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Tag: Marine Corps

  • A Northern Va. police department celebrates 250 years of the Marines with cake and a sword – WTOP News

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    Since 1921, the Marines have had a specific order on how to celebrate the Corps’ birthday involving traditional birthday cake with a globe and anchor decoration.

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    Alexandria Police Department celebrates 250 years of the Marines with cake and a sword

    The U.S. will turn 250 years old in July but one of its military branches is already celebrating that milestone this month. The Alexandria Police Department held a traditional Marine birthday celebration complete with cake and swords.

    Since 1921, the Marines have had a specific order on how to celebrate the Corps’ birthday. Of course, it involved a traditional birthday cake with a globe and anchor decoration but they cut the cake with a Marine officer’s Mameluke sword.

    Alexandria Police Chief Tarrick McGuire told WTOP, “I’ve never held a sword before. So I was I was happy that I was not the person that was cutting the cake.”

    “I’m just really inspired by it being the 250-year celebration,” said Michael Jadoo, commandant of the Marine Corps league detachment in Montgomery County, Maryland. “Also looking back on history and how we as evolved as Marines. I think it’s just really amazing and beautiful.”

    The order handed down in 1921 from Maj. Gen. Commandant John Lejeune also prescribes that the youngest Marine present and oldest Marine present share a slice of birthday cake.

    Alexandria police officer and Marine Sgt. Maxwell Van Arsdale was the youngest on site.

    “In traditional sense, it’s a passing of knowledge, and it’s meaning that, ‘hey, we share and we feast together, and I share my experience with you and pass it on,’” he said.

    Van Arsdale told WTOP that it was his seventh Marine Corps birthday and “they get better each time.” The young officer has completed four deployments as a Marine and is transitioning from active-duty service to the reserves.

    Alex Trapero, a Marine veteran and 23-year officer with APD, was the eldest Marine at the celebration.

    “It’s very sentimental for me to have something like this and be recognized to have served in the Marine Corps,” Trapero said.

    Around a dozen police officers who are also reservists or veterans were on hand to celebrate and received a special challenge coin from the department.

    Why do so many “Devil Dogs,” a nickname for the Marines, go into law enforcement?

    Police Chief McGuire said it’s the calling they have to serve our country.

    Trapero believes it is the structure that law enforcement provides as well as Marine’s need to help those in danger.

    “We have the courage to be the first one to respond,” he said.

    “We put our lives on for people that we don’t know. We respond to any threat. Same thing as the Marine Corps,” Van Arsdale added.

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    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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    Luke Lukert

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  • ‘That tank was my life’: 100-year-old Marine reunited with Iwo Jima tank – WTOP News

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    On Friday, 80 years after Japan’s surrender, 100-year-old Leighton Willhite was reunited with his Iwo Jima tank at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia.

    This article was republished with permission from WTOP’s news partner InsideNoVa.com. Sign up for InsideNoVa.com’s free email subscription today.

    Leighton Willhite was just 19 when he was tasked with driving a tank called “Lucky” ashore at the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.

    On Friday, 80 years after Japan’s surrender, the 100-year-old Willhite was reunited with Lucky in a moment of living history hosted by the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle.

    Lucky represented the Marine Corps’ newest standard tank, which at the time was making its combat debut at Iwo Jima. During intense combat around Hill 362A, north of Mount Suribachi, Lucky’s crew supported infantry units and took part in life-saving rescue efforts. When another tank, “Jeannie,” became trapped, Willhite volunteered to cover his tank commander, Lt. Leonard Blake, as they moved to assist the stricken crew, which earned Willhite the Bronze Star with valor and Blake the Silver Star.

    After the battle, Lucky returned to Hawaii in April 1945 and was one of 72 tanks selected for conversion into CB-H5 flamethrower tanks in preparation for the planned invasion of Japan.
    After Japan’s surrender, it was transferred to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where it remained largely unnoticed until the early 2000s.

    “I had no clue the significance,” Master Gunnery Sgt. Lisa Marshall, who was involved in the initial recovery of the tank in 2001, told InsideNoVa. “It was cool; it was a tank that was embedded in the ground, and [it] took a lot of hard work with a shovel getting it dug out enough to be able to get a sled under it to pull it out. But I didn’t realize until just the other day how significant it was.”

    In June 2023, Jonathan Bernstein, the museum’s arms and armor curator, traveled to the Pima Air & Space Museum in Arizona to inspect the tank. By climbing aboard and analyzing its weld scars and field modifications, he was able to identify the tank as part of C Company, 5th Tank Battalion.

    Paint excavation later revealed the original name, Lucky, and C Company’s tactical markings, confirming its battlefield role and linking it to its original crew, including Willhite.

    Lucky is now one of just six confirmed Iwo Jima Sherman tanks in existence.

    “If I were reunited with one of the helicopters I flew in the Army, it would be pretty amazing,” Bernstein told InsideNoVa. “So, I can’t begin to imagine what [Willhite] must feel to come see something he hasn’t seen in 80 years.”

    Bernstein said restoration efforts of the tank will begin shortly, and in the coming years the tank will be displayed in the National Museum of the Marine Corps for visitors to see.

    And then came the moment everyone was waiting for: Willhite entered the museum’s support facility Friday to meet face-to-face with Lucky.

    “I probably wasn’t the best driver in the world, but I wasn’t the worst either,” Willhite, an Indiana resident, chuckled. “It was my home.”

    Bernstein wheeled Willhite around the tank to point out the different identifying features, as Willhite reminisced on his time in the service.

    “It’s amazing,” Willhite said. “That tank was my life.”

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    Diane Morris

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  • Buy Artillery Or Buy Coffins: The Russian Marine Corps’ Dire Choice As Its Troops Die In Record Numbers

    Buy Artillery Or Buy Coffins: The Russian Marine Corps’ Dire Choice As Its Troops Die In Record Numbers

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    A Russian marine brigade reportedly lost 63 troops in a doomed, two-day assault on Ukrainian positions in eastern Ukraine on or before Nov. 4.

    It apparently was one of the worst single-operation losses for the small Russian marine corps since before the Chechen wars in the 1990s.

    Worse for the Kremlin’s war effort, Russia’s marines—or “naval infantry,” if you will—are some of its best remaining troops after eight months of grinding warfare against an increasingly determined, experienced and well-armed Ukrainian military.

    Russia’s best forces are getting ground up in Ukraine, leaving the worst forces—including the 300,000 unhappy, unfit draftees the army rounded up this fall—to do more of the fighting.

    The doomed Russian assault targeted the Ukrainian garrison in Pavlivka, 28 miles southwest of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. The garrison repelled the Russian attack, the Ukrainian general staff reported on Friday.

    The Russian Pacific Fleet’s 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade has been the main Russian formation along that sector since this summer. The brigade, based in Vladivostok, has been in Ukraine since Russia widened its eight-year war on Ukraine back in late February.

    The brigade with its 3,000 troops and hundreds of T-80 tanks, BMP-3 and BTR-82 fighting vehicles, mortars and artillery was part of the Russian force that tried, and failed, to capture Kyiv in the early weeks of the wider war.

    Battered by stiffening Ukrainian defense, its supply lines fraying, the brigade in April joined the Russian retreat from Kyiv Oblast. The 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade withdrew to Belarus then redeployed to Donbas, where it threw its remaining battalions at Ukrainian defenses between Yehorivka and Pavlivka.

    It didn’t always go well for the marines. A video that circulated in August depicts two of the 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade’s BMPs racing across a field in the direction of Yehorivka—and triggering powerful anti-tank mines.

    Another video, from the Ukrainian army’s 72nd Mechanized Brigade, in essence is a montage of destruction as 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade T-80s and BMPs explode.

    But the worst losses came later, as the marine brigade tried to pry the Ukrainians from Pavlivka. The Ukrainians reportedly had artillery superiority—a reversal of the pre-war balance of forces and a testimony to the Ukrainian military’s months-long effort to target Russian supply lines and artillery batteries.

    Without enough 122-millimeter shells of its own, the 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade can’t suppress Ukraine’s big guns. Its troopers are defenseless. “Either the country will mass-produce 122-millimeter shells, or it will mass-produce coffins,” a Russian officer told one blogger in reference to the Pavlivka fight.

    It’s worth noting that, along most of the front extending all the way from Donbas south to Kherson Oblast on the Black Sea coast—a distance of hundreds of miles—Russian forces mostly are retreating or digging in, not attacking. Twin Ukrainian counteroffensives that kicked off in the east and south back in late August have got them on the run.

    In the few places where Russian troops are attacking—Pavlivka and also Bakhmut—they’re suffering heavy casualties … and gaining nothing.

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    David Axe, Forbes Staff

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  • Veterans Supporting Veterans Phoenix Patriot Foundation Cycling Leadville 100 MTB Saturday, August 15th, 2015

    Veterans Supporting Veterans Phoenix Patriot Foundation Cycling Leadville 100 MTB Saturday, August 15th, 2015

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    Phoenix Patriot Foundation Veterans Cycling To Benefit Fellow Veterans In Leadville 100 MTB Race, Coached By Pro-Athlete Rebecca Rusch, PPF Cycling Ambassador

    Press Release
    –

    Aug 13, 2015


    Temecula, CA, August 13, 2015 (Newswire.com)
    –
    ​​​​​Rebecca Rusch will be riding with the Phoenix Patriot Foundation (PPF) Cycling Program team, military veterans, as they participate in one of the most challenging ultra-endurance mountain bike races in the world, the Leadville Trail 100 Saturday August 15th. Rusch will ride with the PPF athletes, share her race expertise and support their efforts to shatter limits, as the Phoenix Patriot Foundation Cycling Program veterans ride in support of their fellow warriors. Rebecca is a Gold Medal winning mountain bike racer and works as a firefighter and EMT with the Ketchum Idaho Fire Department. Rebecca observed the PPF Cycling Program team members and was inspired by the courage and tenacity of the veterans. This year she will ride with PPF veterans sharing her race expertise and support their efforts to complete this grueling race. 

    The Phoenix Patriot Foundation cyclists are riding to help raise funds for adapted bicycles and PPF jerseys for current and future members in the program. One athlete, U.S. Army veteran Matt DeWitt, lost both arms in combat, and has been racing with the team using an adapted bike. Not every wounded veteran has that opportunity and adapted bicycles can cost anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000 depending upon their complexity. A team outfit with logo-branded jerseys and bike shorts costs approximately $110. Donations fund these expenses and allow Phoenix Patriot Foundation to provide these items to wounded veterans who want to participate but cannot afford adapted bicycling equipment.

    “As a member of a military family, I have a deep understanding of the sacrifices that the military make and also how the bike can be an essential tool for therapy and recovery. This fueled my desire to work with the Phoenix Patriot Foundation. Riding with this veteran community will allow me to strengthen my understanding of what our soldiers go through. In return, I will be sharing my bike racing expertise to support of their goal to reach the finish line.”

    Rebecca Rusch, Professional Endurance Athlete

    A custom- built tandem bicycle designed by PPF Cycling Program members and built by Da Vinci Designs, will be tested by the Cycling Program Director, former U.S. Navy SEAL Guy McDermott. Guy will be riding with a fellow former U.S. Navy SEAL, Bo Reichenbach, a double above the knee amputee. Using this custom built tandem bicycle allows Bo to participate using hand-cycle adaptations to independently provide power on the tandem cycle. Bo, a Patriot who has received aid from Phoenix Patriot Foundation, recently completed his second season as a member of the U.S. National Developmental Sled Hockey Team. 

    Phoenix Patriot Foundation is looking to grow the Cycling Program in order to support wounded veterans who want to enjoy an activity that provides fellowship, sport and physical activity positively affecting their well-being. The Leadville 100 MTB race is a one of a kind event in the cycling community that will bring attention to the organization’s Cycling Program and enable the foundation with a platform to fund adapted bicycles for more wounded veterans. 

    PHOENIX PATRIOT FOUNDATION CYCLING PROGRAM 

    The Phoenix Patriot Foundation Cycling Program serves post-9/11 severely wounded and injured veterans enabling their cycling ambitions by providing them with a welcoming community of support. Program members help to bring attention to the needs of veterans and support fundraising activities to provide cycles for combat wounded veterans including custom adapted cycles, hand-cycles and recumbent cycles in addition to team jerseys so that veterans can participate in our program. The program members are veterans training veterans, and riding as a group in the community provides a method of reintegration, builds endurance and provides strong methods for reconditioning.

    PHOENIX PATRIOT FOUNDATION MISSION

    The Mission of Phoenix Patriot Foundation is to provide direct support to post 9-11 severely wounded and injured veterans enabling them to fully Recover, Reintegrate, and Remain Engaged in serving America while pursuing their passions. We aid each Patriot by developing and implementing an individually-tailored program to ensure independence and lifelong sustainability. This, in turn, enables our heroes to return to service within their communities and nation. 

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  • Pro-Athlete Rebecca Rusch Joins Phoenix Patriot Foundation for the Leadville 100MTB Race

    Pro-Athlete Rebecca Rusch Joins Phoenix Patriot Foundation for the Leadville 100MTB Race

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    REBECCA RUSCH, SIX TIME MULTI-SPORT WORLD CHAMPION, FOUR TIME LEADVILLE 100 RACE CHAMPION, AUTHOR AND FIREFIGHTER TO REPRESENT PHOENIX PATRIOT FOUNDATION AS CYCLING AMBASSADOR AT 2015 LEADVILLE 100 MTB RACE

    Press Release
    –

    Jul 29, 2015


    Temecula, CA, July 29, 2015 (Newswire.com)
    –
    ​​​​​​​With a record-breaking four Leadville championships under her belt, mountain bike icon Rebecca Rusch is now giving back to help military veterans in the Phoenix Patriot Foundation Cycling Program. She hopes to help veterans as they empower themselves by crossing the Leadville Trail 100 finish line. Rusch, also known as the “Queen of pain,” is a professional endurance athlete and spokesperson.

    As a member of a military family, she has a deep understanding of the sacrifices that the military make and also how the bike can be an essential tool for therapy and recovery. These personal ties are what fueled Rusch’s desire to join forces with Phoenix Patriot Foundation at the 2015 Leadville Trail 100. This iconic race is known as one of the toughest ultra endurance mountain bike races in the world. This year, Rusch will ride with the Phoenix Patriot Foundation athletes, share her race expertise and support their efforts to shatter limits and reach the finish line on August 15th. 

    “As part of a military family, I feel strongly about supporting the great efforts of Phoenix Patriot Foundation and the American heroes who are racing in Leadville. My father was an Air Force pilot in Vietnam and never returned home. My sister is currently a Colonel in the Air Force. I have recently embarked on a quest to connect with my father on a deeper level. Being immersed in the Phoenix Patriot Foundation community will allow me to strengthen my understanding of what our soldiers go through. In return, I will be sharing my bike racing expertise in support of their quest to achieve this lofty goal.”

    Rebecca Rusch, Endurance Athlete

    RED BULL ENDURANCE ATHLETE

    Rebecca Rusch is an inspirational Red Bull endurance athlete with an international award winning career encompassing adventure racing, white water rafting, rock climbing, and endurance mountain bike racing.  Eight years ago, Rebecca reinvented herself as a mountain bike racer while working as a firefighter and EMT with the Ketchum Fire Department. Rebecca’s long anticipated autobiography, “Rusch to Glory” details her experiences with empowering stories that are meant to inspire people to rise above self-doubt and find their true potential. Aside from racing, Rebecca is the force behind the SRAM Gold Rusch Tour and her namesake race, Rebecca’s Private Idaho, which gives back to a variety of organizations including the International Mountain Bike Association, World Bicycle Relief, PeopleForBikes.org, the National Interscholastic Mountain Bike Association, and the Wood River Bicycle Coalition.

     CYCLING AMBASSADOR

    Phoenix Patriot Foundation is pleased to announce that Rebecca Rusch will be joining the Phoenix Patriot Foundation as a Cycling Ambassador for this year’s Leadville 100 MTB.  Leading up to race day, Rebecca will be holding rides and clinics geared to share strategies and techniques to help riders reach their own personal race goals as part of her event, “The Leadville Experience.”  For this year’s event, Rusch will don the Phoenix Patriot Foundation jersey and pedal alongside the American heroes of the cycling team, offering inspiration, motivation, and expertise all the way to the finish.  

    WARRIORS SUPPORTING WARRIORS

    LT Guy McDermott, former Navy SEAL and Phoenix Patriot Foundation Board Member Emeritus and himself a VA disabled veteran, is currently the Program Director of the Cycling Team. In 2011, the Phoenix Patriot Foundation Cycling Team partnered with the So Cal Endurance race organization and its founder, Jason Ranao, to bring the Phoenix Patriot Foundation’s message to a large, diverse, and passionate regional audience of racers, family members, and patriotic Americans. The team members motivate and inspire veterans by providing them the equipment, guidance, coaching, and infrastructure to catalyze their journey. 

    Juan Carlos Hernandez, member of the Phoenix Patriot Foundation Cycling Team, has personally witnessed how veterans through Phoenix Patriot Foundation programs that make a difference in the quality of the lives of veterans. Juan joined the United States Army in July 2006. In Dec. 2008 Juan deployed as a gunner on Chinook Helicopters and his aircraft was hit with an RPG flying over Afghanistan. The resulting crash landing Juan was injured causing an amputation to his left leg. Using cycling as rehabilitation for physical and mental therapy Juan gives back and helps other veterans achieve many of the same goals using cycling as a way to bridge the gap between military to civilian life.  Juan is currently in training to participate in the Leadville 100 race with the Phoenix Patriot Cycling Team.

    CYCLING PROGRAM

    The Phoenix Patriot Foundation’s Cycling Program works to inspire, galvanize, and empower wounded and injured veterans to reach their own finish line and become a source of motivation and guidance for their communities, peers, and veterans nationwide. The Phoenix Patriot Foundation’s Cycling Program’s Mission is to serve post-9/11 severely wounded and injured veterans in realizing their cycling ambitions by providing them with a welcoming community of support. 

    PHOENIX PATRIOT FOUNDATION MISSION

    The overall Mission of Phoenix Patriot Foundation is to provide direct support to post 9-11 severely wounded and injured veterans enabling them to fully Recover, Reintegrate, and Remain Engaged in serving America or pursuing their passions. We aid each Patriot by developing and implementing an individually-tailored program to ensure independence and lifelong sustainability. This, in turn, enables our heroes to return to service within their communities and nation.

    Phoenix Patriot Foundation recognizes the value of “Warriors Supporting Warriors” and sharing lessons learned. The veterans Phoenix Patriot Foundation works with are asked to give back in serving other veterans with the Phoenix Patriot Foundation community by sharing some of their time and talents. Phoenix Patriot Foundation programs are based on ‘Quality not Quantity’, and rely upon your donations to support veterans on their individual journey. Your donation will be used to assist post 9-11 wounded and injured veterans by providing scholarships and programs to foster independence and empowerment. Your partnership and support can make a difference!

    http://phoenixpatriotfoundation.org/donate/  

    Phoenix Patriot Foundation is a 501 (c) (3) public charity organization; Tax ID 27-3074476.

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