"Do you want to live forever?"
"There are only two kinds of people that understand Marines: Marines and the enemy. Everyone else has a second-hand opinion."
Work with me in my office someday - you'll notice the lanyard I wear. It's a little hard not to notice, actually - clipped to it hangs my ID badge, key card, drawer and cabinet keys, a pouch of business cards and usually a pen or two. All components considered, it's a significant getup. What you might miss, however (but what is never missing), is the coin nestled into my ID sleeve. Roughly the size of a fifty cent piece, this stowed bit of commemorative currency is stamped with the emblem of the Eagle, Globe and Anchor. In raised block print, carefully lettered in gold against the red trim, the coin reads, "Anti-Terrorism Battalion, 4th Marine Division. United States Marine Corps. Semper Fidelis."
* * * *
On an early January afternoon, my office was packed - post holiday shoppers, irritated at the wait, irritated further by the fact that the wait was longer than their three second window of patience and civility. Everyone had a problem, and everyone's problem was clearly more substantial than the jerk's wasting time in line ahead of them.
Standing out by standing patiently toward the back of the office, a Marine in Enlisted Dress (a 1st Sergeant by the stripes) waited. Inching toward the better part of an hour, he passed the time quietly in the easy attention of a military man used to hurrying up to wait. I guided him from the crowd at last, took him to my desk and asked how we might be of assistance to him that afternoon. "I need help," he stated, down to business, bypassing the popular choice of delaying actual action even further by bitching about the crowd. I filtered a sarcastic internal response, "everyone needs help, what's new?" It had been a long day - I couldn't wait to hear what this guy's version of the world's biggest crisis was, and his interpretation of how I needed to move Heaven and Earth to solve it. I prayed for something unique, at the very least. "Something is acting up on this phone. I need it to work, and I may need to adjust my plan a little. It's been a busy month, and I'm flying out first thing tomorrow." So much for unique - EVERYONE is busy, and always (coincidentally) "flying out first thing" the next day when communications crisis strikes. Typical.
I probably didn't really want to know at the time, but the patient Marine with the soft Southern accent was being gentle with me, so I became gentle back and asked, "where are you headed?" "Delaware." "I see," I nodded, opening his account. "For?" "I'll be escorting a Marine back home to Bozeman." I was about to ask why another Marine would need an escort anywhere, when the obvious dawned on me. I looked up from the computer and the 1st Sergeant and I sat and stared at one another in, what was for me, an unexpectedly intimate silence. His face never changed (I suspect he had long since worked out a way to deal with the outward expression of the profound gravity surrounding the details of his profession) save for one detail: I never care to see what flashed behind his eyes again.
It's rare a person can point to an exact moment their life shifts in a profound way. I took a metal note not to forget.
In whatever small way I could, I did move my own little portion of Heaven and Earth for that Marine that day. When he left he thanked me for my time and attention, but it seemed backward. I shook his hand and thought to myself the "thank you" should be the other way around.
The 1st Sergeant touched base via email and a short voice mail or two over the next week. He sent the newspaper clipping of the young Bozeman Marine returning home from Afghanistan in a flag draped casket, the cloth of the Stars and Stripes the fabric of American myth, stitched in the courage and sacrifice of the man settled beneath it. I sat at my computer and bawled for a boy I had never met. I cried the way people who wonder if they have made a difference in the world cry for those who most certainly have.
I didn't expect to see my Marine again, but one afternoon he emailed and asked to stop by. He waited in my lobby, patient as before - a man I knew little better than I had the first day we'd met, but very suddenly my human face for faraway people and things, distant places and pain. He thanked me again, and placed the coin I carry now into my hand.
For a such a small thing, the bit of metal felt heavy. It still does, and I hope it will be, for me, always weighted with the fiercely proud USMC tradition of excellence, courage, hallowed ritual, and the unbending code of honor the rough men known as the Devil Dogs carry with them on their way to face what I will never have to.
The 1st Sergeant was promoted to Sergeant Major. He left in the Spring after a brief call in which he stated simply, "when the Marine Corps tells you to pick up and go, you pick up and go."
I work every day with the reminder around my neck that my stresses, my frustrations, and my concerns are gifts in a world where far worse things are being visited upon far better people.
I don't know where my Marine is right now, not exactly. What I know is what he gave me. And today, on the 235th birthday of his United States Marine Corps I have something for him too, something I should have given him before he left:
thank you.
Happy birthday Marines.
Work with me in my office someday - you'll notice the lanyard I wear. It's a little hard not to notice, actually - clipped to it hangs my ID badge, key card, drawer and cabinet keys, a pouch of business cards and usually a pen or two. All components considered, it's a significant getup. What you might miss, however (but what is never missing), is the coin nestled into my ID sleeve. Roughly the size of a fifty cent piece, this stowed bit of commemorative currency is stamped with the emblem of the Eagle, Globe and Anchor. In raised block print, carefully lettered in gold against the red trim, the coin reads, "Anti-Terrorism Battalion, 4th Marine Division. United States Marine Corps. Semper Fidelis."
* * * *
On an early January afternoon, my office was packed - post holiday shoppers, irritated at the wait, irritated further by the fact that the wait was longer than their three second window of patience and civility. Everyone had a problem, and everyone's problem was clearly more substantial than the jerk's wasting time in line ahead of them.
Standing out by standing patiently toward the back of the office, a Marine in Enlisted Dress (a 1st Sergeant by the stripes) waited. Inching toward the better part of an hour, he passed the time quietly in the easy attention of a military man used to hurrying up to wait. I guided him from the crowd at last, took him to my desk and asked how we might be of assistance to him that afternoon. "I need help," he stated, down to business, bypassing the popular choice of delaying actual action even further by bitching about the crowd. I filtered a sarcastic internal response, "everyone needs help, what's new?" It had been a long day - I couldn't wait to hear what this guy's version of the world's biggest crisis was, and his interpretation of how I needed to move Heaven and Earth to solve it. I prayed for something unique, at the very least. "Something is acting up on this phone. I need it to work, and I may need to adjust my plan a little. It's been a busy month, and I'm flying out first thing tomorrow." So much for unique - EVERYONE is busy, and always (coincidentally) "flying out first thing" the next day when communications crisis strikes. Typical.
I probably didn't really want to know at the time, but the patient Marine with the soft Southern accent was being gentle with me, so I became gentle back and asked, "where are you headed?" "Delaware." "I see," I nodded, opening his account. "For?" "I'll be escorting a Marine back home to Bozeman." I was about to ask why another Marine would need an escort anywhere, when the obvious dawned on me. I looked up from the computer and the 1st Sergeant and I sat and stared at one another in, what was for me, an unexpectedly intimate silence. His face never changed (I suspect he had long since worked out a way to deal with the outward expression of the profound gravity surrounding the details of his profession) save for one detail: I never care to see what flashed behind his eyes again.
It's rare a person can point to an exact moment their life shifts in a profound way. I took a metal note not to forget.
In whatever small way I could, I did move my own little portion of Heaven and Earth for that Marine that day. When he left he thanked me for my time and attention, but it seemed backward. I shook his hand and thought to myself the "thank you" should be the other way around.
The 1st Sergeant touched base via email and a short voice mail or two over the next week. He sent the newspaper clipping of the young Bozeman Marine returning home from Afghanistan in a flag draped casket, the cloth of the Stars and Stripes the fabric of American myth, stitched in the courage and sacrifice of the man settled beneath it. I sat at my computer and bawled for a boy I had never met. I cried the way people who wonder if they have made a difference in the world cry for those who most certainly have.
I didn't expect to see my Marine again, but one afternoon he emailed and asked to stop by. He waited in my lobby, patient as before - a man I knew little better than I had the first day we'd met, but very suddenly my human face for faraway people and things, distant places and pain. He thanked me again, and placed the coin I carry now into my hand.
For a such a small thing, the bit of metal felt heavy. It still does, and I hope it will be, for me, always weighted with the fiercely proud USMC tradition of excellence, courage, hallowed ritual, and the unbending code of honor the rough men known as the Devil Dogs carry with them on their way to face what I will never have to.
The 1st Sergeant was promoted to Sergeant Major. He left in the Spring after a brief call in which he stated simply, "when the Marine Corps tells you to pick up and go, you pick up and go."
I work every day with the reminder around my neck that my stresses, my frustrations, and my concerns are gifts in a world where far worse things are being visited upon far better people.
I don't know where my Marine is right now, not exactly. What I know is what he gave me. And today, on the 235th birthday of his United States Marine Corps I have something for him too, something I should have given him before he left:
thank you.
Happy birthday Marines.