The U.S. will turn 250 years old in July but one of its military branches is already celebrating that milestone this month. The Alexandria Police Department held a traditional Marine birthday celebration complete with cake and swords.
Since 1921, the Marines have had a specific order on how to celebrate the Corps’ birthday. Of course, it involved a traditional birthday cake with a globe and anchor decoration but they cut the cake with a Marine officer’s Mameluke sword.
Alexandria Police Chief Tarrick McGuire told WTOP, “I’ve never held a sword before. So I was I was happy that I was not the person that was cutting the cake.”
“I’m just really inspired by it being the 250-year celebration,” said Michael Jadoo, commandant of the Marine Corps league detachment in Montgomery County, Maryland. “Also looking back on history and how we as evolved as Marines. I think it’s just really amazing and beautiful.”
The order handed down in 1921 from Maj. Gen. Commandant John Lejeune also prescribes that the youngest Marine present and oldest Marine present share a slice of birthday cake.
Alexandria police officer and Marine Sgt. Maxwell Van Arsdale was the youngest on site.
“In traditional sense, it’s a passing of knowledge, and it’s meaning that, ‘hey, we share and we feast together, and I share my experience with you and pass it on,’” he said.
Van Arsdale told WTOP that it was his seventh Marine Corps birthday and “they get better each time.” The young officer has completed four deployments as a Marine and is transitioning from active-duty service to the reserves.
Alex Trapero, a Marine veteran and 23-year officer with APD, was the eldest Marine at the celebration.
“It’s very sentimental for me to have something like this and be recognized to have served in the Marine Corps,” Trapero said.
Around a dozen police officers who are also reservists or veterans were on hand to celebrate and received a special challenge coin from the department.
Why do so many “Devil Dogs,” a nickname for the Marines, go into law enforcement?
Police Chief McGuire said it’s the calling they have to serve our country.
Trapero believes it is the structure that law enforcement provides as well as Marine’s need to help those in danger.
“We have the courage to be the first one to respond,” he said.
“We put our lives on for people that we don’t know. We respond to any threat. Same thing as the Marine Corps,” Van Arsdale added.
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