It is perhaps a possibility that I am one of few–and your views do not pertain as such–but when I think of my time in the Marine Corps, the cool stuff that we do doesn’t usually pop up. At least not at first. No, before all of the recruit-bait moto-stuff most civilians think of when they hear “Marine”, I tend to think of abstract small things like the hours I’ve spent cleaning floors, jerking off in port-a-shitters, cleaning a rifle, barracks parties (which are every night), hazing, bullshit, the way cammies kind of chafe my inner-thighs, yelling and anything else that was part of my every day life.
The great secret of the Marine Corps is that we only do the cool stuff about 10% of the time. The other 90% is spent doing everything mentioned above, plus confusion and anger at every corner. I shot over twenty SMAW rockets in my four years, trained for weeks at a time in the field and spent sleepless nights and sizzling days hunched over an M2 .50 cal atop an MRAP, but I don’t usually think about it.
The Marine Corps–actually living the Marine Corps–isn’t about the cool stuff. It’s about the little things, the 90% of the time things that are often funny and immensely miserable at the same time.
At the same time though, it’s very important that we don’t reveal to our civilian brethren what really goes on in the Corps. Otherwise, those care packages would come a lot less often.
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