Happy Birthday, Marines!

A rousing happy birthday to all Marines, in ev’ry clime and place. 233 years old, we don’t look a day over 19. (Sometimes don’t act it, either!)

The Commandant’s annual birthday message is here.

To close– and let you get back to the libations– I am pleased to report that a small yet not insignificant historical wrong has been righted. In the “Hall of the Commandants” in the Pentagon (now 4th Deck, Corridor 7), where hang portraits of all the Commandants, the 4th Commandant, LtCol Anthony Gale, once had a mere one-paragraph mention at the end of his predecessor’s bio. Now, this great but mostly unknown man has his own portrait (a generic silhouette), and a much more serious and fitting bio. Where once it began, “A native of Ireland”– as if to say, in horror, Oh, those wild Irish– and continued about his “dubious personal habits,” it lists the highlights of an active if tumultuous career, including his killing of a Naval officer who pissed him off.

So today we can toast our brethren across the globe, and rejoice in a one Marine finally getting his due.