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Marines are not concerned with the incredible misinformation…
Posted by Kim on December 26th, 2005
The spirit is evident with this letter:
For the second time in my life, I enter the Christmas season knowing my oldest son will be absent. Not really surprising since a lot of gifted and talented 22-year-olds spend the holidays with friends from school, a girlfriend’s parents or friends on the ski slopes. Good kids, just like my son. Good kids, but not my son.
The first Christmas we were apart, he was safe with the drill instructors of the United States Marine Corps in San Diego. This time, he is half a world away at a forward operating base in western Iraq. I share the pain that any parent feels when the kids aren’t home for the holidays. I hope that the parents whose sons and daughters are not home because of college, social or romantic conflicts can appreciate mine.
Instead of Christmas presents, I assemble packages on a very strict timetable, knowing that anything I send to my son will have about a two-week lag, at best.
The staff of my court has continually hounded me on something to send him as a Christmas gift. When I broached that subject with my son on one of our far-too-infrequent satellite phone conversations, his response was “nothing for me personally, just some stuff for all the Marines here with me.”
Marines live and die with a dedication to their God, their Country and their Corps. Semper fidelis.
They share the toiletries, candy, ammunition, water, paperbacks, junk food, diaper wipes, news from home and the other things that young men need in a war in a faraway desert. They share the pain when their fellow Marines are killed and maimed doing the job that they all volunteered to do.
My son tells me that the best-kept secret of the Marines in Iraq is their morale. He and his fellow Marines actually find great humor in the gloom and doom reporting of the war that permeates the liberal American media. They know, firsthand, they are winning this war and that they are needed and loved by the vast majority of the Iraqi people.
Marines are not concerned with the incredible misinformation that the liberal media is spinning to the American public. They do their job with quiet confidence in their cause, their country and their commander in chief. Even in conditions that most of us would find unbearable, Marines adapt, improvise and overcome. That is the way of the Corps.
December 28th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
Proud Father,
This is the first Christmas I have spent with my family in three years. The previous ones were in Iraq and Afghanistan. Your son is right on the money. When he returns he will have been exposed to more things than most will ever hear of. The transition from Iraq theatre to the states is difficult. It is hard to discuss things with those who were not there, but I have found that writing that stuff down helps. I salute him and all the others.
Fletcher Christian Bowhay