Marine Corps | Marine Corps
Mar.24.2013
My path toward joining the Marine Corps all began with me not thinking I had too many options after dropping out of community college. I hadn’t really planned very well for the future while I was in high school. My parents didn’t have money to send me away to school and I didn’t really know...
|
Mar.03.2013
Then I glanced behind me at the four to five foot beach grass, being from Illinois I had no idea what the true name of that type of grass is called but I imagined there had to be similar type grass along the beaches of the south pacific. During the battles, there had to be platoons of...
|
|
Mar.01.2013
Part of me had already bought into the marketing bullshit they sell so well to young working and lower class kids who have no real future in their home towns. “The Few, the Proud, the Marines”-- see if you’re man enough to make the team. At eighteen, I had enough self doubt and thought...
|
Feb.02.2013
Arriving at the San Diego airport the evening of May 3rd 1982, after a long flight from Chicago’s O’Hare International airport, I began to have severe doubts about my decision to enlist in the Marine Corps. Forty some civilians all from mid western states had been on the flight together...
|
Dec.15.2012
This is my Christmas blog from last year. I wanted to share it with my readers again. In re-reading it I found memories of pleasures of a childhood Christmas surfing once again. These happy memories ended after I turned 13 and the abuse started but I consider myself fortunate to have them...
|
May.12.2012
Here we are at that day of days, celebrating our mothers. Each year I have knots in my stomach as I think of my mother. Mothers are meant to nurture us, to give us love and support, to make us the most important thing in their life. Ideally they are disciplinarians, firm but not harsh, guides...
|
|
Mar.10.2012
My younger sister, as an adult, once made the comment that she wished we could go back to being a child with mom and dad still taking care of us. I viewed this statement with horror. To my sister’s point of view we were coddled and fed, watched over and guided in such a manner as to make her feel...
|
Jan.20.2012
When I was a tiny child I remember my mother rocking me and murmuring, “What shall I do when my baby grows up?” It was a memory that lingered for many decades, bringing comfort like the soft stroke of a hand. Despite all of the sexual abuse I...
|
Sep.17.2010
Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes
"There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier's sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then...
|
Jul.31.2010
Today I came across this short story I wrote many years ago and thought I'd share it with my Internet friends.
Jerry Bennett was my best friend in the fifth grade. He had blond curly hair and freckles and a lanky body that looked as if it had been put together as an after thought. I knew he was...
|