The Marine Corps is going wild after an accidental service-wide email resulted in the top enlisted Marine surprising the troops.
The Marine Corps is going wild after an email accidentally sent to the entire service resulted in the top enlisted Marine surprising his troops and the young corporal at the center of all of it.
The latest development is the culmination of a story that started in April, when Cpl. Andrew Hundley’s boss routed his online course certificate up to colleagues for record-keeping. The message went well beyond the intended recipients.
With the online training out of the way, Hundley, a 24-year-old cyberspace defense operator, could apply for a spot at the follow-on in-person course required for promotion. That course tackles topics like public speaking and military tactics.
But when the staff sergeant hit «send», the senior Marine accidentally unleashed a «reply allpocalyspe», emailing the entire service and more. Reply-alls began flooding inboxes. Almost just as quickly came the memes, which would last for weeks.
Alarmed, his boss called Hundley to explain his certificate had gone to untold corners of the government.
«There’s been this problem», Hundley recalled her saying to Business Insider. At first he was worried about either of them getting in trouble— the email had made it outside the Corps too, fielding quizzical responses from the Army, Naval Criminal Investigative Services, FBI, and even the White House, Hundley said.
«A lot of them were kind of confused why they were getting the email», he said. Some thought it was a phishing attempt.
Despite the initial stress, Hundley noted that his leaders were quick to assuage his concerns during his rocket to Marine Corps fame and kept tabs on him as the memes kept coming.
A Change.org petition to have the service’s chief officer, Commandant Eric Smith, attend Hundley’s in-person course graduation took off, picking up over 1,600 signatures.
