To all Marines Semper Fi. The USMC is 242 years old today....Happy Birthday.
Tommorrow is Veterans Day, so Happy Veterans day Vets and thank all of you for your service!
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Thank you sir. Semper Fi.
Right back at ya!
Mykcob4 I've got a proposition for you. Send me a message directly and I'll tell you all about it. Or if you can't get in contact with be for any reason contact flamencabot.
I'm not one to raise the flag or defile it. I recognize it as a human weakness to be touched by it, at best, but I don't understand why. I do understand that continued jubilant observances of mankind's combative history is probably never going to make any sense at all to me. Celebrating death in uniform only serves to pretend there's honor in it. Like the man wrote: "See the soldier with his gun who must be dead to be admired." (Gordon Lightfoot - Don Quixote).
I was in uniform but do not consider myself a vet. I did not join for reasons of displaying patriotism or any other call to duty to serve a nation. I joined to learn something I could use after the military. I joined for me only. And, I'll also claim that everyone I knew while in uniform joined for the same reason. Most did their utmost to do the least most and hopefully while high.
Pitar I didn't join out of duty or any horseshit like that. I join because I lost my baseball scholarship when I broke my shoulder and didn't really know what to do. I had no "backup plan" at the time. I joined the USMC because I don't do anything halfway.
I learned to love the Marine Corps because it always asks the best of you individually. It doesn't allow you to compromise. Yes, there is a good bit of politics in the Corps. Just look at Oliver North, Mike Flynn and the people that disgrace not only the Corps but the nation.
You ARE a Vet, no matter what you say. You sacrificed in the fact that you gave your youth to this nation to a job that underpaid you, overworked you, and asked you to do so without any sass.
So when tomorrow comes Pitar, accept the nations thanks for your service. They need to appreciate it maybe even more than you. It isn't patriotism. It isn't remembering death or heroism. It's respect. Veterans day isn't for veterans in the same way birthdays aren't for the people being celebrated. It's for everyone else.
Let me tell you the parameters of my career.
I joined and contracted to become an air traffic controller. The Corps made me a scout sniper. So for ten years that was my job.
The next two years I spent on the Drill Field because it was either that or become a recruiter.
The next ten years I spent as an aviation avionics electrician/maintenance controller. Although I kept being called back to my primary MOS as a scout sniper.
So in all that time, I moved around a lot. I saw some combat. I made a lot of temporary friends. I guess my best friend was the Corps because no matter where I went and who I was with I knew that I could count on the Corps, which actually means I had to rely on myself. I took that with me to the civilian world. The same self-confidence. When the Marine Corps advertises that they will make a man out of you it isn't an idle promise. It isn't about making you a tough guy or a war hero. It's about making you take personal responsibility for everything you do.
That's why everywhere I go when I find a Marine, I find a friend.
So Pitar thanks for your service. It help make you who you are today.
@Mykcob3 "Tommorrow is Veterans Day"
In Brit countries we call that "Armistice Day" or 'Remembrance Day." It commemorates the end of hostilities in World War I at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month. They sell bright red paper poppies to raise money for veterans' causes. Today was the 99th Armistice Day.
Thanks to all who served in all the wars. Lets' hope we live long enough to find a better way.
We use to call it "Armistice Day" but at a certain point the nation felt we should a holiday to celebrate the end of every war that was fought and those that fought in them. Some wanted to rename it VFW day but that exclided people that served but never fought in a foriegn war. So the USA decided on "Veterans Day" and it has been that way for a couple of decades.
Regardless of your insistence that I'm a vet, by definition and lack of any further imagination to see people for who they really are in or out of uniform, I defer to those who suffered the throes of conflict as true vets. To those who did not suffer directly I consider in a different context altogether. They can claim to be vets by definition all day long but I don't confer upon them that privilege.
I'm the son of a vet. He created and brought home his demons yet still managed to fight through them to raise a family as best he could. Despite my personal opinion of him I still see him as the victim of his veteran status. Everyone else who were not directly involved in conflict are merely administratively defined vets, which is in my opinion akin to theism's doctrinal definition of piety. No thanks.
Most people who know me do not know I'm ex-military. It's none of their business and the ultimate insult to true vets is to thank me for my service.