History
The 27th Marine Regiment was activated on January 10, 1944 as a result of the massive increase in the Marine Corps during World War II. The regiment first saw action during the Battle of Iwo Jima. During the course of the battle they suffered 566 killed, 1,706 wounded and had 4 Marines receive the Medal of Honor. After the surrender of Japan the regiment was deactivated on January 10, 1946.
The 27th Marines was again reactivated during the Vietnam War on January 1, 1966 but was mainly used as a pool for new replacements before they went overseas. After the Tet Offensive in 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized an increase in U.S. troop strength in Vietnam and the 27th Marines was one of the units sent. They became the first Marine regiment to fly into a combat zone. Their deployment overseas put a severe strain on manpower in the Marine Corps and they were returned to the United States before the close of 1968.
A homecoming parade was presented as a Memorial Ceremony downtown San Diego to the lives the regiment had given in Vietnam. The unit was then reassigned to MCB Camp Pendleton within the area of the base called Camp Margarita or the 33 Area. Until June 1969, the 27th Marines was made up of "Short timers", that is Marines having only months remaining of active duty.
Read more about this topic: 27th Marine Regiment (United States)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)