Content area
Full Text
"We Make FMF Corpsmen" at Field Medical Training Battalions East and West
Marines often quote a droll adage: 'It's hard to be humble when you're among the world's finest."
Ask any Fleet Marine Force (FMF) corpsman and he or she will probably tell you the same thing. After completing eight weeks of arduous training to earn the title FMF corpsman serving alongside Marines, it's just very hard to be humble.
FMF corpsmen-informally known as "greensiders" as opposed to "bluesiders" who are corpsmen serving in Navy commands-have shared a common bond with their Marine partners since the Navy Hospital Corps was established formally 116 years ago on June 17, 1898.
Just as Marines are "made" at East and West Coast boot camps, so too are FMF corpsmen made at two Field Medical Training Battalions (FMTB): one at Camp Johnson in Jacksonville, N.C., and one at Camp Pendleton in California. They share a common program of instruction that transforms basic U.S. Navy sailors (Navy Enlisted Classification Code 0000, or blueside) into FMF corpsmen (NECC 8404, or greenside).
"It takes a lot of work to get that FMF qualification badge, so I guess greenside corpsmen are a bit more cocky," asserted Hospital Corpsman Second Class (FMF) Daniel Lowderman, an instructor at the East Coast school. Graduating from FMTB is only the first in a long line of steps involving study, tests and practical applications to earn the Navy badge bearing the eagle, globe and anchor of the Marines.
"But in our defense, when you're greenside, you have to be a jack-of-all-trades because when you're deployed, you're it," he emphasized, adding that when he was deployed he often didn't see a medical officer or chief for weeks or months at a time.
"All Navy corpsmen complete basic corpsman school and then they get orders to go greenside or not, based on availability of those billets," explained Master Chief Hospital Corpsman Harlan Patawaran, the command master chief at the Pendleton school. "We do have some basic corpsmen who volunteer to go greenside and we also get fleet returnees who were on the blueside and choose to switch for their own personal reasons, but either way, they'll all be trained from day one to be FMF corpsmen."
Lowderman can speak...