Mariner Story Quotes

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college. And I realize some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding. For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I'm kidding. We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding. If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

And isn't that how you become tender, vulnerable? The tissue-softening marination of your own mind, the quicksand of mental indulgence?

Dad had this story. A Marine and a Navy guy walk into a bathroom together. They both take a piss, and then sailor goes to the sink. The Marine heads for the door, and the sailor says, "Hey- in the Navy they teach us to wash up after we take a leak." And the Marine turns around and says, "Yeah? Well, in the Marines they teach us not to piss on our hands.

When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to catch whole for they will break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book-to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.

I became amazed at how much my men would tolerate if someone just took the time to explain the why of it all to them.

I've had people tell me to get over it. I politely tell them, 'How about if I chop off your finger and see if it grows back?

How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise - the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream - be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book - to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.

We had it drilled into us time and time again: 'If someone above you falls, grip tightly to the vertical rope and cradle that person in your arms until help can get to you.'...If someone fell down on me I swear I would have bitten him on the ass and would keep on biting until he got off onhis own.

A story must be exceptional enough to justify its telling. We storytellers are all ancient mariners, and none of us is justified in stopping wedding guests, unless he has something more unusual to relate than the ordinary experiences of every average man and woman.

With his marine clocks, John Harrison tested the waters of space-time. He succeeded, against all odds, in using the fourth—temporal—dimension to link points on the three-dimensional globe. He wrested the world’s whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.

My skin prickled and I looked back at the ocean. None of us ask for the things we inherit; they are thrust upon us, willy-nilly. Like The Marine, I suddenly understood. Mom and I weren't trespassing. This house was ours. This view was ours. And that seemed as absurd and unreal as the stories Sailor Hat had spun for me on the ferry.

From this point on... every day is a celebration and every meal a feast.

The mariners all ‘gan work the ropes, where they were wont to do: They raised their limbs like lifeless tools - We were a ghastly crew.

If freedom is free and none need worry, then what blood drops for thee?

No limpid daughter slept in the backseat; no strange teenage girl sat next to me, stewing in her own nightmarish conciousness. (And isn't that how you become tender, vulnerable? The tissue-softening marination of your own mind, the quicksand of mental indulgence?)

You can only pretend that you're already dead and thus free yourself up to focus on three things: 1) finding and killing the enemy, 2) communicating the situation and resulting actions to adjacent units and higher headquarters, and 3) triaging and treating your wounded. If you love your men, you naturally think about number three first, but if you do you're wrong. The grim logic of combat dictates that numbers one and two take precedence.

From night problems we learned one lasting lesson: when a map and a compass come into contact with a second lieutenant, prepare yourself for confusion. Throughout,

he was an awesome marine as a person he is a scam i know he try to scam me out 4800 but he didn't get nothing

In life, one can choose to go up, down, or standstill. I choose to move up.

It is not about being high-speed or having the coolest gear. It’s about the raw lessons of combat that have been learned by the men that have come before. It’s about having heart.

But it’s better to live as you will want to have lived rather than spend your time worrying about the end. You are right here in your story. Don’t skip ahead.

A word of advice to you men. Many times in your Marine Corps career you are going to feel like resigning. But don’t forget: one son of a bitch or four or five cannot ruin the Corps.

I learned to cook by helping my mother in the kitchen. I assisted her with the canning, and she began assigning me some other tasks like making salad dressing or kneading dough for bread. My first attempt at preparing an entire dinner¾the menu included pork chops Hawaiian, which called for the pork to be marinated in papaya nectar, ginger, cumin, and other spices before being grilled with onions and pineapple cubes¾required an extensive array of exotic ingredients. When he saw my grocery list, my father commented, “I hope she marries a rich man.

There is a theory that when a planet, like our earth for example, has manifested every form of life, when it has fulfilled itself to the point of exhaustion, it crumbles to bits and is dispersed like star dust throughout the universe. It does not roll on like a dead moon, but explodes, and in the space of a few minutes, there is not a trace of it visible in the heavens. In marine life we have a similar effect. it is called implosion. When an amphibian accustomed to the black depths rises above a certain level, when the pressure to which it adapts itself is lifted, the body bursts inwardly. Are we not familiar with this spectacle in the human being also? The norsemen who went berserk, the malay who runs amuck—are these not examples of implosion and explosion? When the cup is full it runs over. but when the cup and that which it contains are one substance, what then? There are moments when the elixir of life rises to such overbrimming splendor that the soul spills over. In the seraphic smile of the madonnas the soul is seen to flood the psyche. The moon of the face becomes full; the equation is perfect. A minute, a half minute, a second later, the miracle has passed. something intangible, something inexplicable, was given out—and received. In the life of a human being it may happen that the moon never comes to the full. In the life of some human beings it would seem, indeed, that the only mysterious phenomenon observable is that of perpetual eclipse. In the case of those afflicted with genius, whatever the form it may take, we are almost frightened to observe that there is nothing but a continuous waxing and waning of the moon. Rarer still are the anomalous ones who, having come to the full, are so terrified by the wonder of it that they spend the rest of their lives endeavoring to stifle that which gave them birth and being. The war of the mind is the story of the soul-split. When the moon was at full there were those who could not accept the dim death of diminution; they tried to hang full-blown in the zenith of their own heaven. They tried to arrest the action of the law which was manifesting itself through them, through their own birth and death, in fulfillment and transfiguration. Caught between the tides they were sundered; the soul departed the body, leaving the simulacrum of a divided self to fight it out in the mind. Blasted by their own radiance they live forever the futile quest of beauty, truth and harmony. Depossessed of their own effulgence they seek to possess the soul and spirit of those to whom they are attracted. They catch every beam of light; they reflect with every facet of their hungry being. instantly illumined, When the light is directed towards them, they are also speedily extinguished. The more intense the light which is cast upon them the more dazzling—and blinding—they appear. Especially dangerous are they to the radiant ones; it is always towards these bright and inexhaustible luminaries that they are most passionately drawn…

During the few months Troy had been back home, he’d told his friends about us, and so we quickly eased into the conversation as though we’d all known each other for many years. They embarrassed us with great thanks for having served overseas. They recounted combat events Troy had told them, and we realized by the context of their stories that Troy had made us heroes for his friends because we’d been heroes to him. At this point I was the saddest I’d yet been over Troy’s passing, because the true friend from war is the friend who obliterates his own story by telling the stories of others.

According to the biographical notes, Monsieur Julian Carax was twenty-seven, born with the century in Barcelona, and currently living in Paris; he wrote in French and worked at night as a professional pianist in a hostess bar. The blurb, written in the pompous, moldy style of the age, proclaimed that this was a first work of dazzling courage, the mark of a protean and trailblazing talent, and a sign of hope for the future of all of European letters. In spite of such solemn claims, the synopsis that followed suggested that the story contained some vaguely sinister elements slowly marinated in saucy melodrama, which, to the eyes of Monsieur Roquefort, was always a plus: after the classics what he most enjoyed were tales of crime, boudoir intrigue, and questionable conduct. One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep. She laughed nervously. She had around her a burning aura of loneliness. "You remind me a bit of Julian," she said suddenly. "The way you look and your gestures. He used to do what you are doing now. He would stare at you without saying a word, and you wouldn't know what he was thinking, and so, like an idiot, you'd tell him things it would have been better to keep to yourself." "Someone once said that the moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever." I gulped down the last of my coffee and looked at her for a few moments without saying anything. I thought about how much I wanted to lose myself in those evasive eyes. I thought about the loneliness that would take hold of me that night when I said good-bye to her, once I had run out of tricks or stories to make her stay with me any longer. I thought about how little I had to offer her and how much I wanted from her. "You women listen more to your heart and less to all the nonsense," the hatter concluded sadly. "That's why you live longer." But the years went by in peace. Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don't stop at your station.

the Marines, if successful, would prove even more extraordinary than an attack on the embassy. The Marines were, after all, a symbol of American might. For the operation, he brought in Abu Haydar Musawi, who commanded a martyrdom group known as the Husayni Suicide Forces. On October 18—the same day Reagan’s

My career still strikes me as miraculous. That a boy raised on Marine bases in the South, taught by Roman Catholic nuns in backwater Southern towns that loathed Catholics, and completed his education with an immersion into The Citadel—the whole story sounds fabricated, impossible even to me. Maybe especially to me.

Everyone acted like they knew so much about the war. But none of them really knew anything besides what they had learned through Internet searches or shady half-truths political pundits spouted from the comfort of their news desks. Nothing could ever be flushed out because nobody bothered to ask the troops or look at both sides of the story.

the

You mean the retired sergeant of Marines,” said Sherlock Holmes.

Nubs cried as he chased them across the cold, coarse sand. Because of his wound, he could not keep up. He dropped to the ground, exhausted and completely alone.

I’ll give you one chance to run, but may your shoulder always whisper in your ear… “It’s best to watch out for men, like me.

The leading cause of death in expectant mothers is murder.

Once all the little questions have been answered, those answers must be practiced again and again until they become muscle memory.

Welcome to the Beirut Hilton. Military Discounts Available.

But the Marines were there not to fight; they were to serve only as peacekeepers.

Given Assad’s intractability, the administration decided to sideline Syria and focus first on Israel, a snub that would ultimately prove to be a serious misstep.

The synchronized suicide attacks that Sunday morning resulted in the deaths of 299 U.S. and French peacekeepers and scores of wounded. The cost to Hezbollah was two suicide bombers.

Keep vaunting head over heart, and soon the head will arrive at the complete folly of any kind of fight and meekly surrender the treasure to the first bandit with enough heart to demand it.

plastic bottle of water. One of the Marines pulled his ruck over and used it as a pillow, catching some sleep. Another went downstairs, to the store on the first story of the building. It was a smoke shop; he returned with cartons of flavored cigarettes. He lit a few, and a cherry scent mingled with the heavy stench that always hung over Iraq, a smell of sewage and sweat and death.

I got to the end of the story before I'd realized what she'd done. Just as Jake had waited, interviewing the Mariners, Jillian had waited out my first answers so that I would give her a better one.

I don’t know if our people ever stopped to think about the fact that the men with whom they had these allegedly in-depth conversations might have the equivalent of a third-grade education, at best. They knew their city, yes, but they didn’t have the education to implement any of the grandiose ideas that we were proposing. They never came to fruition anyway, at least not during our time in Iraq.

Carl’s concept of freedom had come to be embodied by a mariner in a storm, wholly responsible for himself, accountable to no one else, asking no quarter from the sea, measuring his worth by his immediate actions.

On the same convoy were two marine “snuffies,” or combat correspondents, Steve Berntson and Dale Dye. Both were marine sergeants with unusual jobs. They were “military journalists,” or, rather, public relations reporters in the field charged with writing stories about their fellow marines. They were assigned to the Information Services Office (ISO) and covered the war the same way as civilian journalists but with a mandate to stress the positive. They had a license to go anywhere and do anything that could be turned into a story, so they were far more widely traveled than most marines, and they had a great deal more independence.

Sadly, the dark echoes of our time in Iraq still resonate with many of Echo Company, who battle with the effects of post-traumatic stress (PTS). Including me. I never refer to it as a disorder. A good friend of mine, Charles Adam Walker, taught me that. He wrote an article called “Postcombat Residue” in the December 2013 issue of the Marine Corps Gazette. It shaped the way I look at PTS today. Adam uses a prophetic analogy, likening the effects and residue of combat to those on a stained, well-used coffee mug. Indelibly tainted, yet still capable of performing its intended use day in and day out—but the residue will always remain.

This is the story of one deployment of one medical officer—a mother and the wife of a Marine—who also happened to be a Navy psychologist. She was deployed to Iraq to care for the Marines and the medical personnel.

We’re the front line,” Danny had told Wade. “On September eleventh, 2001, they didn’t call the navy. They didn’t call the Marine Corps. They called the policemen and the firemen. We are the soldiers of our community.

Returning home to the postwar housing shortage, Weinstein took out a $600,000 loan, built an apartment complex in Atlanta, and offered the 140 family units to veterans at rents averaging less than $50 per month. “Priorities: 1) Ex-POWs; 2) Purple Heart Vets; 3) Overseas Vets; 4) Vets; 5) Civilians,” read his ad. “… We prefer Ex-GI’s, and Marines and enlisted personnel of the Navy. Ex–Air Corps men may apply if they quit telling us how they won the war.” His rule banning KKK members drew threatening phone calls. “I gave them my office and my home address,” Weinstein said, “and told them I still had the .45 I used to shoot carabau [water buffalo] with.

Stories continue in all directions to include even the retelling of the stories themselves, as legend is informed by interpretation, and interpretation is informed by time. And so I tell my story to you, as the Mariner told his: he, standing outside the wedding party, snatching at a passing wrist, paralyzing his victim with his gaze; I, standing with my family at the edge of this immortal forest. I tell this story because telling this story is what I must do.

The real Syrian fear,” as one observer noted, “is that peace between Lebanon and Israel would draw yet another Arab state into the Israeli orbit and leave Damascus further isolated and open to devastating attack by the Jewish state.

The fifty-two-year-old Assad, who had seized power in a bloodless coup, considered Lebanon a part of greater Syria, a hangover from the era before the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, which saw the region carved up into smaller nations.

Where do we find men like this?” the president continued. “We all know the answer. They come from families like yours, from farms and villages, towns and cities across this nation. What they did for us—for our country—is what America is all about.

It’s worth it,” she said. “There are some amazing reefs and sea life there.” Jacob still looked baffled. “Do you want to be a marine biologist or something?” “No. I just want to see it.” “Why?” “Because it’s there. Because it’s something in the world I haven’t experienced yet.

Billy read the Bible from cover to cover while he was in the suck, every Marine got one on request. He has often regretted it and this is one of those times. The Bible has a story to puncture every equivocation and denial. The Bible—New Testament as well as Old—does not forgive.

They are all but forgotten now, as all men in war are ultimately forgotten. They are eternal, as all men in war are eternal. Who they were, where they were from in an America both blessed and brutal, the gung ho innocence that turned into the darkest horror as they traveled through the maze of being a marine, is not some period piece or contrived cautionary tale but the most timeless story of all: of humanity in the face of all that has become inhuman, the inhumanity of all that once was human, the remarkable sacrifice that men are still willing to make even when the world has gone mad, united by that thing you cannot ever control in war, however brave or careful or fearful or raging with revenge: who dies, because so many died after that game; who lives, because many did live despite combat and serious injury. The Mosquito Bowl.

Billy read the Bible from cover to cover while he was in the suck, every Marine got one on request. He has often regretted it and this is one of those times. The Bible has a story to puncture every equivocation and denial. The Bible – New Testament as well as Old – does not forgive.

I first learned about Aquino from a concerned mother in Santa Rosa who called the television station with one of the most horrific stories I’ve ever heard. You’ll meet her. Her name is Denise Beaumont and she arranged most everything for this event. Anyway, I began investigating and found out how widespread pedophilia and satanism actually are! It’s not limited to poor hill folk or a lone stranger on a playground like I thought; the richest, most influential people are involved. We even have a judge here in Marin County that is rumored to be a satanist! The more I looked, the more I learned that what I really didn’t want to believe was real.” Carol’s blue eyes widened as she leaned forward to whisper, “I found out its happening right here in my own back yard! My father, who is Air Force Intelligence, lives around the corner. When I told him what I discovered, he advised me to forget about it!

The rise of the western crews may have shocked eastern fans, but it delighted newspaper editors across the country in the 1930s. The story fit in with a larger sports narrative that had fueled newspaper and newsreel sales since the rivalry between two boxers—a poor, part-Cherokee Coloradoan named Jack Dempsey and an easterner and ex-Marine named Gene Tunney—had riveted the nation’s attention in the 1920s. The East versus West rivalry carried over to football with the annual East-West Shrine Game and added interest every January to the Rose Bowl—then the nearest thing to a national collegiate football championship. And it was about to have additional life breathed into it when an oddly put together but spirited, rough-and-tumble racehorse named Seabiscuit would appear on the western horizon to challenge and defeat the racing establishment’s darling, the king of the eastern tracks, War Admiral.

You always hear all these statements like "Freedom isn't free." You hear the President talking about all these people making sacrifices. But you never really know until you carry one of them in a casket. When you feel their bodyweight. When you feel them. That's when you know. That's when you understand.

Wherever forest can develop in a species-appropriate manner, they offer particularly beneficial functions that are legally placed above lumber production in many forest laws. I am talking about respite and recovery. Current discussions between environmental groups and forest users, together with the first encouraging results-such as the forest in Konigsdorf-give hope that in the future forests will continue to live out their hidden lives, and our descendants will still have the opportunity to walk through the trees in wonder. This what this ecosystem achieves: the fullness of life with tens of thousands of species interwoven and interdependent. And just how important this interconnected global network of forests is to other areas of Nature is made clear by this little story from Japan. Katsuhiko Matsunaga, a marine chemist at the Hokkaido University, discovered that leaves falling into streams and rivers leach acids into the ocean that stimulate growth of plankton, the first and most important building block in the food chain. More fish because of the forest? The researcher encouraged the planting of more trees in coastal areas, which did, in fact, lead to higher yields for fisheries and oyster growers.

my flamethrower nozzle fit perfectly inside of it.” Woody inserted the flamethrower into the smokestack and held down the trigger. It poured a violent stream of fire down into the fortification. In a single act, he burned the occupants to death and silenced the machine guns that had killed dozens of U.S. Marines.

When I describe for my far-away friends the Northwest’s subtle shades of weather — from gloaming skies of ‘high-gray’ to ‘low-gray’ with violet streaks like the water’s delicate aura — they wonder if my brain and body have, indeed, become water-logged. Yet still, I find myself praising the solace and privacy of fine, silver drizzle, the comforting cloaks of salt, mold, moss, and fog, the secretive shelter of cedar and clouds. Whether it’s in the Florida Keys, along the rocky Maine coast, within the Gulf of Mexico’s warm curves, on the brave Outer Banks; or, for those who nestle near inland seas, such as the brine-steeped Great Salk Lake or the Midwest’s Great Lakes — water is alive and in relationship with those of us who are blessed with such a world-shaping, yet abiding, intimate ally. Every day I am moved by the double life of water — her power and her humility. But most of all, I am grateful for the partnership of this great body of inland sea. Living by water, I am never alone. Just as water has sculpted soil and canyon, it also molds my own living space, and every story I tell. …Living by water restores my sense of balance and natural rhythm — the ebb and flow of high tides and low tides, so like the rise and fall of everyday life. Wind, water, waves are not simply a backdrop to my life, they are steady companions. And that is the grace, the gift of inviting nature to live inside my home. Like a Chambered Nautilus I spin out my days, drifting and dreaming, nurtured by marine mists, like another bright shell on the beach, balancing on the back of a greater body.

Studs Terkel was waiting for a number 146 bus alongside two well-groomed business types. "This was before the term yuppie was used," he explains. "But that was what they were. He was in Brooks Brothers and Gucci shoes and carrying the Wall Street Journal under his arm. She was a looker. I mean stunning - Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus and carrying Vanity Fair." Terkel, who is 95, has long been a Chicago icon, every bit as accessible and integral to the cultural life of the Windy City as Susan Sontag was to New York. He had shared the bus stop with this couple for several mornings but they had always failed to acknowledge him. "It hurts my ego," he quips. "But this morning the bus was late and I thought, this is my chance." The rest of the story is his. "I say, 'Labour Day is coming up.' Well, it was the wrong thing to say. He looks toward me with a look of such contempt it's like Noel Coward has just spotted a bug on his collar. He says, 'We despise unions.' I thought, oooooh. The bus is still late. I've got a winner here. Suddenly I'm the ancient mariner and I fix him with my glittering eye. 'How many hours a day do you work?' I ask. He says, 'Eight.' 'How comes you don't work 18 hours a day like your great-great-grandfather did? You know why? Because four guys got hanged in Chicago in 1886 fighting for the eight-hour day ... For you.

Henry Hudson was in his forties when he stepped into the light of history, a seasoned mariner, a man with a strong and resourceful wife and three sons, a man born and raised not only to the sea but to the quest for a northern passage to Asia, who, weaned from infancy on the legends of his predecessors, probably couldn't help but be obsessed by it.

Here Coleridge advances the beautiful suggestive idea that the poetic imagination can hold open for us a shape or a space we have yet to grow into. The great works of art and literature are, as it were, making room for our future insights, giving us the shapes, the stories, the images into which the undeveloped antennae of our inner life can grow.

The mission’s ambiguous nature frustrated General Vessey. “American military forces are reared in the doctrine that says that if you are going to use the forces, you need to give them a task to perform. What is it that you want them to do?” Vessey said. “We never got a sufficiently defined task that either we or the forces on the ground really understood.

The great gulf between the story told by the young reporters and the story that military people knew as their truth may be the reason that, almost a half century later, the Vietnam War remains the source of a cultural rift in America. Today a small but growing group of writers is looking back and finding a different story than the one told by many reporters of the day.

Posing as someone, or something, else is the story of many women and men who have experienced repression and made a bid for freedom. It is the story of a gay U.S. Marine who had to pretend he was straight. It is the story of a Jewish family in Nazi Germany posing as Protestants. It is the story of a black South African who tried to make his skin lighter under apartheid.

During forced exercise one day, Louie fell into step with William Harris, a twenty-five-year-old marine officer, the son of marine general Field Harris. Tall and dignified, with a face cut in hard lines, Harris had been captured in the surrender of Corregidor in May 1942. With another American,* he had escaped and embarked on an eight-and-a-half-hour swim across Manila Bay, kicking through a downpour in darkness as fish bit him. Dragging himself ashore on the Japanese-occupied Bataan Peninsula, he had begun a run for China, hiking through jungles and over mountains, navigating the coast in boats donated by sympathetic Filipinos, hitching rides on burros, and surviving in part by eating ants. He had joined a Filipino guerrilla band, but when he had heard of the American landing at Guadalcanal, the marine in him had called. Making a dash by boat toward Australia in hopes of rejoining his unit, he had gotten as far as the Indonesian island of Morotai before his journey ended. Civilians had turned him in to the Japanese, who had discovered that he was a general’s son and sent him to Ofuna. Even here, he was itching to escape.

Second-mountain organizations touch people at their depths and leave a permanent mark. You always know when you meet a Marine, a Morehouse man, a Juilliard pianist, a NASA scientist. These institutions have a collective purpose, a shared set of rituals, a common origin story. They nurture thick relationships and demand full commitment. They don’t merely educate; they transform.

While at sea, a Marine officer displayed a giant map on a wall. It showed the volcanic island known as Iwo Jima. “We are only in reserve! The other divisions will be landing in the morning, and we will stand by in case they need us,” an officer shouted to the men. As Woody’s ship floated out, the men started to get worried. The other divisions had 80 percent casualties on the first day.

And the Corps as a whole focuses on its heroes and on its magnificent battle history, partly to instill a strong service culture in its new recruits, partly to instill the values necessary to do the job, and partly to teach all Marines that they have the potential to achieve something beyond themselves. After all, young Marines can understand and aspire to valor and greatness; death and defeat they cannot.

This has just came in from high command.  There will be no loitering on the beachhead.  Anyone found skinny dipping or fishing with grenades will be put on a charge.  Two marines have already been disciplined for this offence.’  A few men laughed and he smiled.  ‘Also there will be no fraternisation with the local female populace.  This will not be tolerated.  High command believe they may well carry some exotic disease our doctors may not be able to treat.’  That brought a little more laughter.  ‘Again two marines have already been disciplined,’ the rest of his sentence was drowned out by the laughter.  He waited until it died down again.  ‘In their defence the marines stated that the females plied them with a local beverage made from coconuts.  As there doesn’t seem to be any coconut trees in space the high command disbelieved their story.  So don’t try it, you won’t get away with it.

Finally, there was the formidable difficulty of navigation. Making extraordinarily complex spherical trigonometry calculations based on figures taken from a crowd of instruments, navigators groped over thousands of miles of featureless ocean toward targets or destination islands that were blacked out at night, often only yards wide, and flat to the horizon. Even with all the instruments, the procedures could be comically primitive. “Each time I made a sextant calibration,” wrote navigator John Weller, “I would open the escape hatch on the flight deck and stand on my navigation desk and the radio operator’s desk while [the radioman] held on to my legs so I would not be sucked out of the plane.” At night, navigators sometimes resorted to following the stars, guiding their crews over the Pacific by means not so different from those used by ancient Polynesian mariners. In a storm or clouds, even that was impossible.

The Lighthouse by Stewart Stafford Apart and alone, From where the ships dock, Stands the white sentinel edifice on a promontory rock. Like the land's index finger, At the extent of the sea, Warning passing vessels where it's safe to be. It's one luminous eye, Swivels around its clear head, To keep lucky sailors off the seabed. It seeks no credit, And needs no thanks, Saluting proudly from above the fog banks. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

The only detail I knew about my dad’s experience in World War II was that he liked when they served chicken-fried steak. I was probably 13 when he told that story, and with the unblinking sanctimony that only a teenager can wield, I remember saying, “Wasn’t that really unhealthy?” In a look that I can only describe as for-a-smart-kid-you’re-remarkably-stupid, my father replied, “We were in planes carrying bombs, and enemy planes were shooting at us. Fried food was not a problem.

It wasn't surprising and it wasn't quite real. I kept thinking it was a bizarre mistake or a made-up story, until I called her mother, who told me how beautifully made up Marine's corpse was and urged me to see her at the funeral chapel. This with her cigarettes still in my ashtray, her hair still in my brush, her clothes still in my car, her voice still in my ears, so soon after we'd been looking at ourselves together in my mirror and she the more lithe, the more fluidly beautiful of the two

Assad is willing to run a high-risk policy using his considerable assets to physically intimidate Lebanese communal leaders as well as to employ military force in support of Syria’s surrogates,” one secret State Department memo explained. “Syria has become so implacably opposed to Amin Gemayel that it is willing to see him fall rather than attempt to reach some accommodation with him.” To accomplish this, Assad tapped Druze and Shiite militias as proxies to wage war on Lebanon’s central government and undermine Gemayel.

. Our platoon, along with third and fourth, launched out of the Combat Outpost on foot, with two Humvees mounting medium machine guns in support. After fighting our way west through the city for an hour or so, Joker One received orders to hit a building “just north of the Saddam mosque minaret, at the very middle of the city.” Immediately, the Ox’s voice crackled over the radio. “Roger, Bastard Five, will do. Be advised, what’s a minaret? Over.” A long silence followed, then the radio barked back: “Joker Five, the minaret is the large tower that every single mosque in the city has next to it. Looks like a big dick. Over.

As for the world beyond my family—well, what they would see for most of my teenage years was not a budding leader but rather a lackadaisical student, a passionate basketball player of limited talent, and an incessant, dedicated partyer. No student government for me; no Eagle Scouts or interning at the local congressman’s office. Through high school, my friends and I didn’t discuss much beyond sports, girls, music, and plans for getting loaded. Three of these guys—Bobby Titcomb, Greg Orme, and Mike Ramos—remain some of my closest friends. To this day, we can laugh for hours over stories of our misspent youth. In later years, they would throw themselves into my campaigns with a loyalty for which I will always be grateful, becoming as skilled at defending my record as anyone on MSNBC. But there were also times during my presidency—after they had watched me speak to a big crowd, say, or receive a series of crisp salutes from young Marines during a base tour—when their faces would betray a certain bafflement, as if they were trying to reconcile the graying man in a suit and tie with the ill-defined man-child they’d once known. That guy? they must have said to themselves. How the hell did that happen? And if my friends had ever asked me directly, I’m not sure I’d have had a good answer.

Carey recalled Tillman turning to him and tapping him on the shoulder. "Look who's coming up the road!" he said incredulously. In a scene straight from a movie, General Douglas MacArthur confidently walked straight up the center of the road, "bullets flying around him." Carey was dumbfounded. As MacArthur walked up to his position, Carey pulled him behind the building. "The general fell over" and stared at the lieutenant, quickly snapping, "What the hell do you think you're doing, Lieutenant?" "I'm just trying to keep you from getting killed," Carey snapped back. MacArthur glared at Carey with icy presence and said, "There isn't a bullet made that can kill me.

Quickly, reality set in. It was obvious that we had suffered heavy casualties, but I still did not know exactly what caused the attack. Shortly thereafter, someone reported to me that a large truck had penetrated our perimeter south of the BLT’s headquarters from the direction of the airport’s main terminal. The driver had rammed through the sergeant of the guard’s post in front of the BLT building’s entrance and detonated the truck’s payload in the lobby. The explosive force of the blast caused the concrete, steel-reinforced four-story structure, which was considered one of the strongest buildings in Lebanon, to completely collapse. Its total devastation was astounding. I took in this carnage as cries for help pierced the air.

But wait—was that not how the world at large had come to think of the ocean as a whole? Wasn’t the ocean just distance for most people these days? Didn’t we all now take for granted a body of water that, so relatively recently—no more than five hundred years before, at most—was viewed by mariners who had not yet dared attempt to cross it with a mixture of awe, terror, and amazement? Had not a sea that had once seemed an impassable barrier to somewhere—to Japan? the Indies? the Spice Islands? the East?—transmuted itself with dispatch into a mere bridge of convenience to the wealth and miracles of the New World? Had our regard for this ocean not switched from the intimidation of the unknown and the frightening to the indifference with which we now greet the ordinary? And

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing. In the morning when the sardine fleet has made a catch, the purse-seiners waddle heavily into the bay blowing their whistles. The deep-laden boats pull in against the coast where the canneries dip their tails into the bay. The figure is advisedly chosen, for if the canneries dipped their mouths into the bay the canned sardines which emerge from the other end would be metaphorically, at least, even more horrifying. Then cannery whistles scream and all over the town men and women scramble into their clothes and come running down to the Row to go to work. Then shining cars bring the upper classes down: superintendents, accountants, owners who disappear into offices. Then from the town pour Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women in trousers and rubber coats and oilcloth aprons. They come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish. The whole street rumbles and groans and screams and rattles while the silver rivers of fish pour in out of the boats and the boats rise higher and higher in the water until they are empty. The canneries rumble and rattle and squeak until the last fish is cleaned and cut and cooked and canned and then the whistles scream again and the dripping, smelly, tired Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women, straggle out and droop their ways up the hill into the town and Cannery Row becomes itself again-quiet and magical. Its normal life returns. The bums who retired in disgust under the black cypress-tree come out to sit on the rusty pipes in the vacant lot. The girls from Dora's emerge for a bit of sun if there is any. Doc strolls from the Western Biological Laboratory and crosses the street to Lee Chong's grocery for two quarts of beer. Henri the painter noses like an Airedale through the junk in the grass-grown lot for some pan or piece of wood or metal he needs for the boat he is building. Then the darkness edges in and the street light comes on in front of Dora's-- the lamp which makes perpetual moonlight in Cannery Row. Callers arrive at Western Biological to see Doc, and he crosses the street to Lee Chong's for five quarts of beer. How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise-- the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream-- be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will on to a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book-- to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

Mr. and Mrs. Johnson in Omaha or San Francisco or Manhattan will watch the films and weep and decide once and for all that war is inhumane and terrible, and they will tell their friends at church and their family this, but Corporal Johnson at Camp Pendleton and Sergeant Johnson at Travis Air Force Base and Seaman Johnson at Coronado Naval Station and Spec 4 Johnson at Fort Bragg and Lance Corporal Swofford at Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base watch the same films and are excited by them, because the magic brutality of the films celebrates the terrible and despicable beauty of their fighting skills. Fight, rape, war, pillage, burn. Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man; with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his real First Fuck.

The snuffies’ stories were regularly handed out to civilian correspondents, who sometimes reshaped them and put them on the wire, which meant they sometimes showed up in little newspapers throughout the United States. Mention a marine’s hometown—something Berntson was always careful to do—and there was a good chance it would end up in his local paper. There were usually no bylines on these stories, but the marines remembered who wrote them. Berntson would be hailed by a grunt in the bush who said, in so many words: Hey, Storyteller, you lying sack of shit. You know all that bullshit you wrote about me? You know what? My mom clipped it and sent it to me! They think I’m a hero at home now and maybe they’ll buy me a beer when I get back! That felt better than a byline. Commanders heading off on a hairy patrol would say, “Get Storyteller. We’re going out on a romp.

For the 24th MAU and the other MAUs that served in Lebanon during the tumultuous 1982–84 period, your courage, your sacrifices, your dedication to duty, and your eternal spirit are with us forever. Above all, your sacrifices were not in vain. It was only after the 1983 bombing of our BLT Headquarters that the United States officially recognized that terrorist activities are a form of warfare and that a comprehensive strategy must be devised to deal with this national security threat. Additionally, the magnificent performance of our fighting men and women in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, the Philippines, and elsewhere around the globe may be traced to your legacy. Once again, I salute you for who you are, what you have done, and your sacrifices to make the world a better place. As always, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, God Bless, and Semper Fidelis. AL GRAY, MARINE TWENTY-NINTH C

This was not merely the cellar maze crafted by Ronny Jessup, but also the labyrinth below Crete, where the Minotaur prowled and ate the flesh of those who dared enter its realm, but also Grendel’s far northern lair where Beowulf ventured, also the huge catacombs beneath the Mountains of Madness, where the Old Ones of Lovecraft’s story still waited to be called out of the depths of time or from another dimension, and this was as well the tunnel system under the terraforming atmosphere factories where brave Ripley had gone with a team of high-tech colonial marines on a bug hunt, to learn what happened to the colonists on the planet called LV-426. This was both reality and myth, concrete and symbol, the maze of homicidal desires and lust and hunger for power that spiraled to infinity within the deepest darkness of the human heart, male and female alike, here given dimension and immediacy. It was inhabited by a Grendel named Ulrich and a would-be hero who knew himself to be no hero at all, but only an imperfect man with something to prove to himself.

He carefully poured the juice into a bowl and rinsed the scallops to remove any sand caught between the tender white meat and the firmer coral-colored roe, wrapped around it like a socialite's fur stole. Mayur is the kind of cook (my kind), who thinks the chef should always have a drink in hand. He was making the scallops with champagne custard, so naturally the rest of the bottle would have to disappear before dinner. He poured a cup of champagne into a small pot and set it to reduce on the stove. Then he put a sugar cube in the bottom of a wide champagne coupe (Lalique, service for sixteen, direct from the attic on my mother's last visit). After a bit of a search, he found the crème de violette in one of his shopping bags and poured in just a dash. He topped it up with champagne and gave it a swift stir. "To dinner in Paris," he said, glass aloft. 'To the chef," I answered, dodging swiftly out of the way as he poured the reduced champagne over some egg yolks and began whisking like his life depended on it. "Do you have fish stock?" "Nope." "Chicken?" "Just cubes. Are you sure that will work?" "Sure. This is the Mr. Potato Head School of Cooking," he said. "Interchangeable parts. If you don't have something, think of what that ingredient does, and attach another one." I counted, in addition to the champagne, three other bottles of alcohol open in the kitchen. The boar, rubbed lovingly with a paste of cider vinegar, garlic, thyme, and rosemary, was marinating in olive oil and red wine. It was then to be seared, deglazed with hard cider, roasted with whole apples, and finished with Calvados and a bit of cream. Mayur had his nose in a small glass of the apple liqueur, inhaling like a fugitive breathing the air of the open road. As soon as we were all assembled at the table, Mayur put the raw scallops back in their shells, spooned over some custard, and put them ever so briefly under the broiler- no more than a minute or two. The custard formed a very thin skin with one or two peaks of caramel. It was, quite simply, heaven. The pork was presented neatly sliced, restaurant style, surrounded with the whole apples, baked to juicy, sagging perfection.

Sometimes you characters give me a pain in the back of my lap,” said Manuel abruptly. “I hang around with you and listen to simple-minded gobbledegook in yard-long language, if it’s you talking, Dran, and pink-and-purple sissification from the brat here. Why I do it I’ll never know. And it goes that way up to the last gasp. So you’re going to leave. Dran has to make a speech, real logical. Vaughn has to blow out a sigh and get misty-eyed.” He spat. “How would you handle it?” Dran asked, amused. Vaughn stared at Manuel whitely. “Me? You really want to know?” “This I want to hear,” said Vaughn between her teeth. “I’d wait a while—a long while—until neither of you was talking. Then I’d say, ‘I joined the Marines yesterday.’ And you’d both look at me a little sad. There’s supposed to be something wrong with coming right out and saying something. Let’s see. Suppose I do it the way Vaughn would want me to.” He tugged at an imaginary braid and thrust out his lower lip in a lampoon of Vaughn’s full mouth. He sighed gustily. “I have felt …” He paused to flutter his eyelashes. “I have felt the call to arms,” he said in a histrionic whisper. He gazed off into the middle distance. “I have heard the sound of trumpets. The drums stir in my blood.” He pounded his temples with his fists. “I can’t stand it—I can’t! Glory beckons. I will away to foreign strands.” Vaughn turned on her heel, though she made no effort to walk away. Dran roared with laughter. “And suppose I’m you,” said Manuel, his face taut with a suppressed grin. He leaned easily against the base of the statue and crossed his legs. He flung his head back. “Zeno of Miletus,” he intoned, “in reflecting on the cromislon of the fortiseetus, was wont to refer to a razor as ‘a check for a short beard.’ While shaving this morning I correlated ‘lather’ with ‘leather’ and, seeing some of it on my neck, I recalled the old French proverb, ‘Jeanne D’Arc,’ which means: The light is out in the bathroom. The integration was complete. If the light was out I could no longer shave. Therefore I can not go on like this. Also there was this matter of the neck. I shall join the Marines. Q. E. D., which means thus spake Zarathusiasm.” Dran chuckled. Vaughn made a furious effort, failed, and burst out laughing. When it subsided, Manuel said soberly, “I did.” “You did what?” “I joined the Marines yesterday.

Part of it is personal. It’s the same way for athletes: an athlete wants to be in a big game, wants to compete on the field or in the ring. But another part, a bigger part I think, is patriotism. It’s the sort of thing that if it has to be explained, you’re not going to understand. But maybe this will help: One night a little later on, we were in an exhausting firefight. Ten of us spent roughly forty-eight hours in the second story of an old, abandoned brick building, fighting in hundred-degree-plus heat wearing full armor. Bullets flew in, demolishing the walls around us practically nonstop. The only break we took was to reload. Finally, as the sun came up in the morning, the sound of gunfire and bullets hitting brick stopped. The fight was over. It became eerily quiet. When the Marines came in to relieve us, they found every man in the room either slumped against a wall or collapsed on the floor, dressing wounds or just soaking in the situation. One of the Marines outside took an American flag and hoisted it over the position. Someone else played the National Anthem—I have no idea where the music came from, but the symbolism and the way it spoke to the soul was overwhelming; it remains one of my most powerful memories.

They call me Mac. The name's unimportant. You can best identify me by the six chevrons, three up and three down, and by that row of hashmarks. Thirty years in the United States Marine Corps. I've sailed the Cape and the Horn aboard a battlewagon with a sea so choppy the bow was awash half the time under thirty-foot waves. I've stood Legation guard in Paris and London and Prague. I know every damned port of call and call house in the Mediterranean and the world that shines beneath the Southern Cross like the nomenclature of a rifle. I've sat behind a machine gun poked through the barbed wire that encircled the International Settlement when the world was supposed to have been at peace, and I've called Jap bluffs on the Yangtze Patrol a decade before Pearl Harbor. I know the beauty of the Northern Lights that cast their eerie glow on Iceland and I know the rivers and the jungles of Central America. There are few skylines that would fool me: Sugar Loaf, Diamond Head, the Tinokiri Hills or the palms of a Caribbean hellhole. Yes, I knew the slick brown hills of Korea just as the Marines knew them in 1871. Fighting in Korea is an old story for the Corps. Nothing sounds worse than an old salt blowing his bugle. Anyhow, that isn't my story.

It was my father who called the city the Mansion on the River. He was talking about Charleston, South Carolina, and he was a native son, peacock proud of a town so pretty it makes your eyes ache with pleasure just to walk down its spellbinding, narrow streets. Charleston was my father’s ministry, his hobbyhorse, his quiet obsession, and the great love of his life. His bloodstream lit up my own with a passion for the city that I’ve never lost nor ever will. I’m Charleston-born, and bred. The city’s two rivers, the Ashley and the Cooper, have flooded and shaped all the days of my life on this storied peninsula. I carry the delicate porcelain beauty of Charleston like the hinged shell of some soft-tissued mollusk. My soul is peninsula-shaped and sun-hardened and river-swollen. The high tides of the city flood my consciousness each day, subject to the whims and harmonies of full moons rising out of the Atlantic. I grow calm when I see the ranks of palmetto trees pulling guard duty on the banks of Colonial Lake or hear the bells of St. Michael’s calling cadence in the cicada-filled trees along Meeting Street. Deep in my bones, I knew early that I was one of those incorrigible creatures known as Charlestonians. It comes to me as a surprising form of knowledge that my time in the city is more vocation than gift; it is my destiny, not my choice. I consider it a high privilege to be a native of one of the loveliest American cities, not a high-kicking, glossy, or lipsticked city, not a city with bells on its fingers or brightly painted toenails, but a ruffled, low-slung city, understated and tolerant of nothing mismade or ostentatious. Though Charleston feels a seersuckered, tuxedoed view of itself, it approves of restraint far more than vainglory. As a boy, in my own backyard I could catch a basket of blue crabs, a string of flounder, a dozen redfish, or a net full of white shrimp. All this I could do in a city enchanting enough to charm cobras out of baskets, one so corniced and filigreed and elaborate that it leaves strangers awed and natives self-satisfied. In its shadows you can find metalwork as delicate as lace and spiral staircases as elaborate as yachts. In the secrecy of its gardens you can discover jasmine and camellias and hundreds of other plants that look embroidered and stolen from the Garden of Eden for the sheer love of richness and the joy of stealing from the gods. In its kitchens, the stoves are lit up in happiness as the lamb is marinating in red wine sauce, vinaigrette is prepared for the salad, crabmeat is anointed with sherry, custards are baked in the oven, and buttermilk biscuits cool on the counter.

Shortly before our CFO’s pep talk, another high-level executive at the bank stopped me in the hall to give me what he considered some critical advice. “A lot of smart kids like you come through the bank, and they use it for a stepping stone,” he said. “They stay for a year or two and then they leave. I think that’s a huge mistake. Look at me: I’ve been here forever and I’m happier than anyone I know. This place rewards loyalty, and I’m good at my job because I’ve got my finger right on the pulse of the company. I know everything that’s going on.” A week later, I saw two workmen hauling boxes out of his office. He was a victim of the bank’s first-ever round of layoffs. I’m not trying to put this man down for his faith in the bank or make light of his unemployment. I want to use his story to make another point about failure in business. That chat reinforced something else I was beginning to learn: people in management positions, even very senior management positions, are often completely wrong about the fortunes of their own companies. More important, in making these misjudgments, they almost always err on the side of excessive optimism. They think their businesses are in much better shape than they actually are. Jerry’s rig utilization chart at Global Marine and our own CFO’s boasts about Joe DiMaggio only underscored this lesson for me at the time. And, three decades and over 1,400 meetings with other executives later, I can say this tendency is as pronounced as ever.

Eight Bells: Robert J. Kane ‘55D died June 3, 2017, in Palm Harbor, Florida. He came to MMA by way of Boston College. Bob or “Killer,” as he was affectionately known, was an independent and eccentric soul, enjoying the freedom of life. After a career at sea as an Officer in the U.S. Navy and in the Merchant Marine he retired to an adventurous single life living with his two dogs in a mobile home, which had originally been a “Yellow School Bus.” He loved watching the races at Daytona, Florida, telling stories about his interesting deeds about flying groceries to exotic Caribbean Islands, and misdeeds with mysterious ladies he had known. For years he spent his summers touring Canada and his winters appreciating the more temperate weather at Fort De Soto in St. Petersburg, Florida…. Enjoying life in the shadow of the Sunshine Bridge, Bob had an artistic flare, a positive attitude and a quick sense of humor. Not having a family, few people were aware that he became crippled by a hip replacement operation gone bad at the Bay Pines VA Hospital. His condition became so bad that he could hardly get around, but he remained in good spirits until he suffered a totally debilitating stroke. For the past 6 years Bob spent his time at various Florida Assisted Living Facilities, Nursing Homes and Palliative Care Hospitals. His end came when he finally wound up as a terminal patient at the Hospice Facility in Palm Harbor, Florida. Bob was 86 years old when he passed. He will be missed….

Er, hello, Chewie," he said politely. "Woof," the dog said back. "Chewie is a Newfoundland," Beka explained. "They're great water dogs. They swim better than we do, and even have webbed feet. They're often used for water rescue, and the breed started out as working dogs for fishermen." "Uh-huh... Chewie - I guess you named him for Chewbacca in Star Wars. I can see why; they're both gigantic and furry." Beka giggled. "I never thought of that. Actually, Chewie is short for Chudo-Yudo. Also, he chews on stuff a lot, so it seemed fitting." "Chudo what?" Marcus said. The dog made a snuffling sound that might have been canine laughter. "Chudo-Yudo," Beka repeated. "He's a character out of Russian fairy tales, the dragon that guards the Water of Life and Death. You never heard of him?" Marcus shook his head. "My father used to tell the occasional Irish folk tale when I was a kid, but I'm not familiar with Russian ones at all. Sorry." "Oh, don't be," she said cheerfully. "Most of them were pretty gory, and they hardly ever had happy endings." "Right." Marcus looked at the dog, who gazed alertly back with big brown eyes, as if trying to figure out if the former Marine was edible or not. "So, you named him after a mythical dragon from a depressing Russian story. Does anyone get eaten in that story, just out of curiosity?" Chewie sank down onto the floor with a put-upon sigh, and Beka shook her head at Marcus. "Don't be ridiculous. Of course people got eaten. But don't worry. Chewie hasn't taken a bite out of anyone in years. He's very mellow for a dragon.

On August 21, 1931, invited to address an American Legion convention in Connecticut, he made the first no-holds-barred antiwar speech of his career. It stunned all who heard it or read it in the few papers that dared report it in part: I spent 33 years . . . being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. . . . I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. . . . In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. . . . I had . . . a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions. . . . I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents. . . . We don’t want any more wars, but a man is a damn fool to think there won’t be any more of them. I am a peace-loving Quaker, but when war breaks out every damn man in my family goes. If we’re ready, nobody will tackle us. Give us a club and we will face them all. . . . There is no use talking about abolishing war; that’s damn foolishness. Take the guns away from men and they will fight just the same. . . . In the Spanish-American War we didn’t have any bullets to shoot, and if we had not had a war with a nation that was already licked and looking for an excuse to quit, we would have had hell licked out of us. . . . No pacifists or Communists are going to govern this country. If they try it there will be seven million men like you rise up and strangle them. Pacifists? Hell, I’m a pacifist, but I always have a club behind my back!

The flag story is important, Berntson thought. Before the assault was over, Christmas had sent Frank Thomas, his gunnery sergeant, to find an American flag. He knew it was against the rules. This was a war on behalf of the Republic of Vietnam, and the correct flag to run up the pole at its province headquarters would have been Saigon’s yellow and red ensign. But Christmas’s men had bled and died all the way across southern Hue, not ARVN troops. They had looked up at that enemy flag the whole way. They had taken it down, and they wanted to show who had done it. The Stars and Stripes had earned its place. Berntson continued jotting down Christmas’s words: “‘Proudest moment of my life—to be given opp to do it’ . . . ‘main thought was getting the flag up—so it would fly and everyone could see that flag flying’ . . . Capt. Ron Christmas, 27, 2001 S.W. 36th Ave, Fort Lauderdale, FLA CO for 2/5 Hotel . . . ‘street fighting is dirtiest close in. Biggest problem is control—keeping all platoons in line—communication also problem . . . platoons have done extremely well . . . flag. ‘inspiration thing I have ever seen in my lifetime—because it was a hard thing. That feeling of patriotism . . . all you could hear are cheers . . . really brings out America Spirit.’” Hours later, Christmas was paid a visit by two officers, both majors, one army and the other marine. They had been sent by Colonel Hughes from the compound. They said the American flag would have to come down. The South Vietnamese flag was the appropriate one. The men around Christmas were still loading up the wounded and dead. “I don’t think my men are going to like that,” he said. “That doesn’t make any difference,” said one. “You are violating protocol.” “Well, I’ll tell you what,” said Christmas. “If you want to take the flag down, you guys go take it down. But I cannot be responsible for all of my men.” Kaczmarek, who was sitting close enough to overhear the exchange, chose that moment to reposition his rifle. The majors left. The flag remained. Christmas had a gunny sergeant haul it down at sunset, and the next morning a bright yellow South Vietnamese flag flew in its place. But watching Old Glory run up that afternoon was a sight none of the marines who witnessed it would ever regret, or forget.

WILL WORK FOR FOOD © 2013 Lyrics & Music by Michele Jennae There he was with a cardboard sign, Will Work For Food Saw him on the roadside, As I took my kids to school I really didn’t have time to stop, Already running late Found myself pulling over, Into the hands of fate The look in his eyes was empty, But he held out his hand I knew my kids were watching, As I gave him all I had My heart in my throat I had to ask, “What brought you here?” He looked up and straight into my eyes, I wanted to disappear. CHORUS He said… Do you think I really saw myself, Standing in this light Forgotten by society, After fighting for your rights WILL WORK FOR FOOD, WILL DIE FOR YOU I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO v. 2 He put the money in his pocket, Then he took me by the hand Thank you dear for stopping by, I am sure that you have plans He nodded toward my children, Watching from afar It’s time they were off to school, You should get in the car My eyes welled up and tears fell down, I couldn’t say a word Here this man with nothing to his name, Showing me his concern I knew then that the lesson, That today must be taught Wouldn’t come from textbooks, And it could not be bought CHORUS He said… Do you think I really saw myself, Standing in this light Forgotten by society, After fighting for your rights WILL WORK FOR FOOD, WILL DIE FOR YOU I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO v. 3 I told him then that I had a job, That I could give him work And in return he’d have a meal, And something to quench his thirst He looked at me and shrugged a bit, And followed me to the car We went right over to a little café, Just up the road not too far After I ordered our food he looked at me, And asked about the kids “Shouldn’t these tykes be in school, And about that job you said.” “Your job,” I said, “is to school my girls, In the ways of the world Explain to them your service, And how your life unfurled.” He said… Do you think I really saw myself, Standing in this light Forgotten by society, After fighting for your rights WILL WORK FOR FOOD, WILL DIE FOR YOU I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO v. 4He wasn’t sure quite what to do, As he ate his food And began to tell us all about his life… the bad… the good. He wiped his own tears from his eyes, His story all but done My girls and I all choked up, Hugged him one by one Understanding his sacrifice, But not his current plight We resolved then and there that day, That for him, we would fight. We offered him our friendship, And anything else we had He wasn’t sure how to accept it, But we made him understand LAST CHORUS That we had not really seen before, Him standing in the light No longer forgotten by us, We are now fighting for his rights He had… WORKED FOR FOOD HE HAD ALL BUT DIED FOR ME AND YOU NOT FORGOTTEN ANYMORE BUT STILL A SOLDIER IN TRUST