Clip 025 | Controversy after 1st Marine Raider Battalion is Ordered to Move to Camp Lejeune

0:00 I don't know. Like three months ago, we had a Marine Raider Foundation event where we're doing a fundraiser up in Mountain View, California, and the family that did it was Pete and Patty Minuchin. Their son Matt minukan dear friend of mine. He was a captain, actually introduced me to my now wife. He was killed while we're over there and was awarded the Navy Cross.

0:24 And I mean, I think like the foundation pulled in like fifty thousand dollars or something from this event in like their backyard. It was just spectacular, and we were kind of talking about like one of my buddies. He's kind of like one of the last guys in from like the Helmet group of guys, and he's getting ready to retire here in the next month or so, and we were like, you know, Patty's like, oh my god, like you know, we all get and talk, but she's like I always had like an active duty guy and now I don't know, and they're over on the East Coast, and we just kind of started talking about that, and there was a lot of frustration on our side because if you see where First Marine Special Operation Battian or First Raider Battalion US used to be I

1:03 think now maybe the mew where someone took it over and yeah, and it just kind of I mean, and there was a lot of money so com put into it. I mean, we had our dog kennels, our training area, I mean it was one of the best ranges. We had. Range one thirty was our range, so we could go pop out there. You had square base, you had shoot houses, high angle, all the stuff that you would need. And then you're like, you guys are going to move another Special Operations Battalion all the way over to the east coast into our smallest base at Campbella June, and you're going to have all the Victor units or the infantry units. You've gotta have Force Recon Company, a Recon Battalion, and now three Special Operations Battalion all fighting for the same range space.

1:44 I'm like, man, if I had money, I'll go buy chunk of land out there and open up a range because they're going to need to go off base and stuff like that. And then for us, you know, I always tell the Foundation, like you know, it's like any college program or whatever, you got to keep your alumni happy. Right then, I'll keep donating you, honey and giving you stuff. Well, where we had at First Raider Battalion, you know, we had our like kind of our our hero wall where the guys we lost were up there with their paddles.

2:10 We had this really nice monument out there that just was just beautiful when the sun would set and had all the all the fallen heroes names on it. And I'll never forget when we we did all this in like twenty twelve when General le Favor, an amazing general officer as well, you know, he came and gave a speech and he's like this place now has a soul, like you know, pointing to the foot to our memorial, and they just ripped up the memorial. They took everything out and just like left, like it's like the Mayflower van from the you know, Baltimore Colts had just kind of gone and that was it. And we're like, we don't have a place where we can call home now over here on the West coast.

2:50 You know, one thing I recommended was one put another memorial up because you know, our legacy, it needs to be remembered like that. This this was built like really in First Batown and I'm gonna say it was the one who kind of earned the stripes for MARSK. I mean, I know people are getting pissed off about that, but Hellman was no pretty dance floor, and that's where first was, and there was a lot of guys getting banged up over there, you know. And on that compound at Pendleton, we had like another kind of school building and that was for the company that was getting ready to deploy. So you kind of went there not like isolation, but you're just kind of away from everyone, just doing your final thing.

3:27 And I'm like, how hard would it have been for the Marine Corps to say, you know, we're gonna call this the Marine Raider Building or something and then put memorial there just and you put our pictures up from those deployments, just so we had something to remember by and we can come on base and maybe do like a yearly reunion up there, and you know, we could do a Marine Raider Foundation event and you'll draw a ton of money.

3:47 But you know, it just kind of felt like we got the middle finger and off they went, and you know, guy, I'm annoyed. I'm not gonna speak for other people. It really bothered me and still bothers me that did that. That was a lot of sweat and tears in that building. And no more. What I understood the original plan was and watch in like five years somehow this will come to fruition. But what they were thinking about doing was adding another battalion and then bringing a regiment out here, so you'd have a regiment and two battalions on the West coast, a regiment two battalions on the East coast. Because there's a lot going on in the Pacific, and there's this really evil country called China, like doing some weird things

4:26 out there, and you know, it's like they still had to forward deploy people to here and then go off into sock pack and all that stuff special operations fromanda Pacific. But you know, my big thing too, like they were arguing, we're wasting a lot of money sending you know, the raiders from the West coast over to the East coast for schooling because we got the schoolhouse there and all that stuff. Well, you know, take a step back and look at the infantry. You have SOI East, you have SOI West. They're teaching the same period of instruction. You could build another schoolhouse out here, if you've really felt that bad to have these periods of instructions, they can do a seier course out here. They could do something else,

5:12 and you're gonna end up saving money in the long run because you're not going toward deployee people here and stuff. And I think they even have like leave behind assets back here on Penalton that if you're coming through, they'll liaison with you and stuff. It just seemed like an unnecessary move. But then again, the Marine Corps, you know, to the beginning of our conversation, was not happy about us going into special operations. You know. One of the rumors I heard is the first place they pitched to move the you know, Marsac to was be down in Tampa Bay. So and the Marine Corps is like, no way. So, you know, big Marine Corps wants to kind of wrap their arms around it and kind of have control,

5:49 and I you know, I'm sure there's a lot of people who would like to see Marsaco go away.