I have occasionally written here about my retired Marine Dad.
He did not serve very long, but he served long enough to become a Marine.
That is a thing it's hard for people who aren't family members or other Marines to understand.
Every one of our armed services has their particular culture and the comradeship and support they provide one another is lifelong. No disrespect at all to the other services.
Marines, though... there's an intensity to that identity that may have started out as deliberately cultivated to increase unit cohesion and maintain morale, but once it gets under the skin, inside the Marine, it takes on a life of its own.
Back in civilian life my Dad had difficulties settling into a job and couldn't really find a career path that worked for him more than a decade... when he started writing. Not the kind you get paid much for. When she was angry at him Mom would refer to him as "Peter Pan". I get that, but I can also see, now, from a distance, the things that contributed to his inability to settle into anything that would bring material success in the civilian world, and finally resulted in the divorce.
There were two responsibilities, however, that he never shirked. He never missed a birthday or Christmas with his kids, while he lived.
And he never missed the funeral of one of his Marine buddies, while he lived. No matter what it cost.
And sometimes it cost plenty. That was an element to him losing more than one job- whether he'd accrued paid time off or not, if there was a buddy being buried, my Dad told the employer he'd be back after the funeral, if the job was still there. Sometimes it wasn't.
He traveled to California, Texas, Nebraska, and South Carolina that I know of. In a beat-up car if he had one, on the Greyhound if he didn't.
He died of lung cancer before I was old enough to talk about it with him. I wish I could hear more from him about why it was so important to attend the funerals of those "losers" and "suckers"... the ones who served with him.
The armed forces of the United States of America are neither simple nor monolithic. They're a vast and complicated interlocking set of institutions with one purpose: To put themselves in harms way, when necessary, to keep not just their own families and communities safe, but to keep safe a nation organized around the idea that we all matter because we all matter.
They are not perfect saintly idealists, their leaders are not endowed with Higher Wisdom. They have many other reasons for being there- a job, a career, a desire for adventure, self-empowerment, interest in the technology, logistics, the institution itself. There are some not very admirable people in our armed forces, some whose choice to serve was influenced by not very admirable motivation.
But they all have in common one overriding awareness: They have made the commitment to place their skills, their well-being, their lives if necessary, at the call of their fellow-citizens in the person of our civilian government leadership.
I cannot imagine how they must be feeling right now, knowing that their civilian Commander-in-Chief thinks that those of their comrades who made that ultimate sacrifice are "losers" and "suckers."
I cannot imagine what my retired Marine Dad would say about it, to his other comrades, around the grave site of one of their buddies being laid to rest.
Oh, wait. Actually, I CAN imagine that...
somberly,
Bright
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