Reflections of a Grunt Marine: Memoirs of Bruce F. Meyers, Colonel of Marines

Reflections of a Grunt Marine is the personal memoir of Bruce Meyers, whose adventures began early in life and continued through two wars and his time as a Colonel of Marines. At thirteen, he built and used a diving helmet to recover items lost overboard in Lake Washington; at sixteen, he had climbed all six of Washington state s highest peaks; at seventeen, he was a summer forest fire lookout in the Cascade Mountains. These were preludes to a distinguished twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. Marine Corps, which began with the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) at the University of Washington. After further training in the Marine schools at Quantico, Virginia, Meyers was commissioned as a Marine lieutenant in January 1945. Released from active duty in 1946, he worked as a National Park Service Ranger on Mountain Rainier, remaining in the Marine Corps Reserve until called up for active duty when the Korean War broke out in 1950. He left the Reserves to be a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, where he began fighting in wars. Meyers commanded a rifle company on the front lines in Korea and led a small team behind the lines to rescue two wounded Marines. In Vietnam, he was a colonel commanding the Seventh Fleet s Marine Landing Force, and then commanded the 26th Marine Corps Battalion at Khe Sahn. Meyers distinguished service as a leader of men in combat will long be remembered, but his peacetime activities for the Marine Corps may become his true legacy. Between his service in the Korean and Vietnam wars, he was involved in the development of methods for clandestine insertion of military teams into hostile territory, both from air and sea. As part of this duty he formed the first Force Recon Company, a unit that could carry out these missions and was expanded to a Second Force Recon Company. Many of the techniques developed at that time are still in use by the SEALS and other special force units.