Once there, you never really leave (about marines dying on a whim)

[Blue_Tires]

My former college classmate Henry Allen used to talk about the wonderful shock value of it. He'd drop it into conversations occasionally.
"Yeah, well, back when I was in the Marines . . ."
No way. That was the usual reaction in the Washington cocktail chit-chat. Henry Allen? Of The Washington Post? In the Marines?

Yup. Henry Allen, Pulitzer Prize winner for the liberal heart of American journalism, was a Marine. And he wasn't just a Marine. He was a Vietnam Marine, back when the craziness peaked and the Corps was a young man's way of saying so long to all things safe and secure and predictable.

Henry has carried it with him as so many of us have. It is a part of him and always will be. And it will occasionally be brought out to force a turn in the conversation. Henry knows dropping out of college and enlisting was a crazy thing to do. And he knows he wouldn't trade the experience for anything. It continues to pay dividends.

But there is a price to pay, too. If there is still a little part of you that the Marines lay claim to -- some small emotional well that bubbles up at the sight of dress blues, the sound of the hymn or the memory of some crazy friend -- then the anger is likely to run deeper when you see Marines badly used.

http://www.projo.com/news/bobkerr/projo_20050128_frico28.2bfa4a.html

[atreides1]

1. It's The Same Feeling

Some of us former soldiers get too, when we see civilians and generals try to win on the cheap, and then hear the same people that sent them in say that the benefits that they're entitled to is "hurtful" to national security.

[dand]

2. Good article, it is true once a Marine always a Marine,

1961-1966

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

3. Semper Fidelis

1968-72

[sarcasmo]

4. It is called brain washing.