The Monday Nut

I am seething.  The beautiful and talented Suzanne tells me to “let it go” but…why have a blog if you don’t use it to mouth off once in a while?  I will sum up my frustrations in the following sentence, but hope you will read on.

All you Northeastern liberals can kiss my ass and I rue nothing more than the day I came back here.

Yeah!  It’s “my Marine hat that I bought at the MCX on Parris Island” and I wear it because I am proud of my son.  Yeah!  I still love my country even though my son might get sent to Iraq or Afghanistan and may never return. He volunteered…there is no draft to be dodged by “conscious objectors.” Ever done anything that gutsy in your life?  No!  I’m not a crappy parent because I let my child join the Corps and supported his decision.  No!  I’m not stupid because I think military service is an honorable choice in life. 

Truth is…I’ve been back here only five days, and talked only to a few people and this is what I have heard so far.

To compare, in the two days I spent in the South, not one person was less than gracious when they discovered our son had just become a Marine.  Hell, half of them said “Now, there’s a new Marine” when they saw him walking toward them (sans uniform). They gave heartfelt congratulations on his graduation, showed true gratitude for his decision to serve his country through the military, and promised to put them in their prayers.

And all you blue staters think you are just sooooo superior to all the “hicks and rednecks.” 

You ain’t worth a one of them.

To be fair…I have friends and acquaintances here that are left of center, and they have been very supportive and gracious.  Some of them have children in the military, have served themselves, or are simply worried about Ryan. One particularly close friend who leans tha udda way has been a rock throughout and has expressed his admiration for Ryan’s accomplisment several times over.  Thank you all and, of course, you are fully exempt from my ire.

The rest of you can kiss my ass.

Private Ryan Michael Conklin… Graduate, United States Marine Corps Bootcamp, Parris Island, South Carolina, September 19, 2007.

I cannot express in words how I felt when I saw my boy walk into the 1st Battalion, All Weather Training Facility in preparation for Family Day.  Suffice to say, I cried.  I’ve learned only a little bit of what he has gone through…but let me put into simple terms.  Once you have completed basic training in the Marines, you automatically qualify to transfer to any of the other services without having to repeat basic training for the new service.  The reverse is NOT true.  There was actually a member of his company that had been in the Navy for four years…and had to start from day one in the pits with the rest of them.  He may have had more pins on his uniform at the end, but he was just another recruit.

As he showed us the rifle range (he was 2 points from “sharpshooter”) he told us an interesting story about how the crew at the range kept using loudspeakers to try to get recruits who had run away to get out of the woods next to the range, giving them time warnings as to when live firing was going to start.  It gave us a real inkling of the number of recruits that would do anything to get off Parris Island, and a real sense of pride in our son that he was able to complete three months of the most intense training ever devised for recruits and didn’t make a run for the border.  If you ever get a chance to see Parris Island, you will note on the trip in that it is the perfect place for such a school.  If the gators don’t get you, the snakes will, and if you are lucky enough to miss those, you’ll just sink up to your chest in the swamps.  The low country of South Carolina is gorgeous…but “there be bears in them thar woods.”  There were also stories of recruits who made mistakes near the end of their training, and were sent back to “day two” to repeat the entire process over again.

And yet, the recruits were not the only ones who were being put through their paces.  Shortly after Family Day ended, we watched a little bit of the graduation practice from the stands on the parade deck.  It was quite humorous to watch a Gunnery Sergeant (non-commissioned officer) barking orders at a Captain and Lieutenant Colonel, making them repeat their roles over and over again until it was perfect.  His voice carried for hundreds of yards as he put them through the ringer, demanding perfection in every movement.  Later, my son told me that the non-commissioned officers are the heart and soul of the Marine Corps, and even generals respect them utterly.  I could tell when Ryan introduced us to his drill instructors that even thought they had tortured his mind, body, and spirit for three months; he felt a deep down fervor for them that will never go away.

So, we get to see him for 9 days, and then it’s off to School of Infantry in North Carolina, a quick trip home for Christmas, and then where? We don’t know but he is hoping to be based in Germany or Japan for a bit before rotating into Iraq or Afghanistan.  We’ll just have to let go and let God protect him.

In the end…God bless each and every young man and woman that graduated on Friday, September 19, 2007.  Our prayers are with you, and with every person serving in the military here at home and abroad.  Your sacrifices, great and small, will never be forgotten.

Tonight at midnight, we begin the 15 hour trek to South Carolina to watch our son graduate from the Marine Corps Boot Camp at Parris Island.

HE DID IT!

Please keep him in your prayers as we have a total 10 days with him before he moves on to the next part of his training and then onto defending the United States of America.  God bless you all.  I’ll post pictures when we return.