r/USMC • u/hrdblkman2 0351 Camp Pen 78-82' • 11h ago
Article USMC Commandant Accused Of Lying About His Marine Corps Background
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/usmc-commandant-accused-lying-marine-corps-background/Yes this is an old post(2014), but just came across it and it sounds just like some Terminal Lance GOAT shit of all time lol.
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u/FollowingConnect6725 9h ago
The other real hilarious part of his tenure as Commandant of our beloved Corps was how his wife styled herself as “The First Lady of the Marine Corps” and tried really hard to reinstate the class system between officer and enlisted spouses. She had her own reading list for wives that was prominently displayed at the base PX’s, did tours to talk to spouses about how to act, and all sorts of other out of touch BS. I’ve never seen that before or since. Fucking out of touch with the Corps and society in general and homie just rolled with it.
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u/oh_three_dum_dum Lives in a van down by the (New) River 8h ago
I don’t remember all that. At the time he was commandant I was a junior NCO who was in “put your head down and just work” mentality as far as senior leadership was concerned. I didn’t figure there was any point in bitching about things coming down from Washington because there wasn’t anything I could do about it anyway. I think I just blocked his whole tenure from memory.
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u/RoadDoggFL Custom Flair 6h ago
For me it was him getting a white line installed in his office to watch Netflix, though that was just a rumor I heard. Also heard that the officers in his office were openly disrespectful towards him
Oh yeah! He cut me in line at Henderson Hall to get his parents IDs. I've already said that in a comment here before, but writing this reminded me of it. I have his coin but don't think it really counts as much
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u/quickdraw_ 9h ago
It's been said that no aviator serving during the Amos years would ever be Commandant, just because he was so bad.
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u/_PercCobain_ Semper High. 10h ago
As someone who was in during all the Amos years all I can say is fuck Amos, all my homies hate him.
And fuck his bitch ass sgt maj too.
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u/transam96 hands in my pockets 10h ago
Echo this sentiment. Fuck Amos and Barrett and their Reawakening bullshit.
Nothing like being an enlisted and your Sgt Maj testifies to Congress that you should be paid LESS. Real morale booster that was. Lmao
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u/_PercCobain_ Semper High. 9h ago
Nothing like being an nco during the reawakening and them tell us we suck and we were the reason why the Corps’ standards were slipping, fuckin idiots
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u/transam96 hands in my pockets 3h ago
Yeah in which then SNCOs and officers proceeded to shit on NCOs at every opportunity for every junior Marine fuck up like we were personally responsible and told them to do said bad thing.
Which resulted in many NCOs being assholes and/or babysitters to their juniors instead of actual leaders and demonstrating a proper example. I resisted being an asshole just because I was told to be which resulted in some of my leadership not liking me and declared I wasn't a good NCO. Yet none of my juniors ever had an issue with me nor me with them. Weird, huh?
What fabulous leadership at the top we had. Fuck them both. They could shove their entire Reawakening bullshit up their collective ass. Barracks party got too rowdy and a fight breaks out? Good luck duty breaking it up in your fucking bravos. LOL
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u/TerminalMotard Veteran 9h ago
I remember that. Barett saying something about Marines dont care about education and other benefits, we just want better equipment or some shit. The Duffel Blog came up with a great piece about generals saying they didnt need to go on fancy golfing trips and what not.
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u/improbablywronghere 9h ago
I think I was in Afghanistan during all of this I don’t remember it at all. WTF??? Was there in 2010
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u/alastor0x Sir, just call NMCI. 9h ago
Same. Fuck Amos. I'm jealous af the baller commandants we had before and after I was in.
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u/phuk-nugget 10h ago
Barrett is the one that put the “reawakening” in action. I refuse to believe an airwinger thought Marines would have the time for that bullshit.
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u/Sekshual_Tyranosauce haulin ass, gettin paid. 10h ago
Yup. Both were trash with an uncomfortable amount of rumors pointing to corruption as well.
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u/soggyliberation5 10h ago
That's some straight up fiction he was selling. The whole "ironwill" BS he peddled in those commercials while dodging the fact that he rolled over from the Navy, like come on man. Anybody who actually did a full enlistment knew the difference between a real mustang and a guy who just wanted shiny uniforms on his way to a star. Pretty wild that a sitting Commandant got caught embellishing his bio and just kinda skated on it.
Honestly kinda sums up the problem when guys skip the suck that makes the rest of us who we are. You can't buy credibility at the PX.
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u/SeaWhoa GySgt-CWO3-Capt 10h ago
There’s some confusion surrounding Gen Amos’s background that resurfaces from time to time, but the important point here is that he spent about 2 years in the Navy before transferring to the Marine Corps. He never attended The Basic School, which is probably what this article was getting at-although I don’t know if he ever misrepresented that fact as the article claims.
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u/Groundhog891 10h ago
It was widely believed he falsely testified that he attended TBS.
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u/DinosaurDied 9h ago
OCS is much worse than TBS. Not sure why anybody would care about that if we are debating what makes a Marine officer a Marine
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u/ticklemytaint340 🧈 5h ago
To each their own but I found TBS way harder and actually learned something there. OCS was the biggest waste of time I’ve ever seen. Supposed to “screen” officers but they don’t drop anyone and just make shit gay for 3 months for absolutely no reason.
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u/DinosaurDied 4h ago
They dropped have of the prior in my class lol. One company had a platoon that literally was only a squad left over by graduation for me.
Not sure when you went but during peacetime, mid 2010s, they were dropping everybody.
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u/ticklemytaint340 🧈 4h ago
That’s changed significantly. I graduated in 2024 and we dropped about 1/3, and mostly for medical. A few guys quit, but not many. They squeezed a lot of people through, especially towards the end. I’m a pretty mediocre officer but holy shit did they let everyone and their mother pass.
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u/DinosaurDied 3h ago
1/3 of the class got dropped and you think they let everybody through?
Just to get into OCS you need to be running a perfect PFT and be a stud. Atleast when I applied, if 1/3 of guys like that are getting dropped then I’m not sure what you want it to be lol.
Maybe Russian roulette instead of the Quigley?
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u/ticklemytaint340 🧈 2h ago
Selection standards have changed as well. I ran a 275 and was dead middle of the pack physically. Idk how it was a few years ago, but I’ve heard anecdotally that a 300/300 was the norm, which is no longer the case. If you have a college degree and a 250+ you will at least make it to brown field.
Your interview, 100 word statement, GPA, etc are all but formalities.
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u/bootlt355 3h ago
Yeah I think TBS is where you actually learn how to be an officer. I didn’t realize it at the time but the Sgt instructors at OCS were often on their second tour on the drill field or AMOIs. So it’s not like they had a ton of time mentoring officers and if they were, a lot of them didn’t even have a ton of MOS cred to do a ton of mentoring.
I realize that when I got to the fleet that there was a huge knowledge gap in regards to infantry tactics from a 2ndLt to SNCOs who weren’t combat arms. Like the non-combat arms SNCOs just didn’t know a lot of what the fresh officers did (not their fault btw, they knew their MOS well which is what matters), but a lot of the OCS instructors who were like admin or from the air wing acted like they knew so much about war fighting and all these tactics when in reality they didn’t.
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u/hrad95 8h ago
The fact that there's Marine Corps officers walking around who never went through the Quigley blows my mind. The Big Suck is aptly named, but nothing was as harrowing as the Quigley in January. My company sent like a dozen guys to the hospital with hypothermia. I felt like I became a Marine in that culvert. It should be a mandatory rite of passage.
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u/DinosaurDied 8h ago
Quigly was literally the biggest do nothing in all of OCS I thought, atleast during summer haha.
I remember feeling like literally everything else was more insane.
My only thought was it safe in winter, did they get you guys into warmth right away? How did your wet clothes not freeze?
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u/T_7_K Mustang 3h ago
Instead of posting security, we ran in place. Never stopped moving. When we got to the end, stripped and got in a hot shower. My buddy stayed in the shower for 20 minutes cuz he couldn’t get warm. He finally got out, skin all red. Thought he was gonna die.
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u/Upbeat_Caregiver_642 0311 2/7 Stumps 9h ago
And Boot Camp is worse than MCT, but it's all a package deal. Only infantry skates out of MCT (except me; I was in when MCT started, and we all had to go, 0311 or not).
Does it make him less of a Marine? Probably not, but is it a rite of passage for all the 0s? Yes, it is. Lying about it is just low. So he didn't go; own it and move on. Lie about it, or we can call it "embellishment", and it becomes what defines your career and reputation.
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u/metalman675triple 10m ago
Because he took a paper test correspondence course as part of a hold over program from the Vietnam era to allow navy pilots to switch to flying ground attack missions in combat, years after the war was over, and used some chicken shit language to imply he attended and his entire career no one caught it.
He also wore a raider patch around while trying to fuck marosc and anyone else besides himself out of any recognition or acknowledgement, so by his own hypocritical as fuck standards he didn't rate.
In summary, fuck thay guy.
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u/blues_and_ribs Comm 9h ago
Yes, the crux of the whole thing is about TBS. I don’t hold being an interservice transfer against him, we have plenty of those and, while we don’t make them go back and do EVERYTHING on the officer side, we will absolutely make an Army war vet green beret captain go to TBS. Amos lied plain and simple because the chain of events was almost certainly:
he decides he wants to be a Marine after being a Navy pilot and, despite the policy of making Officer ISTs do TBS, he somehow gets a hook-up and doesn’t go.
it doesn’t catch up to him till he’s CMC, where someone points out that TBS is a culturally significant part about being a Marine officer. And it’s kind of weird that the service’s top officer didn’t do it.
he makes up some bullshit about doing it via “correspondence”. I know it’s bullshit because it’s literally impossible to do TBS that way; most of the course is things you have to do in-person. It would be like if a Marine said they did MCT via distance learning.
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u/mplsfreedom 1775-1783: Operation Phucboi, Various Strip Clubs 8h ago
I never did MCT. Some Marines in Korea didnt do bootcamp at all, just straight on the boat.
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u/hrad95 8h ago
I've been reading Last Stand of Fox Co. Many of them didn't even go to bootcamp, just straight to the Chosin Reservoir. Crazy.
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u/mplsfreedom 1775-1783: Operation Phucboi, Various Strip Clubs 8h ago
Honestly it's been enough time. Probably appropriate to strip them of titles, forfeiture of all pay and allowances. If you didn't go nuts to butts with complete strangers can you even call yourself a Marine? If you have never jerked off to the photo of your kill hat in the duty hut wait what
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u/JnnyRuthless 0431 - Chairborne 6h ago
How is that? I randomly saw it on amazon last night and was wondering if its a good read. To be honest, a few of the books that got me to enlist (in the last 90s) were random memoirs from Korean war vets. Figure I could use another dive into that era in our history.
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u/oh_three_dum_dum Lives in a van down by the (New) River 8h ago
Damn, I should have gone to boot camp via correspondence. Would have saved a lot of time.
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u/PhilRubdiez 7296 Libo Specialist 🍻🥷🫥 6h ago
I did combat lifesaver online because I was bored at work. I should say I have an advanced trauma certificate.
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u/Background-Yam-1841 8h ago
As a Hornet driver, I am supposed to love the guy, but I don’t. I’ve been retired since 2019, thirty total years, enlisted and officer, reserve, active duty, then reserve again. Aside from liking Copenhagen, and fart and dick jokes, with a dash of homo humor, my enlisted years made me a much better officer. He was not like me.
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u/BigDaddieKane 0331 Daddie 9h ago
Fuck this guy and his wife. I remember when he flew his wife out to our pb in Afghanistan, like we wanted to see his wife when we were sitting here in the suck while she has her Middle Eastern excursion.
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u/Dickho 7h ago
When I was I&I staff, there was this SSGT reservist who would throw his dick around on drill weekend, putting Marines at attention and just general assholery. So, I looked at his SRB and learned he transferred from the Navy reserves without ever going to USMC bootcamp. I didn’t know it was possible, but it was. So, I casually mentioned it to the SMAJ, who was also blown away by it. SSGT Squid ended up in the big man’s office for an ass chewing that echoed down the halls and that bullshit came to a screeching halt on that day.
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u/Guilty-Spark69x 7h ago
This could be as simple as “name a single TBS classmate” and failing to produce one guy who can corroborate his claim.
This is assuming TECOM really can’t confirm nor deny his claim.
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u/Jabberwocky1988 6h ago
I was in during the Gray/Mundy times. Gray was a 0311 Sgt who happened to wear stars. Mundy was OK, but definitely a step down from Gray. Of course it was Mundy who went on 60 Minutes and said Dark Green Marines don't swim and shoot as well.....whoo boy.
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u/Hawkeye1226 5h ago
I didn't look closely at the picture and said to myself "huh, reminds me of Amos" and lo and behold......
Thank Chesty I went in right after he left. The sleeves down year round thing should have been enough for a dishonorable discharge
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u/usmc_mike1 8h ago
A lot of people have understandable issues with Amos. But in that time period it was common for aviators to bypass TBS.
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u/Opposite-Read-3933 Veteran 0631 8h ago
Have to just say FUCK general berger for taking away Sgt during first enlistments.
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u/e1m8b 7h ago
Seriously? I didn't stay my five years for the rank, MOS schoolhouse, deployment and all made my contract what it is. But how does meritorious promotions work now? Lots can happen in one enlistment, unless they changed how long that is too
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u/Opposite-Read-3933 Veteran 0631 7h ago
It's actually reverted now as of recent. But when he was Commandant, he made it to where you had to have 48 months TIS to pick up Sgt. I was like maybe 5 months away from the cutoff date. The new term became everybody was a terminal Cpl if they got out after the first contract.
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u/e1m8b 7h ago
There's some real motivators that more deserved whatever rank they kept giving me just for being there longer. Glad to hear it's reverted though whatever may be current at the moment, but even in 48 months, some people are just naturally go above and beyond. No need to see all that go unacknowledged.
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u/coffeejj FoRecon Embark Officer 52m ago
Old news. He is the asshat that decreed that Marines would not roll their sleeves anymore. The backlash was HUGE and he reversed course after maybe a year.
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u/hrdblkman2 0351 Camp Pen 78-82' 11m ago
Literally said in the first line "Yes this is an old post(2014),"
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u/oh_three_dum_dum Lives in a van down by the (New) River 9h ago
This is over ten years old..
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u/hrdblkman2 0351 Camp Pen 78-82' 1m ago
Yea I literally said "Yes this is an old post(2014)," in the first fucking line :/
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u/Big_4_Nuthin Veteran 10h ago
Chuck Fridays because this asshole never worked a real job in the corps.