0331 Machine Gunner MOS Patch

Every Marine infantry MOS starts with 03, and 0331 is the one that carries the gun. The 0331 Machine Gunner runs the M240 medium machine gun and the M2 .50 caliber heavy machine gun in direct fire support of the rifle platoons. He is the reason a rifle squad can move under fire. The work is done by teams, never by one Marine alone. A gun team is three Marines, sometimes four, under a corporal team leader: a gunner, an assistant gunner and the ammo bearers keeping belts coming.

New 0331s come out of the School of Infantry and its Infantry Training Battalion at Camp Geiger, North Carolina, or Camp Pendleton, California. The junior Marine usually starts as an assistant gunner on an M240, feeding belts, spotting rounds and changing barrels. A machine gun squad, led by a sergeant, runs three M240 gun teams. Machine gunners serve in the weapons platoon of each rifle company, and the battalion weapons company holds the M240s, the M2s and the Mk19 40mm grenade launchers. The craft is set out in MCWP 3-15.1, Machine Guns and Machine Gunnery, and every gunner learns its fields of fire, sectors and final protective lines.

The patch has the familiar MOS shape, a rectangle with the top and bottom bowed outward, finished with a red merrowed edge. MARINE CORPS is stitched in white across a black band at the top, and MACHINE GUNNER across a black band at the bottom. Between them, on a red field outlined in white, the big white numerals 03 and 31 sit on either side of the eagle, globe and anchor in gold, white and silver. SEMPER FIDELIS runs in white beneath the emblem. It measures 4.5 inches wide by 3.25 inches tall.

Marine infantry battalions carried their guns through Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and in every one of them the machine gun teams set the tempo of the fight. Riflemen depend on the gun to pin the enemy so they can close. That puts the gunner where the enemy wants to shoot first, and 0331s know it. The job is heavy, loud and unglamorous, with tripods, spare barrels and ammo cans humped up every hill. Marines who did it stay proud of it for the rest of their lives.

It fits a shadow box with a Marine's ribbons and a platoon photo, or the vest he wears to the battalion reunion. It is also a good gift for a Marine who just graduated from ITB and drew 0331. The iron-on backing goes on with a household iron, and it can also be sewn on for a permanent hold. Guns up.