There's an awful lot of wisdom here; read on. These words were spoken "extemporaneously" and recorded at an informal farewell for a retiring Marine Colonel.
IT CERTAINLY WASN'T FUN,
BUT......
By A Retired Marine Colonel
In recent years I've heard many
Marines on the occasion of retirements, farewells, promotions and changes of
command refer to the "fun" they've had in the Marine Corps. "I
loved every day of it and had a lot of fun" has been voiced far too often.
Their definition of "fun"
must be radically different than mine. Since first signing my name on the
dotted line 28 1/2 years ago I have had very little fun.
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Devoting my entire physical and
mental energies training to kill the young men of some other country was not
fun.
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Worrying about how many of my own men
might die or return home maimed was not fun. Knowing that we did not have the
money or time to train as best we should have, was not fun either.
·
It was no fun to be separated from my
wife for months on end, nor was it fun to freeze at night in snow and rain and
mud.
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It was not much fun to miss my
father's funeral because my Battalion Commander was convinced our peacetime
training deployment just couldn't succeed without me.
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Missing countless school and athletic
events my sons very much wanted me to attend was not much fun either. Not being
at my son's high school graduation wasn't fun.
·
Somehow it didn't seem like fun when
the movers showed up with day laborers from the street corner and the destroyed
personal effects were predictable from folks who couldn't hold a job. The lost
and damaged items, often-irreplaceable family heirlooms, weren't much fun to
try to "replace" for pennies on the dollar.
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There wasn't much fun for Colonel with
a family of four to live in a 1700 sq. ft apartment with one bathroom that no
welfare family would have moved into.
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It was not much fun to watch the
downsizing of the services after Desert Storm as we handed out pink slips to
men who risked their lives just weeks before. It has not been much fun to watch
mid grade officers and senior Staff NCO's, after living frugal lives and
investing money where they could, realize that they cannot afford to
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send their sons and daughters to
college.
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Nor do I consider it much fun to
reflect on the fact that our medical system is simply broken.
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It is not much fun to watch my
Marines board helicopters that are just too old and
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train with gear that just isn't what
is should be anymore.
·
It is not much fun to receive the
advanced copies of promotion results and call those who have been passed over
for promotion.
·
It just wasn't much fun to watch the
infrastructure at our bases and stations sink deeper into the abyss because
funding wasn't provided for the latest "crisis."
·
It just wasn't much fun to discharge
good Marines for being a few pounds overweight and have to reenlist Marines who
were HIV positive and not world wide deployable.
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It sure wasn't much fun to look at
the dead Marines in the wake of the Beirut
bombing and ask yourself what in the hell we were doing there.
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I could go on and on. There hasn't
been much fun in a career that spans a quarter
·
century of frustration, sacrifice and
work.
So, why did you serve you might ask? Let me answer that:
I joined the service out of a
profound sense of patriotism. As the son of a career Air Force Senior NCO I
grew up on military bases often with in minutes flying time from Soviet
airfields in East Germany. I remember the Cuban Missile crisis, the construction
of the Berlin Wall, the nuclear attack drills in school and was not many miles
away when Soviet Tanks crushed the aspirations of citizens in Czechoslovakia.
To me there was never any doubt that our great Republic and the last best hope
of free people, needed to prevail in this ultimate contest. I knew I had to
serve. When our nation was in turmoil over our involvement in Vietnam I knew
that we were right in the macro strategic sense and in the moral sense, even if
in the execution we may have been flawed. I still believe to this day that we
did the right thing.
Many of our elites in the nation
today continue to justify their opposition in spite of all evidence that shows
they were wrong and their motives either naive or worse. This nation needed to
survive and I was going to join others like me to insure it did. We joined long
before anyone had ever referred to service in the infantry units of the Marine
Corps as an "opportunity." We knew the pay was lousy, the work hard
and the rewards would be few. We had a cause, we knew we were right and we were
willing
when others were not. Even without a
direct threat to our Nation many still join and serve for patriotic reasons.
I joined the Marines out of a sense of
adventure. I expected to go to foreign countries and do challenging things. I
expected that, should I stick around, my responsibilities would grow, as would
my rewards. It was exciting to be given missions and great Marines to be
responsible for.
Finally, I joined for the
camaraderie. I expected to lead good men and be lead by good men. Marines, who
would speak frankly and freely, follow orders once the decision was made and
who would place the good of the organization above all else. Marines who would
be willing to sacrifice for this great nation. These were men I could trust
with anything and they could trust me. It was the camaraderie that sustained me
when the adventure had faded and the patriotism was tested.
I was a Marine for all of these years
because it was necessary, because it was rewarding, because our nation needed
individuals like us and because I liked and admired the Marines I served with
----- but it sure wasn't fun.
I am leaving active service soon and
am filled with some real concerns for the future of our Marine Corps and even
more so for the other services. I have two sons who are on the path to becoming
Marine Officers themselves and I am concerned about their future and that of
their fellow Marines,sailors, airmen and soldiers. We in the Corps have the
least of the problems but will not be able to survive in a sick DOD.
We have gone from a draft motivated
force to and all volunteer force to the current professional force without the
senior leadership being fully aware of the implications. Some of our ills can
be traced to the fact that our senior leadership doesn't understand the modern
Marine or service member. I can tell you that the 18-year-old who walks through
our door is a far different individual with different motivations that those
just ten years ago. Let me generalize for a moment. The young men from the
middle class in the suburbs come in to "Rambo" for awhile. He has a
home to return to if need be and mom has left his room unchanged. In the back
of his mind he has some thoughts of a career if he likes it or it is rewarding.
The minorities and females are looking for some skills training but also have a
considered a career if "things work out." They have come to serve
their country but only in a very indirect way. They have not joined for the
veterans' benefits because those have been truncated to the
point where they are useless. No matter what they do, there is no way it will
pay for college and the old VA home loan is not competitive either. There are
no real veteran's benefits anymore... It is that simple and our senior
leadership has their head in the sand if they think otherwise. As they progress
through their initial enlistments that are four years or more now, many
conclude that they will not be competitive enough to make it a 20 year career
or don't want to endure the sacrifices required. At that point they decide that
it is time to get on with the rest of their lives and the result is the high
first term attrition we currently have to deal with. The very thought of a less
than honorable discharge holds no
fear whatsoever for most. It is a paper
tiger.
Twenty years ago an individual could
serve two years and walk away with a very attractive amount of Veterans
benefits that could not be matched by any other sector or business in the
country. We have even seen those who serve long enough lose benefits as we
stampede from weaker program to weaker program. This must be reversed. We need
a viable and competitive GI Bill that is grandfathered when you enter the service,
is predicated on an honorable discharge and has increasing benefits for longer
service so we can fill the mid grade ranks with quality people. We must do this
to stop the hemorrhage of first term attrition and to reestablish good faith
and
The modern service member is well
read and informed. He knows more about strategy, diplomacy and current events
than Captains knew when I first joined the Marines. He reads national
newspapers and professional journals and is tuned into CNN. Gone are the days
of the PFC who sat in Butzbach in the Fulda Gap or Camp Schwab on Okinawa and
scanned the Stars and Stripes sports page and listened to AFN. Yet our senior
leadership continue to treat him like a moron from the hinterland that wouldn't
understand what goes on. He is in the service because he wants to be and not
because he can't get a job in the steel mill. Three hots and a cot are not what
he is here for.
The Grunts and other combat arms guys
aren't here for the "training and skills" either. He is remarkably
well disciplined in that he does what he is told to do even though he knows it
is stupid. He is very stoic, but not blind.
You bet that Tommy sees... Yet I see
senior leaders all of the time who pile more on. One should remind them that
their first platoon in 1968 would have told them to stick it where the sun
doesn't shine. These new Warriors only think it... He is well aware of the
moral cowardice of his seniors and their habit of taking the easy way out that
result in more pain and work for their subordinates. This must be reversed. The
senior leadership must have the morale courage to stop the misuse and abuse of
the current force. The force is too small, stretched too thin and too poorly
funded. These
The troops are the best we've ever
had and that is no reason to drive them
Into the dirt.
Our equipment and infrastructure is
shot. There is no other way to put it. We must reinvest immediately and not
just on the big-ticket items like the F-22. That is the equivalent of buying a
new sofa when the roof leaks and the termites are wrecking the structure.
Finally let me spend a minute talking
about camaraderie and leadership. I stayed a Marine because I had great leaders
early on. They were men of great character without preaching, men of courage
without bragging, and men of humor without rancor. They were men who believed
in me and I in them. They encouraged me without being condescending. We were
part of a team and they cared little for promotions, political correctness or
who your father was. They were well-educated renaissance men who were equally
at home in the White House or visiting a sick Marine's child in a trailer park.
They could talk to a barmaid or a baroness with equal ease and make each feel
like a lady. They didn't much tolerate excuses or liars or those with too much
ambition for promotion. One once told me that Priests do the Lord's work and
don't plan to be the Pope. They were in touch with their Marines and supportive
of their seniors. They voiced their opinions freely and without retribution
from above. They probably drank too much and had an eye for beautiful women as
long as they weren't someone's wife or a subordinate. You could trust them with
your life, your wife or your wallet. Some of these great leaders were not my
superiors -- some were my Marines.
We need more like them at the senior
levels of Government and military leadership today. It is indeed sad when
senior defense officials and Generals say things on TV they themselves don't
believe and every Service member knows they are lying. It is sad how out of
touch with our society some of our Generals are. Ask some general you know
these ten questions:
1. How much does a PFC make per month?
2. How big is the gas tank on a Hummvee?
3. Who is your Congressman and who are your two Senators?
4. Name one band that your men listen to.
5. Name one book on the NY times best seller list.
6. Who won the last Superbowl?
7. What is the best selling car in America?
8. What is the WWF?
9. When did you last trust your subordinates enough to take ten
days leave?
10. What is the leave balance of your
most immediate subordinate? Where does he live?
We all know they won't get two right
and therein lies the problem. We are in the midst of monumental leadership
failure at the senior levels. Just recently the CJCS testified that he didn't
know we had a readiness problem or pay problems... Can you imagine that level
of isolation? We must fix our own leadership problems soon.
Quality of life is paid lip service
and everyone below the rank of Col. knows it. We need tough, realistic and challenging
training. But we don't need low pay, no medical benefits and ghetto housing.
There is only so much our morality should allow us to ask of families. Isn't it
bad enough that we ask the service members to sacrifice their lives without
asking their families to sacrifice their education and well being too? We put
our troops on guilt trips when we tell them about how many died for this
country
I stayed a Marine despite the erosion
of benefits, the sacrifices of my wife and children, the betrayal of our junior
troops and the declining quality of life because of great leaders and the
threat to our way of life by a truly evil empire that no longer exists. I want
men to stay in the future. We must reverse these trends. There will be a new
"evil empire" eventually. Sacrifices will need to be made and perhaps
many things cannot change but first and foremost we must fix our leadership
problems. The rest will take care of itself. If we can only fix the leadership
problem...
Then I still can't promise you
"fun," but I can promise you the reward and satisfaction of being
able to look in the mirror for the rest of your life and say: "I gave more
to America than I ever took from America...and I'm proud of that."
Semper fi and God Bless you all! >>
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