04-01-2020, 05:07 PM | #11 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
|
Re: USMC Minutiae for Marine Character Background
Quote:
I somehow thought that in the Reserve, people affiliated with a unit with a drilling station within a certain distance from their homes and at least generally wouldn't be assigned to a unit located thousands of miles away. So, if someone has an MOS which seems to be confined mostly to three units in the USMCR; i.e. the 3rd FORECON in Mobile, Alabama, 4th FORECON in California and Hawai, and 4th Reconnaissance Battalion with HQ in San Antonio (units in Texas, New Mexico, Georgia, Louisiana and Illinois); wouldn't they have a pretty good chance at staying with the reserve units within driving distance of their homes? Say, for someone living in Louisiana? If not, aside from one rotation with 4th Recon Bn and one with 3rd FORECON, what does the USMC Reserve do with a prior active duty Recon Marine (0321) who wants to serve as a reserve Recon Marine for as long as he fulfils the physical requirements?
__________________
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! |
|
04-01-2020, 09:12 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
|
1SG to Master Gunnery Sergeant Promotion
If someone was a First Sergeant (E-8) at the End of Active Obligated Service in the USMC and his last duty as as the SNCO Inspector-Instructor (i.e. active duty Marine functioning as a staff and training cadre) of a Reserve unit, is there any way for that Marine to affiliate with that specific unit* for his Reserve service?
Specifically, there is only the one First Sergeant billet at that unit, but there is a Master Gunnery Sergeant billet as the Operations Chief of the company, which, unlike the First Sergeant billet, is held by a reservist. Could our hypothetical former Inspector-Instructor voluntarily laterally move to the other SNCO career path, i.e. pursue potential promotion to Master Gunnery Sergeant from First Sergeant, when he signed up for the USMC-R? That is, can he try to become the Operations Chief of the same unit he was the Inspector-Instructor First Sergeant of before? I assume that this would mean assignment somewhere else as a reservist for a rotation or two, maybe even as a Master Sergeant instead of a First Sergeant. If it means extra courses or schools, our NPC is fine with doing them as a reservist, even to the point of having to work full time at it for a while. I realize that under ordinary circumstances, there's not much point to doing this, but our NPC has gotten a very good civilian job in the area and has been specifically asked to try to get that exact position in 3rd FORECON, in order to be in a position to scout talent among the Marine reservists in that unit, so that his employer can hire men with very specific talents, to covertly fight supernatural threats. *3rd FORECON again, because the geographic location for it means that a lot of my NPCs will be associated with it.
__________________
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! |
04-02-2020, 06:07 AM | #13 |
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Earth
|
Re: USMC Minutiae for Marine Character Background
Everything is maybe and needs of the Corps.
__________________
Thanks, VR/Scott Saltare cum Diabolis' pullum! |
04-02-2020, 08:19 AM | #14 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
|
Re: USMC Minutiae for Marine Character Background
Yes, but can anyone give me guidelines whether it's as plausible as an O-3 Chaplain becoming a platoon leader of Recon Marines or if it's actually something that might reasonably happen?
Has anyone ever heard of a First Sergeant changing his career path and being promoted to Master Gunnery Sergeant instead of Sergeant-Major? Do Marines in rare MOS-es who want to join the USMCR have a decent chance of being able to affiliate with the Reserve unit that is closest to their home of record that has those MOS-es? Does the Primary MOS of a Recon Marine change at any enlisted rank? I.e., is there a rank at which he attends a senior NCO course and is after that assigned some kind of SNCO MOS, which renders his previous MOS irrelevant?
__________________
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! |
04-02-2020, 09:27 AM | #15 |
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Earth
|
Re: USMC Minutiae for Marine Character Background
Nahh, if Chaplain leads platoon only one thing to say, "Jesus is coming soon!" That won't happen.
__________________
Thanks, VR/Scott Saltare cum Diabolis' pullum! |
04-02-2020, 09:38 AM | #16 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
|
Re: USMC Minutiae for Marine Character Background
No, Chaplains will never lead combat troops (at all, period). If the Chaplain is the highest ranking surviving officer, command would instead devolve to the next highest rank line officer or, if there are none capable of leading, the highest ranked NCO of a combat MOS. Now, the NCO cannot technically give orders to the Chaplain, but they can ignore any orders by the Chaplain related to combat, so only a complete moron of an officer would ignore an NCO who was in command of a combat unit.
Now, there is possible that a Chaplain could be attached to a support company and gains command because it is a non-compete unit. If that support company becomes trapped behind combat lines, without any line officers or combat NCOs, they will do the best that they can with what they have. In general, their only objective would be to find safety behind allied lines or, failing that, to make for a neutral border. If they end up facing enemy troops, they would be expected to surrender unless they could reasonably capture their enemies (such as the support company coming upon an enemy support squad). Ironically, I knew a pagan Chaplain while I was in the Navy who was given a star as the religious symbol that looked identical to a command star. It might be hypothetically possible that, during an emergency, the enlisted would default to following the orders of any with that symbol, but it would only be until the emergency ended. The military would never give formal command of a combat unit to a Chaplain though, and they would probably sweep incidents of emergency command under the rug unless something really bad or really good occurred. Last edited by AlexanderHowl; 04-02-2020 at 09:46 AM. |
04-02-2020, 09:40 AM | #17 |
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Earth
|
Re: USMC Minutiae for Marine Character Background
I think the only unit I could command would be musicians, and that's only if their O's were dead.
__________________
Thanks, VR/Scott Saltare cum Diabolis' pullum! |
04-02-2020, 10:12 AM | #18 | |||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
|
Re: USMC Minutiae for Marine Character Background
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
I was looking for guidelines on where on the plausibility/possibility scale a First Sergeant changing his SNCO career path and pursuing a Mastery Gunnery Sergeant billet (instead of SGM which would naturally result from a promotion from 1SG) would fall; from 'Chaplain command of Recon platoon' to 'something reasonably likely'.
__________________
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! |
|||
04-02-2020, 09:59 PM | #19 | |||||||||
Join Date: Apr 2005
|
Re: USMC Minutiae for Marine Character Background
Quote:
Quote:
Unless you want your ex-Marine to have a somewhat unusual background - like doing embassy guard duty in some neutral country - it's most likely that an early war Marine would end up on Guadalcanal. OOB here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle...rder_of_battle Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
During the first year of the Korean War, nobody was going home unless they were wounded or had some other very good reason. After that, the policy was to rotate the troops out of the fighting based on a "points" system. Someone who survived 1950-51 was likely to have enough "points" to be rotated to a post in Japan or the U.S. by 1952-53, although they might not have necessarily been discharged until the end of the war. As for rank, he could have gotten busted back down to private due to some serious screw up or he could have ended up with a battlefield promotion to Lieutenant or even Captain. If he survived the Chosin Reservoir campaign there was plenty of opportunity for him to rise quickly in rank. Finally, keep in mind that after Korea, assuming that he wasn't psychologically and physically too beaten down to continue serving, that McBride might have felt a duty to keep serving in the Marine reserves due to the perceived threat of Communism during the Cold War. In that case, assuming he was still an NCO, he might end up with as high a rank as a Marine reservist NCO is likely to have (Gunnery or First Sergeant). If he was an officer, rank wouldn't be as easy to come by - he'd probably retire as a Major or Lt. Colonel. As long as he wasn't a complete screw-up, high level decorations (i.e., Navy Cross or Medal of Honor) are also likely to extend his career. The military likes to keep its heroes in uniform. Last edited by Pursuivant; 04-02-2020 at 10:06 PM. |
|||||||||
04-02-2020, 10:49 PM | #20 | ||||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
|
John McBride Background
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
John McBride would have been very opposed to leaving 'his' boys behind while he rotated somewhere safe. Quote:
Between wars, McBride was a Deputy at his local Chambers County Sheriff's Office, where he acquired enough reading and writing to fill out basic reports tolerably, but while McBride came to value education and instill respect for it in his children, he never became what you might call bookish. McBride was a competent, capable man, but to anyone with even a hint of classism, he exemplified the ideal of the non-comissioned officer. Depending on how much impact his apparent social status had, by pure merit, McBride would deserve a battlefield commission. Phlegmatic, practical, responsible, disciplined and too concerned with duty to display any fear. I imagine that McBride was commanding a platoon as a Staff or Gunnery Sergeant during Chosin, in the absence of an officer. Whether that translated into rank, however, I don't know. It wouldn't do any damage to the imagine of the character if it did, but would accepting a battlefield commissioned mean accepting any kind of service obligation during peacetime? McBride had already decided, during his time as a Sheriff's Deputy between the wars, that he was going to make law enforcement a career. He won't accept any position in a peacetime Army, he sees his duty as being 'for the duration' and no longer. Quote:
I'm not sure whether he should have been a reservist. I guess he could have, but as long as there was no ongoing war, McBride may have felt that his duties lay in his law enforcement work, first as a TxDPS Highway patrolman and the later as a Texas Ranger. By the time Korea ended, McBride was 35 and had three children, in addition to a nephew he was raising after the death of his sister. In the next few years, he added two more kids.
__________________
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! |
||||||
Tags |
marines, military, military culture |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|