OEF 04
Nick’s Life From Around the World
Screenshot from “Nick’s Life”
“Hey, coming down to the final stretch over here. Hope to see you all soon. Thanks again for everything!” — Nick Kirven, April 2005
Nick Kirven was killed in action on 8 May 2005, almost a year before I joined the Marine Corps. I never met him. The closest I ever came was through his brothers in arms, many of whom were getting ready to leave either 3rd Battalion or the Marine Corps in November 2006 when I was assigned to his old unit, Kilo Company 2nd Platoon. His memory was kept alive through their behavior: their rigorous instance of proper combat drills, occasional references to some terrible day in Afghanistan, or just their general anger that a close friend had been taken from them.
That changed two years ago when I accidentally stumbled upon his old website, Nick’s Life From Around the World. Read more
First into the Korengal?
The Korengal Valley, December 2004
Many of the Marines I’ve talked to from the 2004-2005 deployment to Afghanistan swear that 3rd Battalion was the first American unit that operated in the Korengal Valley. However, other Marines I’ve talked to from 2nd Battalion 3rd Marines’ 2005 deployment and 1st Battalion 3rd Marines’ 2006 deployment all swear the same things about their units. A pro-Army site even suggests that 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment was the first unit in the Korengal as late as April 2006. They can’t all be right… can they? Read more
The Few, The Proud, The Bloggers
Source: Terminal Lance, 29 January 2010
For the Marine Corps, the Global War on Terror coincided with the rise of social media, also known as Web 2.0. While many senior military leaders saw this as a threat — the rapid spread of the Abu Ghraib pictures, the puppy tossing incident, and the Scout Sniper urination videos, seemed to confirm their worst fears — it also gave Marines a soapbox that they wouldn’t have had even a decade ago. The Marine Corps maintained a formal ban on social media until late 2009, calling it “a larger attack and exploitation window, [which] exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage,” but saw that ban overturned by the DOD in early 2010. Read more
24 June – 18 July 2005: Post-Deployment Leave Block
“The Battalion executed Post Deployment Block Leave.” – Source: 3/3 Command Chronology for the Period 01 January to 30 June 2005, 3/3 Command Chronology for the Period 01 July to 31 December 2005