SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Marines everywhere were saddened at the death of former Marine and committed POG Staff Sgt. R. Lee Ermey, who passed away earlier this week.

Ermey, a former supply clerk from Marine Wing Support Group 17 and winner of the coveted Meritorious Unit Award, served in the Marine Corps from 1961 to 1972 before starting a second career playing actual infantry Marines.

He had a long and distinguished career, from the Buy Me Drinky bars on Okinawa to the brothels of Manila, to his tour in Vietnam where he served in an elite REMF Wing Wiper unit guarding the chow hall at Da Nang Air Base.

After moving on from the Marine Corps, Staff Sgt. Ermey developed a talent for acting, and later achieved fame in the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket. In the film he plays fictional drill instructor Gunnery Sgt. Hartman, whose terrorized Marine recruits eventually rebel against his POG ways by spending the entire second half of the film attached to grunt units in Vietnam and actually killing people.