David Berger (general)
United States Marine Corps general (born 1959)

David Hilberry Berger (born December 21, 1959) is an American retired general who served as the 38th commandant of the United States Marine Corps from 2019 to 2023.
Berger was born in Delaware and raised in Maryland. He graduated from Tulane University and was commissioned as a United States Marine Corps officer in 1981, through the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps. He served in the 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion during the Gulf War. Over the course of his career, Berger led the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines on a deployment to Haiti, led a regimental combat team in Iraq, served at the Kosovo Force headquarters, and commanded the 1st Marine Division in Afghanistan. He later commanded the I Marine Expeditionary Force from 2014 to 2016; Marine Corps Forces, Pacific, and Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, from 2016 to 2018; and the Marine Corps Combat Development Command from 2018 to 2019.
As the commandant, he developed and began implementing Force Design 2030, a reform that is shifting the focus of the Marine Corps from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to preparing for the competition between the United States and China.
Early life and education
David Hilberry Berger was born on December 21, 1959 in Delaware. He is a native of Woodbine, Maryland. He graduated from Glenelg High School in 1977.
“David Berger (general)” enters the record as united States Marine Corps general (born 1959). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what David, Berger and general can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “David Berger (general)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.