Hartelijk Gefeliciteerd!
By Mitch Berg
Today is the 234th birthday of the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps – one of the oldest military units in constistent existence in the history of the world.
“Dutch Marines?”
Siddown.
The Dutch Korps Marijniers were, like most Marine Corps of the sail era, initially soldiers who fought on ships. Like the US and eventually British (as well as French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian) Marine corps, they gradually formed into a separate ground-combat unit specializing in amphibious warfare.
During the opening weeks of the German Blitzkrieg into the Low Countries in 1940, the Germans rated the Dutch Marines as the tougest opponents they faced; it was a unit of Marines in Rotterdam that kept the Panzers from linking up with the Paratroopers, which led the Germans to their infamous terror-bombing attack to break the stalemate. The Marines’ main theater of operation, though, was in the Dutch East Indies – today Indonesia – where their resistance to the Japanese, while effective, was doomed; their homeland conquered by the Nazis, they were fighting without supplies, spare parts or any kind of direction from the home office.
After the fall of the Netherlands, many Marijniers escaped to the UK and, eventually America, where US Marine Corps trained a brigade of Dutch. This unit became the core of the modern Nederlands Korps Marijniers, long one of NATO’s elite rapid deployment units. They’ve spent most o the past forty years training to fight in Norway against the Soviets, alongside US and British Marines.
And at a time when the world seemed befuddled about what to do about terrorist attacks, in the seventies, it was the Korps’ special operations unit, the Bijzondere Bijstands Eenheid, a hostage-rescue unit equivalent to the British SAS, the US “Delta” and the German GSG9, carried out one of the first notable successful hostage rescues.
Iraq and Afghanistan? Sure.
Anyway – happy birthday, Dutch Marine corps!
December 10th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
When I was going to Navy dive school, I met a SEAL trainee that had joined after he’d completed his enlistment with the Dutch Marines. He was BUD/S “Iron Man” for pull-ups…dude could do hundreds at a whack. He was also one of the funniest guys I ever met….crazy funny.