National Museum of the Marine Corps - Quantico, VA

On Saturday morning we visited the National Museum of the Marine Corps at Quantico, Virginia. This is an amazing place and the Marines have done themselves proud. There are exhibits from every campaign the Marines have fought in since their birth in 1775. I was most interested in the Vietnam display since that is where I served with them and got my baptism of fire. The displays and the sounds were eerily realistic and I returned to a place that I thought I would never see again. The only thing missing is "the smell" of war but I was happy to not experience that. The CH-46 helicopter simulator brought many memories and I wished they had a UH-34 and a HUEY to go along with it. We also visited the WWII, Korea and Beirut displays and they are also very well done. Viewing these displays and reading the stories gave me a much better appreciation of what it meant to be a Marine. As a Navy Corpsman with the First Marine Division I got to live the life and it changed me in many ways.