Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 13:36:37 -0700 (PDT) From: Weldon Goree Subject: My 7th birthday in the military To: johnny at charm.net I turned 21 6 years ago on Parris Island. I can't remember 6 years that have passed faster. That day, my platoon did 21 pushups while a drill instructor drank a beer in my honor. It was 1997 and I was looking forward to getting out of boot camp and returning to finish my last year at SJC. I turned 22 5 years ago in Ft. Lee, Virginia, learning how to do rations logistics. I had just graduated from SJC and was having trouble coming to terms with that fact. My party consisted of getting tanked with my buddies and starting a brawl with some Army people. Good times. I turned 23 4 years ago in Twentynine Palms, California, doing rations logistics. It was very very hot and there was sand everywhere. I didn't get tanked (drinking beer is a Bad Thing in the Mojave), but we did manage to have a brawl with the Navy hospital staff. I turned 24 3 years ago in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, cooking for the 25th Marines (or maybe it was the 8th Marines). The traditional Ft. Sill birthday party is to do a pub crawl of all the strip clubs in town, but the base general had just pressured the Laughlin, OK, city council to close them all. So, we again got tanked and started a brawl with some Army people. I turned 25 in Alexandria, Virginia, since my 2 weeks that year were in the winter (cold weather training... I don't recommend it). I turned 26 also in Alexandria; no 2 weeks that year because they were saving their budget for the war we could all see coming. Now today I turn 27 in Camp Pendleton, California, at the end of a 5-month deployment and a singularly undistinguished career in the Marine Reserve. Soon I'll go home, check out of my reserve unit, look for a job, and for lack of a better phrase start a new life. The Corps still reminds me of St. John's in a lot of ways: it's small, there's a deep sense of community, it stresses generalism and group participation over individual effort (and, of course, the drunken brawls are largely the same). Even the flaws are similar: insularity, a creeping sense of elitism, and the occasional doctrinaire attitude from on high. Right now I feel a lot like I did right before I graduated from college... that "torn between past and future" feeling Mr. Pastille so beautifully described in his address that year. I've had 7 birthdays in the Marine Corps, and I know that's enough. But it's almost like as long as I was still in I could pretend I was still that 20-year-old who enlisted. I won't be able to fool myself about that anymore. Anyways, no real point here, just musing over yet another birthday spent in a crappy barracks. Hope y'all are having a nice day. Weldon Goree A'98 ===== ----- The language is that of COBOL, which I shall not utter here...