Marine Corps Base Quantico -- When an armchair Civil War historian in Fredericksburg decides to purchase a metal detector and finds an old-looking projectile in his backyard, who’s he gonna call?
Probably the local police first, but the local police will call the Marine Corps Base Quantico Provost Marshal Office (PMO) and PMO will call Quantico’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technicians. The base EOD section has Memorandums of Understanding with communities as far south as Richmond to respond to the discovery of ordnance.
“Our section supports civilian authorities at the discretion of the installation commander,” said Capt. Matthew Anderson, EOD officer for Marine Corps Installations National Capital Region-MCBQ. “Farmers plowing fields, any kind of construction work that turns up suspected military or Civil War ordnance.”
Quantico EOD, which is made up of Anderson and six enlisted Marines, is active in the community in many ways.
“We help a lot of people out,” Anderson said. “I really don’t say ‘no’ to anybody.”
For instance, this June, the section responded to a call from Fredericksburg, where an excavation had uncovered an object EOD identified as a three-inch projectile from a Parrott rifle used by the Union Army during the Civil War. EOD will preserve the projectile and then turn it over to the University of Mary Washington or another historical organization for display.
“We get a good amount of that kind of call,” Anderson said. “We’ve responded to probably three this year.”
Since the City of Fredericksburg and Stafford and Spotsylvania counties were all sites of major Civil War battles, Civil War ordnance is everywhere. Quantico EOD has identified a mix of Union and Confederate artillery projectiles, musket balls and black powder bullets. EOD’s typical practice is to inert the object—or remove the hazards, often by flushing out the black powder—and then preserve it. At that point, they prefer to either pass the item along to a museum, college, or university or keep it for their own library.
“Our mission is the protection of personnel and property,” Anderson said. “Often, these things are worth money and we want them to go somewhere they can kind of ‘give back’ to the community, instead of financially benefiting an individual.”
He said the EOD library contains about two dozen Civil War pieces and an estimated 700 other items.
“We like to keep examples of everything we can,” he said. “Bombs, mortars, rockets, old, new, U.S., foreign.” (Members of the public can visit the EOD library by appointment.)
Marine Corps EOD is the only military EOD branch authorized to inert ordnance, so the Quantico section helps area police departments and federal agencies with this task. They also help museums and historical organizations ensure that the firearms in their collections are safe. This summer, they X-rayed a World War II M1 Garand rifle recovered from the grave of a Marine Raider on Makin Island, now in the collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps. The X-rays determined that the chamber and magazine of the rifle were free of ordnance. And last year, they conducted similar work on the ordnance collection at the Navy Yard.
Quantico EOD also supports Very Important Persons Protection Support Activity (VIPPSA), assisting in the protection of the president, vice president, secretary of defense and others. In June, two Marines from the Quantico section accompanied President Obama when he visited Orlando following the June 12 shooting at the Pulse nightclub.
“If we get the mission, we go,” Anderson said. “Most of the tours are short notice and short duration.”
Quantico EOD Marines also spend time on security detail at the White House and at Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C. for the Friday evening parades.
All of this is in addition to their work on MCBQ, clearing ranges after training exercises and identifying UXO elsewhere on base.
“We’re super busy,” Anderson said. “If I could double my section, that would be awesome!”
Writer: auphausconner@quanticosentryonline.com