Marine Corps

In the style of a war correspondent, Marine Corps Reserve Maj. Ricardo A. Crocker sent regular dispatches to his colleagues at the Santa Monica Police Department, e-mails and photographs of life on the battlefield in Iraq. "Two Marines killed, several wounded," he wrote Aug. 21. "I was hesitant to write about this, however, it's the reality of this place. Everyone in the battalion is getting through this."

With Supervisor Don R. Roth objecting because of a lack of information, the Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday, 4 to 1, for a land exchange that would give the county 137 acres at the center of Mile Square Regional Park now owned by the Marine Corps. In return, the county would give the Marines 41 acres in two parcels outside the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station that can be used for housing. There is one potential problem: The county does not own the 41 acres it is planning to swap.

The death of a Marine recruit who collapsed during an informal boxing match last month was accidental, and no one will be disciplined for allowing the 18-year-old to fight despite his history of head injuries and nearsightedness, the Marines Corps announced Friday. But after a six-week investigation of Pvt. Paul Resce Jr.'s death, the Marine Corps Recruit Depot has decided to permanently halt the bouts traditionally held near the end of recruits' 11-week training program, Maj.

You have to get a kick out of the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. Alfred Gray. When this whole Iraqi mess is over, one hopes he'll commit his management ideas to a book. If it doesn't quite revolutionize American management practice, it should at least entertain a lot of managers. Gen. Gray believes that the way to solve problems is simply to deny their existence. He told complaining troops in Saudi Arabia that they really don't have a morale problem.

Gen. Louis Hugh Wilson, a Medal of Honor recipient in World War II who was commandant of the Marine Corps in the post-Vietnam era -- and made it harder to join and remain in the Corps -- has died. He was 85. Wilson died Tuesday at his home in Birmingham, Ala., the Marine Corps announced. Moments after becoming their new leader June 30, 1975, Wilson said, "I call on all Marines to get in step and do so smartly."

The Marine Corps, which takes pride in taking care of its military family, held a family fair Saturday for the wives and children of Marines deployed in the Middle East--and the wives took the opportunity to compare news from their husbands and gripes on the home front. The men in the bunkers are adopting pets--usually scorpions--and giving them names. They're giving themselves buzz haircuts right down to the scalp, partly because the sand fleas are so bad.

Washington, D.C., Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Aug. 26, 1986: "Over the past several months the Marine Corps has been progressively converting mess halls to civilian contract . . . ." Another of the terrible predictions from "Player Piano," Kurt Vonnegut's frighteningly prescient 1951 novel about the world of the future, has come to pass. First there was his prediction about credentialism, a world come to pass--as the Washington Monthly reported several years ago--when a Ph.D.

Not long ago, Marine Lance Cpl. Tony Butterfield sent his parents in the Central Valley city of Clovis a disposable camera that he had used to take pictures while serving in Iraq. When the pictures were developed, one stood out. In the photo, Butterfield faced the camera in front of the most barren of landscapes in the Iraqi desert. But the preternaturally upbeat Marine wore a huge grin and carried a handwritten sign that read: "Hi, Everyone. Welcome to Paradise."

If the Marines are ever again called upon to hit the beach, it's a good bet that some of them and a great deal of their heavy firepower will arrive on high-tech hovercraft now stationed at Camp Pendleton.

Methamphetamine use, a growing practice recently among Marines stationed here, is now the base's most widespread illegal drug problem, military officials say. The Air Ground Combat Center, a training base for about 9,000 Marines, is in the high desert about 100 miles east of San Bernardino, an area authorities say is a center for illegal methamphetamine labs because of its isolation and sparse population.