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Marine Corps Staff SergeantE-6 Staff Noncommissioned Officer, U.S. Marine Corps |
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Marine Corps Ranks » Staff Sergeant Rank • SSgt Pay • SSgt Rank History • Promotion Information
History of the Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Rank
A Staff Sergeant is a Staff Noncommissioned Officer in the United States Marine Corps at DoD paygrade E-6.
Up until WWI, there were a great variety of Sergeant ranks. To simplify things, most were combined into the all-purpose "Staff Sergeant". "Sergeant" comes from the French "sergant", which came from the Latin "servientum" (servant or valet). A Sergeant-at-arms was a personal bodyguard of a fuedal lord or nobleman.
Want to learn more? Read about the Marine Corps' Staff Sergeant rank on Military-Ranks.org.
History of the Marine Corps
As far back as the Revolutionary War, Marines were known as Naval Infantry, and were assigned to ships to repel boarders, assault land-based targets, and discipline unruly Sailors. In WWI and WWII, Marines very successfully augmented Army units in war theaters throughout the world, with their most brutal and historic fighting on islands in the Pacific. In contrast with the Army, the Marines were not originally made to be self-sufficient to fight land wars for long periods of time. Doctors, Chaplains, and Medics who deploy with Marines are all Navy Sailors.