The title Marine is earned, not given! Being a Marine is an attitude, an acceptance of a way of live, and title United States Marine will be a part of you up to your last breath. It all started when  a committee  of the Continental Congress met at Tun Tavern to draft a resolution calling for two battalions of Marines to be formed ti fight for independence at sea and on shore. The resolution was approved on November 10, 1775, thus officially forming the Continental Marines. As the first order of business, Samuel Nicholas became the first Commandant of the newly formed Marines. Tun Tavern’s owner and popular patriot, Robert Mullan, became his first captain and recruiter.

My first job in the Marine Corps when I checked into my first unit (H&S Co, 3rd Bn, 1st Marines) was packing a flamethrower and working with a 106mm recoilless rifle which gave me the 0351 MOS. The M2 flamethrower, weighed 42 pounds empty, 68 pounds filled, and held about 3.5 gallons of fuel mixture, and  was an American man-portable backpack flamethrower that was used after World War II. Although it’s burn time was only around 7 seconds and the flame was only effective out to around 20–40 meters, it was still a useful weapon….it scared the hell out of everyone: using it and being on the receiving end. The M40 is an 106mm breech-loaded, single-shot, man-portable, crew-served recoilless rifle. It can be used in both anti-tank and anti-personnel roles. The M40A1 system weighed approximately 438 pounds when assembled and mounted for firing; it has a sustained rate of fire of 6 rounds per minute and an effective range of 1365 meters. The M50A1 Ontos (Rifle Multiple 106MM Recoilless fully tracked), used by the USMC in Vietnam, mounted six of these barrels on a tracked vehicle.

When a Marine goes to combat, circa 1960s, this is what the 782 gear looked like as shown on the right. This is called the field marching pack. There is one heavier and which had another component making it a field transport pack.