Marine Corps League, Clevenger Detachment 1355

06/16/2015

Our next meeting is on June 27th of this month.

06/16/2015

Some pictures from this years State Convention

05/25/2015

Next meeting is May 30th

05/25/2015

Memorial Day Event May 25, 2015

04/04/2015

The rank structure is as follows:

Commandant- Steve Maxson
Sr. Vice- Robert Alexzander
Jr. Vice- Kyle Farmer
Judge Advocate- Chad Star
Adjacent Pay Master- Mike Sylman
Chaplin- Mike Weaver
SGT. of Arms- Sam Maxson

04/04/2015

Next meeting is on April the 25th of 2015
Breakfast is at 9:30
Meeting starts at 10:00

04/04/2015

Untitled album

04/03/2015

Stay tuned there will be new updates of events, and pictures to come in the next few days.

09/18/2013

WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT MARINES

Ask a Marine what’s so special about the Marines and the answer would be “esprit de corps,” an unhelpful French phrase that means exactly what it looks like-the spirit of the Corps, but what is that spirit, and where does it come from?

The Marine Corps is the only branch of the U.S Armed Forces that recruits people specifically for FIGHT. The Army emphasizes personal development (an Army of One), The Navy Promises fun (let the journey begin), the Air Force offers security (it’s a great way of life). Missing from all the advertisements is the hard fact that a soldier’s lot is to suffer and perhaps to die for his people and take lives at the risk of his/her own.

Even the thematic music of the services reflects on the evasion. The Army’s Caisson Song describes a pleasant country outing. Over hill and dale, lacking only a picnic basket. Anchors Aweigh, the Navy’s celebration of the joys of sailing, could have been penned by Jimmy Buffet. The Air Force song is a lyric poem of the blue skies and engine thrust. All is joyful and invigorating, and safe. There are no land mines in the dales nor snipers behind the hills, no submarines or cruise missiles threaten the ocean jaunt, no bandits are lurking in the wild blue yonder. The Marines Hymn by contrast, is all combat: “We fight our Country’s battles…First to fight for right and freedom…We have fought in every clime and place where we could take a gun…in many strife we have fought for life and never lost our nerve.”

The choice is made clear. You may join the Army to go to adventure training, or join the Navy to go to Bangkok, or join the Air Force to go to computer school. You join the Marine Corps to go to War! But the mere act of signing the enlistment contract confers no status in the Corps. The Army recruit is told from his first minute in uniform that “you’re in the Army now”, soldier. The Navy and Air Force enlistees are sailors or airmen as soon as they get off the bus at the training center. The new arrival at the Marine Corps boot camp is called a recruit or worse, (a lot worse), but never a MARINE. Not yet, maybe never. He or she must earn the right to claim the title of “UNITED STATES MARINE,” and failure returns you to civilian life without hesitation or ceremony.

Recruit Platoon 2210 at San Diego, California trained from October through December of 1968. In Viet Nam the Marines were taking two hundred casualties a week, and the major rainy season operation Meade River, had not even begun, yet Drill Instructors had no qualms about winnowing out almost a quarter of their 112 recruits, graduating eighty-one. Note that this was post-enlistment attrition. Every one of those dropped had been passed by the recruiters as fit for service. But they failed the test of Boot Camp, not necessarily for physical reasons; at least two were outstanding high school athletes for whom the calisthenics and running were child’s play. The cause of their failure was not in the biceps nor the legs but in the spirit. They had lacked the will to endure the mental and emotional strain, so they would not be Marines. Heavy commitments and high casualties notwithstanding, the Corps reserves the right to pick and choose.
History Classes in boot camp? Stop a soldier on the street and ask him to name a battle of World War One. Pick a sailor at random to describe the epic fight of the Bon Homme Richard. Everyone has heard of McGuire Air Force Base. So ask any airman who Major Thomas McGuire was, and why he is so commemorated. I am not carping and there is no heresy in this criticism. All of the services have glorious traditions, but no one teaches the young soldier, sailor or airman what his uniform means and why he should be proud of it. But ask a Marine about World War One and you will hear of the wheat field at Belleau Wood and the courage of the Fourth Marine Brigade, Fifth and Sixth regiments. Faced with and enemy of superior numbers entrenched in tangled forest undergrowth, the marines received an order to attack that even the charitable cannot call ill advised. It was insane.

Artillery support was absent and air support hadn’t been invented yet, so the Brigade charged German machine guns with only bayonets, grenades, and indomitable fighting spirit. A bandy-legged little barrel of a gunnery sergeant, Daniel J. Daily, rallied his company with a shout, “Come on, you sons a bi***es, do you want to live forever”? He took out three machine guns himself and they would have given him the Medal of Honor except for a technicality – he already had two of them. French liaison-officers, hardened though they were by four years of trench bound slaughter, were shocked as the Marines charged across the open wheat field under a blazing sun directly into the teeth of enemy fire. Their action was so anachronistic on the twentieth-century battlefield that they might as well have been swinging cutlasses, but the enemy was only human. They could not stand up to this. So the Marines took Belleau Wood. The Germans called them “DOGS FROM THE DEVIL, “ [TeufelHunden].

Every Marine knows this story and dozens more. We are taught them in boot camp as a regular part of the curriculum. Every Marine will always be taught them! You can learn to don a gas mask anytime, even on the plane in route to the war zone, but before you can wear the E.G.&A. and Claim the title you must know about the Marines who made that emblem and title meaningful. So long as you can march and shoot and revere the legacy of the Corps you can take your place in line. And that line is unified spirit as in purpose. A soldier wears branch of service insignia on his collar, metal shoulder pins and cloth sleeve patches to identify his unit. Sailors wear a rating badge that identifies what they do for the Navy. Marines wear only the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor, together with personal ribbons and their CHERISHED marksmanship badges.

There is nothing on a Marine’s uniform to indicate what he or she does, nor what unit the Marine belongs to. You cannot tell by looking at a Marine whether you’re seeing a truck driver, a computer programmer, or a machine gunner. The Corps explains this as a security measure to conceal the identity and location of units, but the Marines penchant for publicity make that the least likely of explanations. No, the Marine is amorphous, even anonymous, by conscious design.

Every Marine is a rifleman first and foremost, a Marine first, last and Always! You may serve for four-year enlistment or even a twenty plus year career without seeing action, but if the word is given you’ll charge across that Wheatfield! Whether a Marine has been schooled in automated supply, or automotive mechanics, or aviation electronics, is immaterial. Those things are secondary – the Corps does them because it must. The modern battle requires the technical appliances, and since the enemy has them, so do we, but no Marine boasts mastery of them. Our pride is in our marksmanship, our discipline, and our membership in fraternity of courage and sacrifice. “For the honor of the fallen, for the glory of the dead”, Edgar Guest wrote of Belleau Wood, “the living line of courage kept the faith and moved ahead”. They are all gone now, those Marines who made a French farmer’s little Wheatfield into one of the most enduring of Marine Corps legends. Many of them did not survive the day, and eight long decades have claimed the rest. But their actions are immortal. The Corps remembers them and honors what they did, and so they live forever. Dan Daly’s shouted challenge takes on its true meaning: if you lie in the trenches you may survive for now, but someday you may die and no one will care. If you charge the guns you may die in the next two minutes, but you will be one of the immortals. All Marines die in the red flash of battle or the white cold of the nursing home. In the vigor of youth or the infirmity of age all will eventually die, but the Marine Corps lives on. Every Marine who ever lived is living still, in the Marines who claim the title today. It is the sense of longing to something that will outlive your own mortality, which gives people a light to live by and a flame to mark their passing.
Sgt. Nick Sparacino 2/9 Viet Nam 1966

09/17/2013

Reminder....Monthly meeting has been moved up to Saturday September 21st due to the Pelican Fest.

08/05/2013

Happy Birthday to our Member Kyle Farmer!!! Ooh Rah!!

07/28/2013

Today is a milestone for the American Military. It's the 60th anniversary of the "Forgotten War" Armistice in Korea. Today we look back at a time when the Evil of Communism was a threat to the entire globe and how the Sons and Daughters of American Freedom looked that Evil in the face and said " Not today, Not ever." To all who were there, as with any war, they left a legacy and set a precedent that our current, brave fighting Americans emulate. I think its safe to say that the warriors of the past are ever watchful of today's Military and their six. Weather physically or in spirit, it is there. I have had the opportunity to meet and hear some of the experiences of those who lived them and the only word that comes to mind is phenomenal and for that I reserve an eternal gratitude. Remember, Freedom is not free. Their is a price that, at times, is paid for with the blood of our countrymen. You are free today because of it. Don't forget it because so many can't.

I'm not the best at transferring my thoughts to written word but to sum it up......Thank You to all those that went before me. God bless you all and God bless the United States of America.

Detachment Judge Advocate Dennis Lee

07/24/2013

Happy Birthday to our illustrious Commandant. Can I get an OOH RA?

06/12/2013

Shotgun Raffle

06/12/2013

GAR Memorial

04/28/2013

Next Meeting
May 25, 2013
10:00 AM

04/20/2013

Memorial Day 2012

04/20/2013

Officer Instalation March 2013

04/11/2013

Due to the Medal of Honor ceremony on April 27, we are moving the monthly meeting to April 20, 2013 at 10 am at the new American. Legion Post.

03/26/2013

The meeting for March 31, 2013 time has been changed to 1500 to accommodate the Officer Installation. It will be held at the new location 2129 Denver Harner Dr, Miami, OK. Come join us for the festivities.

03/26/2013

The meeting for March 31, 2013 time has been changed to 1500 to accommodate the Officer Installation. It will be held at the new location 2129 Denver Harner Dr, Miami, OK. Come join us for the festivities

02/01/2013

We have moved our meeting location. We are now at
2129 Denver Harner Dr
Miami, OK 74354
Meetings are still last Saturday of the month at 10am. Come early to enjoy breakfast before the meeting.

01/22/2013

Monthly meeting Sat, Jan 26th. New officer installation.

06/09/2012

Marine Corp League Convention 2012

05/29/2012

Memorial Day 2012

04/28/2012

Battle Rattle - A Marine Corps Times Blog – Gunfire and children: A day on the ground in Sangin

Battle Rattle - A Marine Corps Times Blog – Gunfire and children: A day on the ground in Sangin

Semper Fi - Discuss life in the Marine Corps and the Marine Corps headlines of the day.

04/28/2012

Fallen MARSOC operator awarded Silver Star

R.I.P Sgt!

An operator with Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command will posthumously receive the Silver Star for life-saving heroism in Badghis province, Afghanistan.

04/28/2012

General: USMC not giving women infantry jobs

Marines not ready to send women into direct combat

Expanded infantry training for women does not mean the Marine Corps is ready to send women into combat assignments, the Corps’ top personnel official said Wednesday

04/21/2012

Just a Reminder...... Our next Meeting will be 28 April 2012.... Chow @ 0900hrs and Meeting comes to order @ 1000hrs. Lots of Business to discuss. Plus we have a busy Spring and Summer heading our way!! Also keep in mind your Officer nominations for this years election

04/21/2012

Officers May 2011 to May 2012

04/21/2012

Here in a little bit, I will Introduce you all to our Officers. Hurry up and wait!!! OOH RAH!!

04/21/2012

Osprey Crash Victims Honored at Sea | Military.com

R.I.P Brothers!!

Marines and Sailors from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group gathered together to honor Cpl. Derek Kerns and Cpl. Robby Reyes during a memorial ceremony aboard the USS Iwo Jima April 18.

04/21/2012

Battle Rattle - A Marine Corps Times Blog – Marines make best seat in MRAP

Adapt Overcome and Improvise the Motor T way!!! OOH RAH!!

Semper Fi - Discuss life in the Marine Corps and the Marine Corps headlines of the day.

04/21/2012

Group opposes unit’s ‘Crusaders’ nickname

If they named the Squadron "Puppy Dogs" cat owners would be offended! This is rediculous!!

BEAUFORT, S.C. — An advocacy group is objecting to the use of the name Crusaders for a flight squadron based at the Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort.

04/21/2012

Marine corps tribute

Remembering The Marines and Corpsmen of Iwo Jima
http://youtu.be/jdMc7YalbnI

For those of you who know my work, I was compelled to make this tribute after hearing the song Dante's prayer. When I make a video it starts with hearing a s...