After COVID-19 delay, Marine Corps adds more athletic trainers, force fitness instructors February 26 Marines participate in Force Fitness Instructor Course culminating event at The Basic School, Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia., February 12, 2018. (Staff Sgt. Melissa Marnell/Marine Corps) As the Marine Corps pushes its physical standards to focus beyond the physical fitness test , key positions such as athletic trainers and force fitness instructors are both the overseers and ambassadors for a new, total-package approach. While some units have access to an athletic trainer and fitness instructor, the Corps is not yet at full capacity. In 2020 COVID-19 events curtailed some of the work by a year or more to reach the full operational capability, but that has been reset and the Marines expect to have a full contingent of both positions by mid-2023.
Feb. 12, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine
Defense Department and congressional leaders on Feb. 12 announced eight appointees to the bipartisan commission tasked with renaming military bases that bear the monikers of Confederate leaders.
Congress, in the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, called on the Pentagon to begin the process of removing homages to Confederate leaders, like Fort Bragg, N.C., and Fort Hood, Texas. …
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III announced his picks for the commission include retired Adm. Michelle Howard, the Navy’s first Black and female admiral; former Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert B. Neller; Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute; and retired Army Brig. Gen. Ty Seidule, an emeritus professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy.
For over seventy years, Marine Corps misidentified two men who raised the first flag on Iwo Jima.
Here s What You Need to Know: The second flag raising, in which Marines replaced the first flag with a much larger one, would be the one immortalized forever by war photographer Joe Rosenthal’s famous picture.
The Marine Corps announced on August 24, 2016 that it revised the identification of two of the men who raised the first flag on Iwo Jima.
Marine Corps commandant General Robert B. Neller stated in an address on the revelation:
“Our history is important, and we owe it to our Marines and their families to ensure it is as accurate as possible. After we reviewed the second flag raising and found inconsistencies, we wanted to take another look at the first flag-raising to make sure we had it correct.”