Local Marines celebrate 240th birthday of corps
By John Joyce
Published in News on November 11, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Vic Miller hands a plate to Bob Hill during the second annual Marine Corps birthday in Goldsboro at the Flying Shamrock Tuesday. It is tradition for the oldest, Bob Hill, and youngest, Kevin Dahlin, also pictured, Marines in attendance to share the first piece of cake.
Christopher Cosgrove loved the Marine Corps.
The lance corporal, assigned to Golf Company 225, Picatinny Arsenal, 2nd Batallion, 25th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, was among a small group of reservists who volunteered to deploy to Iraq in 2006.
On Oct. 1, 2006, while serving in Fallujah, Iraq, a car bomb exploded, taking Cosgrove with it.
"He was the last Marine I lost in combat," said Vic Miller, USMC Ret.
Standing before a small crowd gathered inside the Flying Shamrock Irish Pub Tuesday, Miller, a 22-year U.S. Marine Corps veteran, led a brief ceremony commemorating the 240th birthday of the military branch he served with distinction.
At a table near the back of the crowd, seated close to the wall, were Cosgrove's parents, Arthur Bowie and Charlene Cosgrove Bowie.
Veterans of various eras and branches dotted the room, there to help celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Marine Corps in Boston, Nov. 10, 1775.
"We are a year older than the country," Miller said.
In addition to celebrating the founding of the U.S. armed forces' oldest -- and one of its most storied -- branches, Miller said the occasion is one to share camaraderie with those who remain, and a time to "hoist a drink to those who have gone before us."
It is in the company of these men and women that Cosgrove's family finds some semblance of comfort.
"Our son loved the Marines," Bowie said, his voice catching. His wife's eyes immediately began to well. "He was a reservist, but he just loved the Marines," he said.
Bowie said whenever he and his wife get together with veterans, especially those who knew and served with their son, it stirs up feelings of loss, but it also reminds them they are not alone.
"It's one of the things that keeps us going. He left us with this whole family," Bowie said. "We've got Marines who served with him who call (Charlene) on holidays, on Mother's Day. And they look after us."
"They keep us going," Mrs. Cosgrove Bowie said.
Cosgrove was a reservist who volunteered in 2006, among 39 of his fellow Devil Dogs, to deploy with an another battalion to Fallujah.
"He was a reservist with Picatinny Golf Company 225, Picatinny Arsenal (New Jersey)," Bowie said. "But he served over in Fallujah with a group out of Plainview, Conn., 125 C Company.
"They all volunteered to go. Most of them had never been deployed before."
Bob Hill, of Goldsboro, also served in the U.S. Marine Corps.
From 1948 to 1951, Hill helped rebuild Camp Lejeune, here in N.C.
"Well, like they say, 'Once a Marine, always a Marine,'" he said.
Hill served during the Korean War, and although he never deployed, he contributed to the war effort by helping ready a forgotten part of the base he was assigned to for incoming officers who would later deploy.
"The area out there that had been sort of left alone when the services were integrated. Montford Point -- that's where the black boot camp was -- and those buildings had sat vacant for a time," Hill said.
When they started calling the reserve officers back in 1950 -- at the outset of the Korean conflict -- somebody had to stay there and put those buildings back together so service members would have a place to live when they got there, he said.
"So that's what I spent my wartime doing," Hill said.
Hill explained that gatherings such as the one held Tuesday were important, not just for his generation of veterans, but for every group of every era, whether they deployed overseas or contributed here at home.
And for the Marine Corps, whose tradition is as steeped in conflict as it is history, the birthday celebration is a special time.
"The Marine Corps' story is one that is unique and anyone who has served understands that 'esprit de corps' that is available and it just makes you a party of one," Hill said.
Miller kept the official ceremony relatively brief. He said the Marine Corps remains the smallest of all U.S. military branches and the most underfunded. But that has never affected its ability to do its job, he said.
"We are the first to go in and the last to leave. First to go, last to know... It is a tight fraternity. For 240 years our history speaks for itself," he said.