AN AMERICAN VETERAN STORY!
My great friend, Dr. Peter Forrest sent me the following article. This brought back memories only a veteran could possibly understand. This took me back to the day I asked my parents to allow me to join the Navy Reserve at 17 in 1947. Just think, how many American boys have died serving in the military, especially when this boy decided to give it a try so soon after WWII was over shortly after I was 15. I have never shared all of this with anyone.
My real desire was to continue learning as the opportunity to attend college was not possible for me and there were no jobs for kids. It was still difficult for the veterans of WWII to find jobs and any hope of a scholarship at that time was for the veterans as it should have been. My hope to fulfill my desire to serve on active duty was answered and I was sworn in on March 15, 1948. I will not bore you with the pride I had at that moment or the details of my service as I was not involved IN the war in Korea that started not too long after I enlisted. I served some 42 months on active duty before I finished my reserve enlistment and was Honorably discharged on August 30, 1952. This was the day before my 22nd birthday.
The greatest thing the service did for me was to make a man out of a boy, and fast. If Americans really wanted to re-establish discipline, pride respect in their children they would support mandatory military training for every boy and girl at 18 whether they graduated high school or not. There would not be gangs and violence we see today and the prisons might not be full of young people. Please enjoy this wonderful story.
A great article…………….
This is a well written article about a father who put several of his kids through expensive colleges but one son wanted to be a Marine. Interesting observation by this dad. See below. A very interesting commentary that says a lot about our society, By Frank Schaeffer of the Washington Post.
Before my son became a Marine, I never thought much about who was defending me. Now when I read of the war on terrorism or the coming conflict in Iraq, it cuts to my heart. When I see a picture of a member of our military who has been killed, I read his or her name very carefully. Sometimes I cry.
In 1999, when the barrel-chested Marine recruiter showed up in dress blues and bedazzled my son John, I did not stand in the way. John was headstrong, and he seemed to understand these stern, clean men with straight backs and flawless uniforms. I did not. I live in the Volvo-driving, higher education-worshiping North Shore of Boston. I write novels for a living. I have never served in the military.
It had been hard enough sending my two older children off to Georgetown and New York University. John’s enlisting was unexpected, so deeply unsettling. I did not relish the prospect of answering the question, “So where is John going to college?” from the parents who were itching to tell me all about how their son or daughter was going to Harvard. At the private high school John attended, no other students were going into the military.
“But aren’t the Marines terribly Southern?” asked one perplexed mother while standing next to me at the brunch following graduation. “What a waste, he was such a good student,” said another parent. One parent (a professor at a nearby and rather famous university) spoke up at a school meeting and suggested that the school should “ carefully evaluate what went wrong.”
When John graduated from three months of boot camp on Parris Island, 3000 parents and friends were on the parade deck stands. We parents and our Marines not only were of many races but also were representative of many economic classes. Many were poor. Some arrived crammed in the backs of pickups, others by bus. John told me that a lot of parents could not afford the trip.
We in the audience were white and Native American. We were Hispanic, Arab, and African American, and Asian. We were former Marines wearing the scars of battle, or at least baseball caps emblazoned with battles’ names. We were Southern whites from Nashville and skinheads from New Jersey, black kids from Cleveland wearing ghetto rags and white ex-cons with ham-hock forearms defaced by jailhouse tattoos. We would not have been mistaken for the educated and well-heeled parents gathered on the lawns of John’s private school a half-year before.
After graduation one new Marine told John, “Before I was a Marine, if I had ever seen you on my block I would’ve probably killed you just because you were standing there.” This was a serious statement from one of John’s good friends, a black ex-gang member from Detroit who, as John said, “would die for me now, just like I’d die for him.
My son has connected me to my country in a way that I was too selfish and insular to experience before. I feel closer to the waitress at our local diner than to some of my oldest friends. She has two sons in the Corps. They are facing the same dangers as my boy. When the guy who fixes my car asks me how John is doing, I know he means it. His younger brother is in the Navy.
Why were I and the other parents at my son’s private school so surprised by his choice? During World War II, the sons and daughters of the most powerful and educated families did their bit. If the idea of the immorality of the Vietnam War was the only reason those lucky enough to go to college dodged the draft, why did we not encourage our children to volunteer for military service once that war was done?
Have we wealthy and educated Americans all become pacifists? Is the world a safe place? Or have we just gotten used to having somebody else defend us? What is the future of our democracy when the sons and daughters of the janitors at our elite universities are far more likely to be put in harm’s way than are any of the students whose dorms their parents clean?
I feel shame because it took my son’s joining the Marine Corps to make me take notice of who is defending me. I feel hope because perhaps my son is part of a future “greatest generation. “As the storm clouds of war gather, at least I know that I can look the men and women in uniform in the eye. My son is one of them. He is the best I have to offer. He is my heart.
“Faith is not about everything turning out OK; Faith is about being OK no matter how things turn out.”
I know that the candy-ass, spoiled youth of today that have majored in demonstrations, violence and ignoring our laws will never know how proud the dad in this story had to have been. I have no doubt that if America were attacked today like it was in 1941 we would never be able to defend ourselves with the cowards that ran to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. My brother, Lt. Col. James Brewer, served 24 years in the Army and was heckled, booed and threatened after he served two tours in that war that was fought for the Democrats and the banks. We have a similar event in Afghanistan that is a waste of life and trillions of dollars that will never change the way these people desire to live their lives.
To the young marine in the story my message is “SEMPER FI”. I have a shirt that best expresses my feelings. On the front over my heart it says “Veteran”. On the back above an American Flag it says, “I AM NOT A HERO”, below the flag it says, “I HAVE WALKED BESIDE A FEW”. My brother died at 55, an unhappy warrior who’s country turned there back on. He and my friend John Booker are just two of those “HERO’s” who I have been proud to have walked beside.
GOD SAVE AMERICA, the Demoncrats will give up. Comments please. C Brewer
A Conservative View 