ROCHELLE — Rochelle Police Department Officer Andrew Herring served in the United States Marine Corps from April 2011 to May 2019. 

Herring started his service with boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California. He attended infantry school at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in California before being assigned to Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment in Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center 29 Palms in California in January 2012 as a rifleman He was then deployed to Helmand Province, Afghanistan in 2012-2013.

In January 2015, Herring received orders to report to Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and deployed as part of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard the USS Arlington in September 2015 until May 2016. In January 2017 he received orders to 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade to serve as assistant operations chief and watch chief. Herring deployed to Norway in 2018 in support of NATO Exercise Trident Juncture. 

Herring then left active duty as a sergeant and pursued his college degree before briefly returning to attend Officer Candidates School at Quantico, Virginia. He ultimately declined his commission upon completion of the course to pursue a career in law enforcement. 

Herring chose to serve in the military for two major reasons, to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves, and because it was his way of fulfilling a childhood dream. 

“I've been a lifelong practitioner of martial arts and so I always wanted to protect those who couldn't protect themselves,” Herring said. “That led me to understand that the best ways to do that were through the military, and then later through policing. The other reason is kind of goofy, but I wanted to be a ninja as a kid and maintained a fascination with their true historical context for much of my teens, but obviously that's not exactly a career path anymore, so I found the closest thing available to 21st century Americans and joined the Marine Corps.”

The military taught Herring discipline and how to learn. He found out how technical being an infantryman is and how much structured learning and training is required. 

“I also learned how to live with very little,” Herring said. “When I moved from California to North Carolina I had two sea bags, a backpack and a bicycle, plus a garment bag which held all of my military uniform. On each of my deployments I had a similar amount of stuff I brought with me. I learned how to be truly flexible. Ever-changing circumstances often dictated my actions or plans changed on a dime, but how I approached them didn't.”

When attending a Mountain Warfare Training Course in Bridgeport, California, Herring learned the history of the Fox 2/7 unit when it came to operating in frigid environments. His company commander read passages to the unit from the book "The Last Stand of Fox Company" which detailed the battle at the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War. Herring called that a unique experience from his service.

“I never understood the struggles of someone in a book better than that, because it might be California but living outside for a month at elevations between 7,000 and 11,000 in the winter is seriously cold,” Herring said.

While onboard a Naval vessel in his time in the military, Herring visited 10 countries. He found his experiences traveling in the military to be unique.

“That was always cool coming to a new country and watching it materialize over the horizon,” Herring said. “Even going to new places on airplanes was cool, but because I was stationed in the desert, going to Afghanistan just felt like flying back to California for me. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest so flying to Norway was likewise similar to flying home, but the smells were different.”

As an infantryman, Herring’s primary duty was to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy. He was assigned a squad automatic weapon and had to learn how to properly employ it as part of his team, squad and platoon. He carried that weapon for his first year and a half in the Marine Corps. 

As fire team leader, Herring was in charge of training three other Marines and managing them under “the most stressful situations imaginable.” His next job as squad leader put him in charge of three fire teams. It was during that time when he learned to put his faith in his fire team leaders. Herring steered them and communicated progress to platoon leadership. 

“While I was a fire team leader I was also certified as a martial arts instructor which meant I was certified to teach the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program,” Herring said. “This was fun because I would often implement pieces from my own experience in Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to enhance the training.”

Herring entered the officer world when he became assistant operations chief. And then as watch chief, he worked in an operations center.

“Watch chief meant we had fighting units attached to us and we were on operations,” Herring said. “Think of any command center you've seen in the movies, that's about accurate. My job was to keep that situation running smoothly, plan for contingencies and assume command should the watch officer be indisposed.”

After his service ended, Herring spent four years in college. His first three years were spent at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina and his senior year was at Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois. He took his finals a week early and graduated and attended the Sauk Valley Community College Police Academy at the end of his senior year in 2023, before graduating from that and starting work at RPD. He’s assigned to RPD’s patrol division.

Serving in the Marines helped Herring on his path to becoming a police officer, but he made up his mind on his career path long before he served.

“Because of the experience of being a Marine infantryman I'm obviously pretty used to situations of stress and chaos, that wasn't new to me,” Herring said. “Because I knew how to learn, that made the academy and field training go pretty smoothly. I decided I wanted to be a police officer when I was about eight. When I realized that ninja was off the table, at that point I decided I was going to be a Marine and then a police officer.”

Honoring Our American Hero is a series that will print twice a month in the News-Leader. If you know an American Hero you would like to have featured, contact Jeff Helfrich at jhelfrich@rochellenews-leader.com or call 815-561-2151.