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They’re not a branch, but a cult.

In early 1942,  shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Paul Douglas, like so many others, enlisted in the Marines.

Unlike most who joined, Douglas wasn’t exactly a spring chicken. Douglas was an established economist, author, and former Chicago City Council member. And he was 50 years old. And at age 50, he went through the famed Marine Boot Camp at Parris Island, as a Private. Upon completion of Boot Camp, he was put to work writing training manuals.

He constantly agitated to be deployed overseas, and was constantly told to sit down, shut up, and write manuals.

Eventually, he was told that under no circumstances would be be shipped overseas as an enlisted man.

And so, as a powerful, connected progressive Democratic politician, he used his influence to secure a commission as an officer.

Eventually, Douglas would fight at bloody Peleliu. While he was a Captain, he served, essentially, as a rifleman. During the fighting there, he was lightly wounded while carrying ammunition.

At Okinawa, as a Major, he was serving as a rifleman in the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. He was badly wounded by machine gun fire while carrying wounded, and would have permanent damage to his left arm.

Douglas would be discharged as a Lieutenant Colonel with full disability in 1946.

Douglas would eventually become a United States Senator for the state of Illinois, serving in the Senate from 1949 to 1967.

A progressive, he was also a fiscally conservative, with a reputation for rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse.

Take a moment, and read all that again.

A progressive Chicago machine Democrat politician used his not inconsiderable political influence to get into the Corps, and then again used it to get into the fight as a rifleman. And he did so at an age when absolutely no one would have expected him to serve in any capacity.  I’m fifty, and I pull a muscle just watching YouTube videos of young Marines at Parris Island!

So, yeah, the Marines do have a certain cachet that inspires awesome loyalty from those who have earned the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor.

Happy Birthday, and Semper Fi.