September 10, 1999

Graduation Day.  I survived.  I made it.  I'm a Marine.  I am not going home a failure.  My driving force in this man made hell hole has been to prove not only to myself but to everyone who said I couldn't do this that they were wrong! I have friends back home who talk about doing things and never do. They are good people, but when I look down the road I see a time when they will sit at a bar and say " I think I could have been this or done that.. I think.." I didn't want to wonder, I wanted to know.  No mater what happens from this moment on, I know that I can and will make it through the hard times.  For all intents and purposes, I am 6'2 and bulletproof.  Fear isn't my enemy anymore.

Thirteen weeks ago, I wondered what the hell I was thinking.  Now I wonder why I waited so long.  When I got here I weighed 223 pounds.  Today I weigh 172 pounds.  I still have a black eye I got during the Crucible.  My grandfather asked me if I went to boot camp or a concentration camp when he saw me.

There are a lot of things I want to do now.  I want a beer.  I want a dip.  I want to go home and sleep in a bed without 80 other guys in the room.  I'm excited.  I can't sit still.

On the drive out the gate of Parris Island in broad daylight, I look back and realize how different it looks now.  The night I got here it looked like the gates of hell, now it looks similar to the entrance to UMass the last time I saw it.  It is a black dot on the map that is the journey of my life... just a black dot... well maybe it's a BIG black dot.  I'm going home, thank God almighty, I'm going home.

The More Things Change...

This past June I celebrated the 11th anniversary of getting home from Iraq.  The significance of getting home on June 6th is definitely not lost on me.  The last eleven years have been a roller coaster of both good and bad times.  Losing old friends, making new ones.  Losing jobs, finding jobs.  Agreeing with people, fighting with people.  Drinking far too much, failing to quit drinking.. ;)  I loved being a Marine.  I got out because I realized that I no longer fit into the Corps.  I can live with that.  I wanted to do other things.  I wanted to be something else.  I had further to go and the Corps wasn't going to let me get there.  That's not a slam on the Marine Corps or me.  I answered the call.  I can say I had and have what it takes.  

Eleven years have passed since the invasion of Iraq, or the War on Terror, or Operation Enduring Freedom, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, or Bush's Illegal War or W's Revenge Tour, or Imperialism, or Stomp out the Muslims, or Let's Steal All the Oil.  These are just some of the names it has been called.  I prefer to use the term my father used.. My step into history.  I wasn't on the sidelines of this, I was in the game.  This has caused me some issues since I got out and came home.  Sometimes I was jealous that my friends were ahead of me in terms of relationships, careers, things they could afford.  Other times I was angry when they'd say "We shouldn't be there!" But most of the time I really felt alone.  They didn't get it, they don't get it and they never will get it.  War isn't an abstract philosophy to me anymore.  It is a very real, very scary event that people die in far away from home for reasons that may or may not be true.  

Why do I bring this up?  Unless you are living on a deserted island somewhere, then you should realize that the global machine is cranking up again.  Russia is on the move, Israel and Palestine are at each other's throats, Iran is rattling its saber and Iraq and Afghanistan are as much a mess as they were 11 years ago and the rest of the world is just waiting to see what America will do.  Politicians come and go and with them come conflicts that require sacrifice.  But we keep sending the troops into harms way without properly equipping them to win the battle and return home.  We keep saying we'll support them no matter what and then sit by as veterans die because the VA is a bogged down bureaucracy. The VFW was a dying organization 15 years ago, now it's ranks are swelling with angry disillusioned servicemen and women.  The Marine Corps teaches us to improvise, adapt and overcome.  It seems obvious that we are doing something wrong if we are about to go back to Iraq for the 3rd time since 1990; we can't take care of our veterans;  the rest of the world wants to be like us and not listen to us.