Service members are ‘suckers’?! Try brave, humble and patriotic

After I learn Gen. John Kelly’s statement that former President Donald Trump had referred to U.S. service members as “suckers,” it made my blood boil. Suckers? Battle heroes like Sen. John McCain and former President George H.W Bush are suckers? It’s exhausting to even put in phrases the contempt I really feel for Trump, a coddled wealthy child who’s averted any actual sacrifices for his nation. To make issues much more disgusting, the Trump Organization hasn’t paid its fair share of the very taxes that help the army and the identical women and men who toil lengthy hours and sometimes die for the very nation he lives in and enjoys the advantages of.

My army expertise was as an enlisted man within the post-Vietnam Battle U.S. Navy. From 1975-79, I used to be stationed on the USS Leahy, a guided missile battle cruiser based mostly in San Diego. Most of my fellow shipmates had not skilled warfare or any specific hardships (past lengthy hours and low pay).

Nonetheless, there was one man in my division who was a former Marine. His final title was Curtis. Forty-five years later, I nonetheless keep in mind him. I favored Curtis. He was quiet, a little bit of a loner, favored to drink and sometimes obtained in bother when drunk due to his penchant for disobeying orders and disorderly habits. As I slowly obtained to know Curtis, I realized why he moved providers. He’d been a fight Marine concerned in quite a few excursions and battles in Vietnam. His descriptions of the combating and bloodshed have been horrifying. He instructed me about killing different people. He instructed me about lifeless ladies and youngsters he’d seen. He instructed me concerning the fixed noise, the ever-present scent of dying and the unshakable worry that got here with patrols into enemy territory.

Vietnam haunted him. He drank closely and smoked lots of weed. Largely he mentioned it was to neglect the issues he’d seen and executed as a grunt combating a warfare that took an enormous toll on tens of 1000’s of troopers.  Curtis and I turned good mates within the 12 months or two earlier than my enlistment ended. We smoked joints collectively and sometimes sat on the ship’s fantail at evening whereas out at sea, simply speaking. He mentioned the ocean calmed his nerves.

His background was so completely different from mine. I got here from a middle-class household that careworn training. My dad was a Boeing engineer. He got here from a working-class household. His dad went from job to job. Curtis was a “lifer” who deliberate on staying within the army, however who after almost 10 years (and quite a few run-ins with officers) was nonetheless a lowly seaman. I used to be getting out to go to school on the GI Invoice. Curtis was staying in as a result of in his phrases, “It’s the one job the place you possibly can’t get fired.”

Forty-five years on, John Kelly’s current feedback describing Trump’s lack of respect for our service members and warfare vets precipitated me to assume again to 1 individual out of the 400-plus crewmen on my ship: Seaman Curtis. I puzzled what occurred to him. Did he keep in? Was he in a position to make it to retirement and do his full 20 years? Was he in a position to management his mood and maintain the warfare demons he carried with him from surfacing and getting him in bother?

I can consider lots of phrases to explain Curtis: Loner, troubled, irritable, troublesome, and even pigheaded. However different phrases additionally come to thoughts: Courageous, patriotic, humble and a survivor. He’s by no means going to be a sucker in my thoughts, and I hope someplace he’s residing a cheerful satisfying life. A life that he earned and deserves.