Author: Maximilian

Baghdad, Iraq, zero-three-hundred hours… You’re jolted awake in your sleeping bag by a loud rumbling at your side… An enemy attack? You’re not sure. You unzip the bag and pop your head out to take a look… It’s your racist uncle, fast asleep. He forgot his sleep apnea machine and his snores are louder than any mortar you’ve heard so far.

There’s obviously a very touchy geopolitical situation going on in the Middle East right now. Tensions are on the rise as the threat of war with Iran looms over the heads of our young men and women deployed to Iraq. They may or may not have feelings of their own about the situation. Most of the time spent as a Marine is just doing what you’re told, whether you want to or not. Your opinion, as a Marine, doesn’t matter there.

Of course, the opinions on the internet of divorced alcoholics with enlarged prostates don’t really matter either, but that sure doesn’t stop them from putting them all over the internet. As with anything that would be better off without them (like their ex-wives), the hardline Facebook Veterans are out in full force, stumping for a war with Iran that they won’t have to fight.

Let’s send them, I say. In the great words of Ken Watanabe…

As I said in the very first comic I ever did, 10 years ago now, no one gets to pick their own nicknames. You watch movies like Top Gun or whatever and you think you’re going to end up with some badass name like ICEMAN, or GRIM REAPER… Instead you end up with FUCKHEAD, because the ONE TIME you forgot your NVG’s and the whole platoon had to spend a night looking for them in the field. They never forget.

Iran ain’t ready for Dad-Bod Actual.

Speaking of…

Shit is going crazy as I type.

There’s a lot going on right now in the military sphere, thanks to all of the insanity in the Middle East at the moment. All I can hope for is that the Marines and other service members stationed abroad are staying safe and looking out for each other.

In other news… Sunday was the 10th Anniversary of Terminal Lance. As I mentioned over the various social media channels, I could have never predicted as a Lance Corporal in Hawaii that TL would become the phenomenon that it has. I legitimately thank all of the Lance Corporals across the Corps for the love and support over the years, and look forward to more to come.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B69oARzFGb6/?igshid=1tdf4ifb60ygi

As for the Duty Doodle contest, look forward to the winners on Friday… Stay tuned.

I can only imagine the surprise that Marines are arriving back to in their drunken and hungover stupors after the holiday leave block, as we kick off the New Year with quite a bang by assassinating a high level Iranian general in Baghdad. 2/7 Marines are already on the scene at the US embassy, many of them probably with alcohol and eggnog still on their breath as they drunkenly meander into the fray.

Hopefully there’s at least one Marine with some buzzers to administer much needed barracks cuts to those nasty scalps.

There’s been a lot of rampant Twitter speculation about this being the beginning of World War III, complete with its own hashtag and all. I won’t comment on the geopolitical dealings of such a surprising maneuver. I only hope that the Marines and soldiers being sent in are ready and willing for whatever happens next.

I’m sure they are.

I have a variety of emotions about the return to Iraq. Having been there myself on two deployments, years ago, it’s not something I was necessarily expecting. But, given the nature and history of these never-ending wars… perhaps I should have.

As a very unrelated aside, WE HAVE A CONTEST GOING ON! Check out the post below and submit your DUTY DOODLES to social@terminallance.com before the end of tomorrow (Saturday, January 4th, 2020)… We have some special stuff in store for the winners.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6wr-EFlk_x/?igshid=144zow7apbizh

Christmas approaches and the Marines are leading a full-scale invasion of America’s airports nationwide. At every international and regional hub in the states, you’ll find a smorgasbord of different Marine archetypes traveling home for their holiday leave block. Unleashed upon the world, Marines and other service members fill the airports with their haircuts, tactical backpacks, and maybe even a uniform or two.

The holiday leave block, graciously granted by your command (at the last minute), is a time of calm and reflection with your family. For most, it will also be a time to ignore text messages from your overbearing command and binge drink with your burnout friends that never left home (but always have a case of Natty Light ready for you).

For the Marines of 3/6, it will be a time of anger and resentment and declining reenlistment numbers.

Personally, I’ve been each one of these airport character classes at one point or another. I actually did wear my service alphas home from Hawaii to Portland, once, to impress my mom.

Delta Airlines couldn’t have given less of a shit, and my ass sat in the cheap seat I paid for for the six hour duration of the flight over the Pacific.

Travel safe, Marines.

Sometimes good ideas backfire tremendously. Staying back from leave is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you get to save up leave days and avoid seeing family you don’t actually like. On the other, you’re the only line of defense between the Marine Corps barracks and the wilderness surrounding it, meaning you will likely have a lot more duty than you would have otherwise. After all, if there’s not a Marine on duty, do the barracks even exist? Do they revert back to nature?

Is this what the barracks will look like with no Marine on duty?

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6BT2oVFnv2/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

It may be worth it at the end, however, when you’re soaking up the sun, growing out your beard, and collecting those last few trickling paychecks on your terminal leave block. Put those leave days to work and save them up for that sweet, sweet DD-214 vacation.

Ask any Marine that’s been in the fleet for more than a couple of years to remove their shirt, and I promise you there’s at least a 50% chance they have a tattoo on their body that they greatly regret. There’s a reason the “boot towns” of Oceanside and Jacksonville are littered with more tattoo parlors per square inch than any other corner of America: because boots with disposable income and weekend liberty make bad decisions.

The boot Moto tattoo is the equivalent of getting your Tinder date’s name permanently inked into your flesh for eternity. Yeah, maybe it’s great now, but after she fucks you and leaves you, you’ll be reaching for a cheese grater to make some corrections to your new body art. When you’ve been in the Marine Corps for a total of 4 months of your new adult life, you really don’t know what is going to be around the corner, or how you’re going to feel about it.

Aside from all of that, it just looks boot as fuck.

While it might seem cruel for a Drill Instructor to bet against his own recruits, I want to assure you it is only because they truly hate you and want you to fail. We make fun of Drill Instructors a lot around here–it’s hard not to, with their frog voices and often exaggerated character traits–but the life of a Drill Instructor is actually quite miserable in itself.

Herding a platoon of 60+, badly shaven and terribly odorous 18 year olds has to be among the worst jobs in America. I would call it similar to herding cats, except cats actually clean themselves and don’t spread pink eye and cellulitis to their owners (not discounting brain parasites). While the life of the recruit itself is certainly not something to admire in any context, imagine being the one responsible for keeping them in their constant state of misery. Sure it sucks to be woken up at 5am every morning by a sweaty, screaming rageaholic; but imagine waking up at 4:30 just so you can get dressed and go yell at these nasty bodies.

You are there day and night, from sunrise til sunset, the first and last thing they see… Like a kind of fucked up momma bird to a room full of plague rats.

Make no mistake, I admire them, but I do not envy the Drill Instructor.

It’s not their fault they’re so angry…

…You’d be too.

Buyer beware, Black Friday is about to take on a whole new meaning at your local mega-retailer superstore. Having just secured a contract with the Department of Defense, Marine Corps Drill Instructors will now be on loan for Black Friday shopping events around the country, where they will scream and haze some discipline into nasty bodies from coast to coast.

Okay, not really. This is not a news site.

For those of you wondering what sweaty, screaming men have to do with the day after Thanksgiving, it goes back to Marine Corps boot camp. There, “Black Friday” is dubiously known as the day that you meet your Drill Instructors for the first time. This is your rude awakening to the next three months of life aboard the Recruit Depot, where you’ll spend 24 hours a day with these rage-monsters as they teach you how to be a Marine.

For Marines, the term “Black Friday” will never mean the same thing again. If a Marine veteran you know flinches when you ask if they want to go check out some hot deals today… Now you know why.

The Marine Corps experience will try and test you in ways you can’t possibly imagine. Of course, the recruiting commercials make this entirely about… Like… Boot camp, or something. However, the real challenge is hardly the physicality of being yelled at by sweaty drill instructors, or climbing the Reaper during the crucible. The real challenge is within, dealing with the every day dramas and tribulations of young adulthood and coming of age while being owned and operated by the United States Government.

The four year enlistment will generally span the average age of 18-22 years old. This is when you’re just coming into yourself, figuring out relationships new and old, and learning how to be an adult. This isn’t easy for anyone, but doing it with an alcoholic Staff Sergeant with a 4th grade reading level yelling at you for breaking a rule you didn’t know existed certainly doesn’t help.

While of course it’s fun to point and laugh when it’s not us, every single one of us will end up “going internal” at some point or another. Sometimes life is actually overwhelming. For what it’s worth, at the very least, you’re likely to be surrounded by Marine Lance Corporals just like you… And as we all know from the Terminal Lance Instagram page… Lance Corporals can cheer up just about anyone.

If you see one of your Marines dealing with some shit, don’t let him do it alone.

(Obligatory shout out to Terminal Boots for their classic PFT video of a similar subject)

I’m not sure what I was expecting with Hideo Kojima’s latest game, Death Stranding… But I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be the most realistic depiction of Marine Corps infantry life I’ve ever seen to date.

You play as this guy named Sam (played by Norman Reedus), who is tasked with hiking all over America carrying a giant, heavy pack; you drink literally nothing but Monster Energy; you have to take care of another man’s baby the entire time, and you’re haunted by the ghosts of the dead. If this isn’t the most Marine Corps infantry shit ever made, I don’t know what is.

Kojima has done it again.

In all seriousness, I’m kind of obsessed with this game right now, if you couldn’t tell. Those of you that have followed TL for a long time know that I’m a big Metal Gear Solid fan, and even did a 10-part Terminal Lance/MGS crossover series you can read here. With Kojima ousted from Konami, I knew that unleashing him upon the world could yield… Odd results… If nothing else. From the trailers, it was impossible to tell if Death Stranding was actually going to be good, or just really fucking weird.

I am happy to say that there’s just something about this game that makes it kind of amazing. To me, the management of the minutiae of your comfort and survival is more “infantry” than say something like Call of Duty. While the latter will focus on the intense, cinematic firefights of military action, those realistically only make up about .0001% of your time in the Marine Corps, if at all.

It’s weird to say that Death Stranding is somehow more “real,” given that its story exists in an incredibly odd science fiction setting, that is equally as brilliant as it is confusing. However, what the game does do is force you to think through every single step, feel the weight of this insane cargo on your back, change your boots, tactically distribute weight so you’re well-balanced, stay hydrated, take a piss, etc. These are actually the things that make up life as an infantryman, and somehow this fucking strange game about an unborn baby guiding you through a ghost-filled post-apocalyptic America has got it right on.

I give Death Stranding 10 Monster Energies out of 10.

Change your socks.