Thursday, April 19, 2018

Gunny Ermey

Now I am a huge fan of R. Lee Ermey.  Kinda wished his movie hadn't come out the summer I went to new recruit training and inspiring the cadre to new heights of fun and excitement in an organization not fully accountable to the DoD, so could get away with a bit more... but that's not Ermey's fault.

I thought it was nice for the Commandant to give him his Gunny stripes 30 years after separating from active duty.  He sure earned them, out of 'uniform' promoting USMC values far and wide.  He might be the second most famous Hollywood Marine, after Gomer Pyle.

But wait.  This looks like a vintage picture.  And he's wearing gunny stripes back then.  What gives?





Was he jinxing himself posing with rank he hadn't yet earned, then taking them off after this picture?

Was he promoted in the Corps, then busted back to Staff Sergeant before getting his DD214 on a med discharge?

Is this him on a movie set for something like The Boys in Company C?  Loyce was just a Staff Sergeant.

Does this just LOOK Asian but is acutally from the set of Full Metal Jacket, and that is Gunnery Sergeant Hartman?

I dunno. 

Here is a screen cap of his movie ribbons in FMJ, and they don't match, now do his eyebrows.

2 comments:

jon spencer said...

Think it is a movie role picture, to earn the Navy Occupation Service Medal he would have had to serve in West Berlin sometime during his time is service, which is possible but not probable.
Maybe from the movie, The Frighteners as he played a deceased Gunnery Sergeant, but these ribbons do not quite match from the only screen cap of that movie that I could find.
He also played a Gunnery Sergeant in the movie Purple Hearts.
Could not find a credited screen cap of him from that movie.
Still I would bet on a movie role.

McChuck said...

The occupation of Japan ended in 1952, so he's too young for that. And the medal is on backwards, anyways. (Red hand, black heart.)