Sending your Kids to War!

For the longest time I never gave much thought to the notion that when we go to war, people see it as sending their kids to war. I know I didn't agree with it because I saw myself as a man, not a child. On the same token, I was leading Marines into combat that were 17 and 18 years old. You could still see the baby fat on their faces. I too looked like an adolescent on my first two or three of my five deployments.

This train of thought always bothered me, but I didn't know why. Then after watching a news commercial about it, my wife started spouting out angrily about how she must be married to a little boy then. We have been together through every deployment, starting back in 2003. She put it into words. Is she married to a child of someone, or a man that is her husband and father of her child? A man that has fought in two wars, led Marines (the biggest honor of all), and a man that works hard to feed his family.

I'm not tooting my own horn, but think about it. I'm not the only marine that has done this. So are we all just someone's child?

The answer to this is a resounding no. Once I was a child. Once I partook in childish ways. Then one day I put those childish ways behind me and I signed over my life as a sacrifice to my nation. I am one of many, but still few.

The moment I entered that legally binding contract, I was no longer a son. I was a man, a man that makes his own way, and earns his own breath. From that moment, I stood shoulder to shoulder in a long legacy of men that have fought, sacrificed, and sometimes died.

Is this the thought of someone's child? Those that now defend our way of life are young and still developing in life, but they defend us with their lives, and honor.

To call these men our nations children is to give great disrespect to their standing in society. These men answer to no father or mother. They now answer to their God, Sgt, and their conscience.

I have not answered to my mother or father since I turned 18. That day I was a man, making a man's decisions. I am a son to no one. I am a father to Isaac, and a husband to Jessi. We send our nation's best men to war, not our children.

To the Men I followed, and the Men I led, it was truly an honor.
Simper Fidelis.