November 14th, 2013
Veterans Day is a great Facebook holiday. Facebook makes it easy for folks to remember that it is Veterans Day and makes it easy to post some thoughts or a photo related to Veterans Day. Between the Marine Corps Birthday on November 10th and Veterans Day on November 11th, my Facebook timeline really lights up with patriotism and gratitude and remembrance. It’s nice.
And then it is over.
I always feel like I have kind of a hole in my belly after Veterans Day. I have been out of the Marine Corps for a long time now, but Veterans Day takes on more meaning for me as I get older. The older I get, the more profoundly opposed I am to war and the older I get the more I am humbled by the sacrifices made by the men and women that choose to serve.
I was a squad leader in 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment and in 1991 we participated in the ground offensive of Operation Desert Storm. We were part of Task Force Grizzly, and were actually inside of Kuwait almost two days before the ground offensive officially began. Desert Storm was pretty short and sweet, in no way does it compare to serving 12 months in Iraq or Afghanistan, Vietnam or Korea, but it was real and there were real consequences. There were not a lot of casualties from Desert Storm and some units had very little interaction with opposing forces, but we did and we actually lost two Marines over there and had several wounded. Brian Lane and Christian Porter made the ultimate sacrifice in Kuwait and lost their lives in the sand, a long, long way from home. Throughout the year, but especially on Veterans Day and Memorial Day, I think of them.
Regardless the scale or scope, regardless the era, geography, outcome or technology involved, warfare comes with incomprehensibly violent and permanent consequences. The sacrifice made by Brian Lane and Christian Porter was not just that their lives came to an end. Their hearts stopped beating, they stopped breathing, they likely experienced pain and fear, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Much of the sacrifice lies in the loss of what might have been.
We have no way of even trying to understand the potential and the opportunity that was erased from this world when those men died.
I have lived a pretty full, noisy life since 1991. I got my college degree, have continued to travel and see things, have continued to enjoy life. My friends and family have enjoyed (mostly) having me in their lives for an additional 22 years. I started my own business and have been happily self employed for some time now. I fell madly in love with a good person, became a husband and a father. Brian Lane and Christian Porter got none of that. They died with people that they loved doing something they believed in, but even they had no inkling of what they were actually sacrificing.
We send men and women to a lot of dark and dangerous places, and the longer I am alive, the more I am faced with the staggering magnitude of that sacrifice. It is massive. It is beyond measure. It is nothing short of profane to use the language of dollars and cents to discuss the cost of war.
I cannot thank Brian Lane and Christian Porter for their sacrifice, so I just try to thank the men and women that come back from places like that and maybe even more importantly I try to earn the additional time that I have been given. Would I feel comfortable sitting across the table from Brian Lane or Christian Porter today and telling them about my last 22 years, about the kind of person that I am and have been? That is what I think about on the day after Veterans Day.
Be good to each other.