The flag in front of our company office flew at half-mast today. I would have loved to get a picture and post it for you, but the camera I brought with me succumbed to the heat about a month after we got here, so you will have to be content with the mental image of our flag flying at half mast in front of a raw wood building where Marines carry out the work that was triggered by the events that are so prevalent on everyone's minds today.
I don't really have any deep insights to offer for you today, no philosophical musings about life, the military, the Taliban, politics, what have you. What I do have for you is this: the things we do here make a difference. Yes, it's true that some Afghans support the Taliban, but it's also true that many of them support the Taliban only because they are coerced to do so, and that others risk their lives to help Marines. Marines, Afghan Soldiers, and other Coalition Forces are still engaged in a fierce fight and losing their lives, but we are fighting in the Helmand River valley--the birthplace of the Taliban; their home turf. You can't get much better for taking the fight to the enemy! And we'll keep fighting for as long as our Commander-in-Chief tells us to.
I've been thinking lately about how I've joined the group of millions of young (and not-so-young) men and women throughout our nation's history that have been called away from their homes and families to defend someone's freedom, and how proud I am to be in this group. Yes, I miss my family--I got up at 5 this morning so I could call home and sing Happy Birthday to my brother (love you, bro!) before they all had cake and ice cream and retired for the night. (Okay, so I walked back to the barracks and went back to sleep for another hour and a half once we were done.) Yes, I get tired of the dust that gets everywhere, and the chow hall having the exact same thing week in and week out, and working seven days week in and week out, and I'm counting down the days until we go back to the states. But if someone had given me a time machine before I'd gone to OCS, and I had known exactly what it was like out here before I even joined the Marine Corps...I would still do exactly what I did.
Semper Fidelis.
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
11 September 2010
15 July 2010
Welcome, Judah!
So, the big news of this week (as I’m sure you all know by now) is that Amy had her baby, and I am now a proud Aunt! I now have a picture of Judah posted by my desk here in my office, and my screensaver scrolls through what pictures I have of him. I wish I could be in Oregon right now, but I am getting by with pictures.
Probably the largest sacrifice that Marines (or anyone in the armed forces) makes is their time with their families. (The second-largest one is sleep…but sleep can be caught up on. At least in my job.) I know several Marines that are on their fifth deployment, each spanning at least 7 months. These Marines have spent more time away from their families than with their families in the past few years. One of my Marines’ wives will give birth to their first child while we are here, and I know there are more in our Battalion in that situation. Some Marines receive “Dear John” letters from their girlfriends (I hated that movie), others will come home to find their spouses have left them for someone else. (Very sad, but I personally know Marines this has happened to.) The old joke that if the Marine Corps wanted you to have a wife it would issue one is just that—a joke—but there is that nugget of truth hidden in it. The Marine Corps is very hard on families and relationships.
Depressed enough yet? Makes my whining about not being there for the first days of my nephew seem paltry. Overall I’m doing well, though. I’ve gotten plenty of pictures e-mailed, just got a letter in the mail, and am anticipating a couple of packages in the next few days.
Our pace has slowed down slightly since the first month and a half that we were here, but we still have missions here and there. Last weekend the news of the weekend was the river reconnaissance we did. I took a couple of Marines that are familiar with military bridging (from a different platoon in my company), and we went to a few locations on the Helmand River to determine suitability for bridging. The river was actually fairly nice, if fairly and fast-flowing. Before we went out there we were worried about how clean it would be, but it looked as clean (possibly cleaner) than any river in the US. And certainly cleaner than some of the beaches in LA.
Once I got back, I got to sit down and fill out all of the river and ford reconnaissance forms, and put together a brief for the unit that requested the recon. It was actually kind of fun, once I got started, figuring out the way to best brief it. Most of the briefs I do follow a pretty standard format and are designed to brief what will happen, not what has happened. This was just different enough to be fun, and by the time I delivered the brief I had gotten comfortable enough with the people I was briefing so as not to be nervous.
A logistics officer recently mentioned to me his observation that engineer school seemed to prepare its students well for briefing. I would have to agree; we did at least four formal briefs, and a couple of other informal briefs. When I got here, I actually went back to some of those briefs I did at school to figure out how best to brief my actual missions.
I hope that’s a random enough collection of thoughts for tonight. I do actually think about posting more often, but nothing I do seems interesting enough to talk about. And I can never say much about the things that are interesting.
Until next time.
Probably the largest sacrifice that Marines (or anyone in the armed forces) makes is their time with their families. (The second-largest one is sleep…but sleep can be caught up on. At least in my job.) I know several Marines that are on their fifth deployment, each spanning at least 7 months. These Marines have spent more time away from their families than with their families in the past few years. One of my Marines’ wives will give birth to their first child while we are here, and I know there are more in our Battalion in that situation. Some Marines receive “Dear John” letters from their girlfriends (I hated that movie), others will come home to find their spouses have left them for someone else. (Very sad, but I personally know Marines this has happened to.) The old joke that if the Marine Corps wanted you to have a wife it would issue one is just that—a joke—but there is that nugget of truth hidden in it. The Marine Corps is very hard on families and relationships.
Depressed enough yet? Makes my whining about not being there for the first days of my nephew seem paltry. Overall I’m doing well, though. I’ve gotten plenty of pictures e-mailed, just got a letter in the mail, and am anticipating a couple of packages in the next few days.
Our pace has slowed down slightly since the first month and a half that we were here, but we still have missions here and there. Last weekend the news of the weekend was the river reconnaissance we did. I took a couple of Marines that are familiar with military bridging (from a different platoon in my company), and we went to a few locations on the Helmand River to determine suitability for bridging. The river was actually fairly nice, if fairly and fast-flowing. Before we went out there we were worried about how clean it would be, but it looked as clean (possibly cleaner) than any river in the US. And certainly cleaner than some of the beaches in LA.
Once I got back, I got to sit down and fill out all of the river and ford reconnaissance forms, and put together a brief for the unit that requested the recon. It was actually kind of fun, once I got started, figuring out the way to best brief it. Most of the briefs I do follow a pretty standard format and are designed to brief what will happen, not what has happened. This was just different enough to be fun, and by the time I delivered the brief I had gotten comfortable enough with the people I was briefing so as not to be nervous.
A logistics officer recently mentioned to me his observation that engineer school seemed to prepare its students well for briefing. I would have to agree; we did at least four formal briefs, and a couple of other informal briefs. When I got here, I actually went back to some of those briefs I did at school to figure out how best to brief my actual missions.
I hope that’s a random enough collection of thoughts for tonight. I do actually think about posting more often, but nothing I do seems interesting enough to talk about. And I can never say much about the things that are interesting.
Until next time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
