http://guides.grc.usmcu.edu/content.php?pid=408059&sid=3340387
There must be a hundred books of history alone here I ought to read, but haven't. And me the professed historian, too?
Is it accurate for me to call the "Commandant's list a "tradition" of the Corps, Dave?
Damn you guys are impressive in even more ways than I thought.
Originally Posted by: Wade
...kind of a tangent in my answer...
General Al Gray started the Commandant's list, as I recall. You may recall that Al Gray was my father's best friend during the Korean War. It is Al Gray that my wife went "back-channel" to get me relieved and retired in 2004...Fast, very fast, with a freeze on. I had zero knowledge of it at the time fwiw. She had overheard my father, brother and I telling war stories to one another and somehow figured out that the Al Gray we were talking about was presently the man in charge when I was deployed over there. (It was formerly in charge, but she didn't know a Commandant from a private, and it worked) My dad told me when I was 12 that either Al Gray or John Chaisson (another friend of my dad) would be commandant of the Marines one day. I talked to General Gray a few times, he said he thought my dad would be Commandant. (My dad went to be a federally instead.) Gen Chaisson would have been a good one.
My dad is a lib. He can't pick politics, but he can damn sure pick Commandants. ๐
This way way back when they were Captains.
This doesn't suck, as Al Gray is considered the best Commandant ever, by most real Marines, as he was one.
It is possibly the most respected position in the military, and in our government, within Washington.
Semper fi