasoned commander like Winfield Scott was probably the most obvious o
ne. To be fair, McClellan looked good on paper. He was Commander of the Department of Ohio, a former observer of the Crimean War, experienced the use of railroads, and ordered the first conclusive Union victory at Philippi (in what is today West Virginia). He also had his own grand plans for defeating the rebels – both of which Scott rejected as "unfeasible."
Scott was the subject of criticism and derision for his patience in the press, while McClellan was being celebrated for what seemed like a quick victory. But he turned out to be just as slow as Scott, without any of Scott's success. Lincoln began to grow impatient, while McClellan grew insubordinate. The General was eventually removed as Commanding General of the Army and replaced by a board of officers who would direct strategy. Reduced to just command of the Army of the Potomac, he was painfully slow and cautious. When McClellan finally moved, launching the 1862 Peninsula Campaign in Virginia, he was soundly beaten.
The blunders didn't stop there. That same year, McClellan barely secured a victory at Antietam, despite having the rebels' entire plan of attack and his dawdling made that battle the bloodiest single day in American history. When the general failed to pursue the Confederates after his victory, Lincoln fired him as Commander.
The Union's battlefield woes continued, but this time, there was no insubordinate general blaming his defeats on Washington. McClellan was replaced and transferred, where he languished without a command until October 1863. That's when he entered the presidential race as a Democrat. He supported the war and restoration of the Union but not the abolition of slavery.
Meanwhile, many of the President's wartime policies were unpopular with Americans. There were calls to end the war through negotiations with the Confederates, men were being conscripted into the Union Army under Lincoln's 1863 draft laws (that sparked riots in New York and elsewhere), and some simply didn't believe in ending slavery. All this made McClellan the immediate front-runner for the election of 1864. Even Lincoln himself lamented his coming loss, writing, "This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected."
As election day approached, however, the President and Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, wondered how men fighting for the Union would be able to exercise their rights as citizens of that Union. They weren't alone. By the time the votes were ready to be counted, 19 states had passed laws outlining how their fighting men would be able to vote while they were away. When those votes were counted, Lincoln received an incredible 78% of the military vote. Lincoln carried 22 of 25 states, with 212 electoral votes to McClellan's 21. Even the recently captured states of Louisiana and Tennessee voted for Lincoln.
Only an estimated 150,000 soldiers voted in the election of 1864, but from that moment on, absentee voting systems were in place for voters who couldn't return home to cast a ballot. It would lead to a series of laws passed over the next 150 years that would secure voting rights for American service members deployed overseas during all of America's overseas conflicts.
Marines have always considered the yellow footprints as the starting point of the journey to becoming a Marine.
Whether at Parris Island or San Diego, new recruits find these yellow footprints stenciled on the ground outside the receiving barracks at each location. They are directed to stand on these iconic symbols once they arrive at boot camp. This is when the change begins, and it's the perfect name for the website.
Building YellowFootprints.com
I purchased the domain YellowFootprints.com in 2002 after discovering it was available for sale. I still needed a mission statement for the future site, one that stated its goals and its mission. Early on, I knew the site would have to be geared towards history – a Marine Corps history.
Although we Marines are part of the U.S. military, we've always considered ourselves the elite branch or, as we call it, The Breed. The individual historical value of each Marine begins with their boot camp graduation book, which reflects their daily experience of becoming a Marine, from their first days in boot camp to graduation day. Many would find their pictures in these books reflecting a different aspect of their training. Boot camp graduation books show the true value of a Marine, who each experienced becoming one of the world's best fighters.
The mission of returning history started with gathering these historical books in any way I could. I began by purchasing books from eBay. As years went by and word got out about the coming website and its mission, book donations started flying in. One such donation even came from a non-Marine supporter of our mission, who donated some 1,200 platoon books, personally driving 18 boxes of platoon books from the East Coast to our California location.
Now that's support!
Next, I had to create some kind of database where these books could be shared by all. Little did I know at the time what I was about to get myself into. From 2002 until 2004, word spread across the Corps as to what I was building with the new website. Not only did I receive calls to help administer the site, but free server offers came in as well.
The Boot Camp Database
I decided the database should be broken up into two groups: Parris Island and San Diego. Each boot camp location would start with years of graduation, months, and, finally, platoon numbers. Now that the database had some kind of format, it was time to populate it.
As I sat with all the boxes of books I had received over the prior two years, I knew the real mission was about to start. From 2004 until 2006, I spent hundreds of hours and used more scanning equipment than any one person can imagine, scanning recruit pages from each book. I would then upload these pages to the YellowFootprints.com database. At this point, the website was still not online or active for others to see, but I continued my diligent work.
On July 16, 2006, after two years building and populating the database, the website finally went live. So much anticipation was built up by then that our guest list went crazy within days. Marines and non-Marines alike signed up as members, and within a month, I was experiencing more than 200,000 hits. I found site traffic was coming in from all over the world, including from places like China, Russia, and all over Europe. Even the Pentagon, of all places, was coming to see our history.
As of this writing, it has been more than 20 years since I bought the website and began my mission of returning history.
Continuing the Mission
The goal from the beginning was never to keep these books in my collection but rather return them to those Marines who earned them. In my more than 20 years of documenting this history, I have never sold a single book. The objective of the collection was always to return said books to those Marines who found their book in our collection, free of charge.
Over the years, requests for books would come in from family members whose Marine was being assigned to her final duty station or were under hospice care. In the cases where I found we had their book, we would send it out, along with a video of the book where the family members could share it via a computer or television.
There are so many to thank who have supported this mission, from administrative support of the forums to system engineers who have worked tirelessly in keeping our servers up and running 24-7.
As I approach the Autumn of my life, I've started wondering what happens to this collection of history after I'm gone. I needed to see the mission to the end, so I posted a note on Facebook, looking for someone or an organization that would take over guardianship of the collection.
Fortunately, one of my fellow collectors, William Pilgrim, reached out to TogetherWeServed to see if a permanent home could be found for the collection. Through a joint effort by TWS, Ancestry.com, and the Marine Corps University, my passion project has found a home.
As I sit here, reminiscing about the years I've been on this mission of returning history via YellowFootprints to my fellow Marines, I have to think about how all this started. I signed up to join the Marine Corps at the young age of 16 and soon found myself on a troop ship heading to Vietnam when I was only 17.
Many have asked me over the years why I would join the Corps at such a young age, and my response was always the same: to pay a debt I owed the Marines.
To all who have been part of this journey, thank you.
Semper Fi
Cpl Gary Miller
USMC 1964-1970
I really didn't start to think about putting some proverbial "footprints in the sand" until 10/13. As I started on the TWS website, I reflected on how little I knew of my father's war. He jumped into Normandy with the 82nd Airborne and was wounded and disabled at the Battle of the Bulge. I regretted not knowing more and wanted to leave my family and friends more about what my war was like. In addition, TWS enabled me to connect with Lt. John Dawson's family, who then posted his TWS profile. His classmates from high school had him recognized as an outstanding graduate in the year (2013). I also was able to get a better sense of the battle where he was killed, and I was wounded from Tom Jacobs, Mike Thompson, Bob Lascher, and the Silver Star Citations of Mathews and Hackett. As a TWS history volunteer, I have been fortunate to assist in completing or adding profiles to the website. I am up to over 6,500 profiles now.
Cpl Edward Burke US Marine Corps Veteran
Served 1966-1968
On the night of August 2, 1944, a team of operatives from the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of today's Central Intelligence Agency, parachuted into the town of Pranjani, Serbia. Led by U.S. Army Lt. George "Guv" Musulin, the team of three was to contact Gen. Draža Mihailović, the leader of a Serbian nationalist band of fighters called the Chetniks.
He was there to plan how the United States' 15th Air Force would airlift the more than 500 downed Allied pilots the Chetniks rescued and bring them back to safety. Operation Halyard, as the mission was named, would be the largest rescue operation of American airmen in military history.
"The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II" is a 2008 book that describes in detail how some 500 airmen were shot down over Serbia, how they were protected by Serbian civilians and the brave group of resistance fighters who helped them all get home. It's a refreshing and engrossing reminder of the courage and teamwork of Serbia's Chetniks from Award-winning author and journalist Gregory A. Freeman.
After the Allies liberated Sicily in 1943, it wasn't long before Fascist Italy capitulated entirely, giving the Allied forces a foothold in southern Europe. This foothold became critically important, as it put the Nazi-controlled oil fields of Romania and Hungary – which provided more than a quarter of Adolph Hitler's fuel – within bombing range of the 15th Air Force. They also targeted objectives in Bulgaria and Serbia.
The U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) would fly more than 20,000 sorties against those oil fields between October 1943 and October 1944, taking 50% of aircraft losses and losing 10% of its personnel. Those who bailed out over the targets were either captured by the enemy and sent to POW camps, or rescued by Marshal Josip Broz Tito's Partisans or Gen. Draža Mihailović's Chetniks. Those who were rescued by Chetniks were moved to local villages where they were blended in with the population and cared for.
Over time, the toll of the bombing campaign swelled the numbers of downed airmen. By the autumn of 1944, more than 500 Allied crewmen were living hidden among the Chetnik Serbs. In the face of political opposition from ally Great Britain (who supported Tito and his Partisans, and wanted the U.S. to end contact with the Chetniks), the OSS and Army Air Forces created Air Crew Rescue Unit 1 (ACRU 1), and hatched a plan to get them out.
Operation Halyard was as dangerous as it was ambitious. Downed aircrew had to build a landing strip, by hand and at night, to avoid detection by the enemy. Meanwhile, the Chetniks had to engage enemy occupation forces at different points to keep their attention far away from the makeshift airfield, losing a number of fighters in the gambit. But on the nights of August 10th, 12th, 15th, and 18th, C-47 transport planes landed one after another to take on their precious cargo: hundreds of rescued Allied pilots. Not only was the massive airlift a success, it was repeated in September, November, and December 1944 at similar airfields in the Serbian towns of Koceljeva and Boljanić.
The postwar world wasn't kind to Draža Mihailović and his royalist, nationalist Chetniks. After being liberated by the Soviet Red Army, Yugoslavia descended into a civil war between the anti-communist Chetniks and Tito's Soviet-backed Partisans. His forces were crushed by the Yugoslav Army and Partisans, and Mihailović himself was captured in 1946. He was put on trial, and the airmen he rescued were not allowed to testify in his defense. He was convicted of high treason, executed, and buried in an unmarked mass grave.
For his help in rescuing American and Allied aircrews, Mihailović was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit by President Harry S. Truman. The award was kept a secret during the Cold War to maintain relations with the communist government of Yugoslavia. It was finally presented to Mihailović's daughter Gordana Mihajlovic by the U.S. State Department on May 9, 2005.
To learn more about Operation Halyard and the monumental efforts by the OSS, USAAF, and Serbian nationalist leader Draža Mihailović and his Chetniks, pick up Gregory A. Freeman's "The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II." It's currently available on Amazon in hardcover, paperback, Kindle Reader, and on Audible, starting at $11.74
"Carlos just really believed in what he was doing out there. He was saving Marines; that's how he really saw it. He was just doing his job, his duty. Now, Carlos is kind of a folk hero to a tremendous number of people," his boss in Vietnam, retired Maj. Jim Land told Leatherneck Magazine in a 2010 profile.
The enemy never put a bullet in him. The only time they came close to killing White Feather was when a personnel carrier in which he was riding hit a mine. Despite his own significant burns, which covered 40% of his body, he managed to pull several Marines out of the burning wreckage. It would be another 30 years before he received recognition for the action, accepting a Silver Star in 1996. After he recovered, he helped establish the Marine Corps Scout Sniper School in Quantico, Virginia. 
The success of the ISIS offensive in Mosul led its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to declare the beginning of the group's self-proclaimed caliphate as the leader of Muslims all over the world. He proclaimed Mosul's Great Mosque of al-Nuri, a unique holy site that was first constructed in the 12th century. The mosque, like tens of thousands of Iraqis, would not survive the Islamic State. 
On October 16, 2016, the Iraqi Army's attack on Mosul finally began. It got off to a great start but bogged down in the urban combat that followed. Iraqi and Kurdish troops claimed to have captured 77 miles of ISIS-held territory and villages on the first day of fighting. Revolts against ISIS rule broke out in the city but were quickly put down as suicide bombers, improved explosive devices, and oil fires slowed the Coalition's advance. Since ISIS also controlled a large area, it began counteroffensives of its own from places like Kirkuk, diverting much-needed attention away from the attack on Mosul.
The battle to retake Mosul and turn the tide against the Islamic State would take two full years, and in that time, the U.S.-led Joint Task Force would kill some 70,000 terrorist fighters in Iraq and Syria. In those two years that ISIS ruled over Mosul, the city's population fell by one million people as the group persecuted and executed religious and ethnic minorities. At the time of the Islamic State's greatest expansion, it controlled 90,000 square kilometers of oil-rich Middle Eastern territory, an area roughly the size of Portugal. It also controlled the lives of an estimated eight million civilians. 
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the belligerent armies fighting World War I finally laid down their arms and stopped killing each other for the same pieces of blown-up mud they'd been fighting over since 1914. 
But "The War to End All Wars" didn't end any wars. It was just a prelude to World War II, the largest and costliest war in human history, in terms of both money and lives spent fighting it. World War II didn't end wars, either. After the Allies defeated the Axis Powers, the Cold War began, and in 1950, its first battles were fought on the Korean Peninsula. The United States, less than 40 years after the end of World War I, was suddenly filled with millions of war veterans, all of whom had fought for American freedoms and ideals. 
The design utilized a mild steel hull and an aluminum superstructure. Following the Coast Guard custom in place in 1960 of not naming vessels under 100 feet in length, the first 44 Point-class patrol boats were only identified by their hull number using the scheme of WPB-823xx, where 82 was the design length of the hull. Beginning in January 1964, the Coast Guard started naming all vessels 65 feet long and over. The 82-foot patrol boats were all given geographical "Point" names, e.g., Point Glover, Caution, Hope, Slocum, Jefferson, etc. This cutter was named after the USCG Orient Point Lighthouse (active 1899-present) in Suffolk County, New York. 
U.S. Naval Forces Vietnam (USNAVFORV) was patrolling near the north end of the shore at Tam Quan harbor in Binh Dinh Province. Point Orient approached five sampans in restricted waters, two of which escaped into the Song Tam Quan River. The other three turned off their engines and prepared for boarding by the approaching Coast Guardsmen. As Point Orient neared the sampans, heavy automatic weapons fire erupted from the shoreline to the north and west. A crewman on the cutter was killed instantly by the first hail of bullets. The Vung Ro Bay Incident in February 1965, proved categorically that North Vietnamese smugglers were infiltrating men and smuggling weapons and matériel for the communists in South Vietnam by sea. General William C. Westmoreland, commander of Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), convened U.S. military commanders in the Pacific to determine how to handle the problem and stem the flow of people and contraband. As a result, Operation MARKET TIME was born.
Over a period of five years, approximately 8,000 U.S. Coast Guardsmen served in Vietnam. Not all of their activity was interdiction. During their service in Vietnam, the Coast Guard provided gunfire support missions, buoy tender duties, port security and waterways details, and explosives loading detachments. They also built and manned Long Range Aids to Navigation (LORAN) stations, and supplied the U.S. Air Force's 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron at Da Nang with highly skilled Sikorsky HH-3E Jolly Green Giant combat search-and-rescue helicopter pilots.
The first burst of gunfire struck and killed Chief Engineman Morris S. "Bee" Beeson, Point Orient's Engineering Officer. Beeson was born on March 8, 1932, in Pitkins, Louisiana. He died two weeks after his 37th birthday. He was a career Coast Guardsman, married, and had a son. He had served a previous tour in Vietnam from April 1967 to January 1968 aboard USCGC Halfmoon (WHEC-378). Beeson Hall, the U.S. Coast Guard Division 12 headquarters in Da Nang, was named in recognition of his service and sacrifice. The incident occurred at Tam Quan Point, which forms the northern border of Tam Quan Harbor, Binh Dinh Province. Beeson Hall, the USCG Division 12 headquarters in Da Nang, was the only Coast Guard facility named for any of the Squadron One Coast Guardsmen killed in action in Vietnam. Bill Wells, a Guardsman who served in Vietnam, maintains an informal Coast Guard Vietnam site where the photos of Chief Engineman Morris Beeson are found. They were taken by, and belong to, another Point Orient sailor, Bill Ross. The Coast Guard TWS remembrance of CPO Beeson, composed by BM2 Hugh McManus, describes the incident as follows:
ve in their Commander-in-Chief. When the states allowed those soldiers to vote from the battlefield, it may not have turned the tide of the election in the President's favor, but it did set a precedent for future American troops at war.
ne. To be fair, McClellan looked good on paper. He was Commander of the Department of Ohio, a former observer of the Crimean War, experienced the use of railroads, and ordered the first conclusive Union victory at Philippi (in what is today West Virginia). He also had his own grand plans for defeating the rebels – both of which Scott rejected as "unfeasible."
Meanwhile, many of the President's wartime policies were unpopular with Americans. There were calls to end the war through negotiations with the Confederates, men were being conscripted into the Union Army under Lincoln's 1863 draft laws (that sparked riots in New York and elsewhere), and some simply didn't believe in ending slavery. All this made McClellan the immediate front-runner for the election of 1864. Even Lincoln himself lamented his coming loss, writing, "This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected." 
Whether at Parris Island or San Diego, new recruits find these yellow footprints stenciled on the ground outside the receiving barracks at each location. They are directed to stand on these iconic symbols once they arrive at boot camp. This is when the change begins, and it's the perfect name for the website.
The Boot Camp Database
As I sit here, reminiscing about the years I've been on this mission of returning history via YellowFootprints to my fellow Marines, I have to think about how all this started. I signed up to join the Marine Corps at the young age of 16 and soon found myself on a troop ship heading to Vietnam when I was only 17.
On the night of August 2, 1944, a team of operatives from the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of today's Central Intelligence Agency, parachuted into the town of Pranjani, Serbia. Led by U.S. Army Lt. George "Guv" Musulin, the team of three was to contact Gen. Draža Mihailović, the leader of a Serbian nationalist band of fighters called the Chetniks. 
After the Allies liberated Sicily in 1943, it wasn't long before Fascist Italy capitulated entirely, giving the Allied forces a foothold in southern Europe. This foothold became critically important, as it put the Nazi-controlled oil fields of Romania and Hungary – which provided more than a quarter of Adolph Hitler's fuel – within bombing range of the 15th Air Force. They also targeted objectives in Bulgaria and Serbia. 
Operation Halyard was as dangerous as it was ambitious. Downed aircrew had to build a landing strip, by hand and at night, to avoid detection by the enemy. Meanwhile, the Chetniks had to engage enemy occupation forces at different points to keep their attention far away from the makeshift airfield, losing a number of fighters in the gambit. But on the nights of August 10th, 12th, 15th, and 18th, C-47 transport planes landed one after another to take on their precious cargo: hundreds of rescued Allied pilots. Not only was the massive airlift a success, it was repeated in September, November, and December 1944 at similar airfields in the Serbian towns of Koceljeva and Boljanić.