Tsk tsk ... probably shouldn't have gone to FMF Corpsman school. Don't know, but there IS a clue in the title.
Now this is no shit...
My whole lifetime the Marine Corps' slogan had been: " The Marine Corps is looking for some good men"
So there I am, a highly medically trained Navy HM3, a four-oh sailor with 2.5 years under my salty belt, one feeling slightly betrayed to have been assigned into this boy scout troop that as far as I could tell didn't really have any adult supervision.
So I'm standing in line in FMS in my recently issued Marine Greens, getting still another USMC approved hair cut, one designed to make me look even more like a freaking leatherhead instead of that beautiful sailor I really was, when they deliver our mail.
And I get this poster sent to me by my sister, see?
So I open it up and what is it? It's the new Marine Corps recruiting poster.
And what does the Corps' new recruiting poster now say?
"The Marine Corps is STILL looking for some good men"
Let's me tell you, lads, my feelings were more than just a little hurt. They had the best the NAV had to offer and still they're whining?
But you know, eventually I grew to love those last 18 month of my tour of duty.
Sure I was humping the hills of SoCA with a bunch of Leatherheads, the hours sucked, food sucked, we slept in the dirt and we seldom bathed. But I got a chance to do more medicine, more honest stand up independent duty field medicine than I'd ever have had the chance to do in the NAV.
I wouldn't trade that experience or knowing those Marines for anything.
The Marines were okay, folks.
They're a strange lot, really. Given to high incidences of asthema, they were as puny and sickly a lot of GI issues as I'd ever seen. How most of them even got into the service to begin with, I surely do NOT know.
I found that your average Gi-reen was an overcompensating nitwit. He who was determined to hump up those god damned Californian hills even if his asthematic lungs burst out of his scrawny chest, because his fellow marines were humping it, and he'd be damned if was going to let his comrades and his unit down.
The Corps had no shortage of good men, folks, I can tell you that.
I don't think they had the best equipment. I doubt they had the best training. I'm damned sure they didn't have the best officer corps, either.
But those grunts had heart, folks.
Or in the venacular of that time, those leatherheads I served with had beaucoup espirit de corps.
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