A Company, 3rd Battalion The Parachute Regiment @ Exercise Mayan Warrior in Belize...

Hey Neller! 

Open letter to you bud.  You have great ideas but for some reason you spout them and then lose focus.

Remember stating that the Marine Corps might need to get into the business of seizing ports?  I cheered.  The idea went nowhere.  You talked about getting back to basics because we would be fighting in an environment where all our toys wouldn't work...how basic skills like land nav and map reading need to be re emphasized in prep for the big nasty coming?  It went nowhere.

But the focus of today's writing is your idea of setting up a Jungle School.  Maybe it's cost prohibitive but guess what.  Everytime we send out a SPMAGTF-CR to S. America, we can run those bubbas thru the Brit's setup.  The Brits are busy?  We can send them thru the French deal in French Guyana!

It would be so easy to setup a detachment and run units thru there that it boggles the mind on why we aren't doing it. 

Hell just to make this a unified effort, the Marine Corps would (with a detachment at either location) overnight be running the most intense Jungle Training Schoolhouse in the DoD.

I figure one Captain to head the shit (maybe Major since it will evolve into being interservice if my thinking is right), a squared away Gunny to ramrod things...and a bunch of hard charging Sgt Instructors to lead in the field.

Tops 25 actual training staff with a half dozen Corpsmen to handle the bumps, bruises and insect bites (don't know about snakes...but damn there will be snakes!).

I reckon you could send maybe two companies at a time thru and if you get buy in from the 82nd, some light fighter division and even MARSOC then this could easily be our way back into the fight in the jungle with loaned staff to handle the increase in students.

This is a sparse setup but as I indicated it can easily be plussed up.

Get back to your roots dude!  You're a freaking Infantry Officer!

You've been playing budget games too long.  Well guess what cowboy, you got your dream budget, now its time to set the house in order, slash away all the silly fuck fuck games Marines are playing (really...you have a PFT and added a CFT to the mix...how about just doing old fashioned platoon PT without all the silliness of paperwork) and not only putting your stamp on the Marine Corps but signalling that it's back to getting ready to win the fight in environments we haven't been in recently.

The same can also be done with ease in the arctic at the air base up there.

The wing is still hurting but on the right trajectory.  Turn to the Ground side bro!

Snafu! Out.