Death Before Dishonor

So today one of the boot Marines came in and was submitting his leave for the leave block and someone asked, "How many days are you taking?" His response was something I feel that all Marines think about and probably all civilians assume.

"All of them. Just in case I die." Something that is preconceived about us as far as deployments. That most of us don't come back. I remember my dad talking to me before I signed my paperwork, "Marines are the first ones in and the first ones dead, you know?" Now my dad was looking out for me but I feel like that is something that everyone one thinks. But the truth is that most of do come home, thank God. Most of us, as far as Marines, are trained well enough to know what to do. Yes there are situations which we cannot predict, that we cannot train for, but we sure as hell do a damn good job of training.

Back to this Marine. I looked at and asked, why would you put that bad juju on yourself? Now Marines in general as people are not superstitious but when we are together there are certain things that are bad juju, or bad luck. The classic death note idea, charms (used to come in MREs and now don't. Eating certain ones would mean certain things would happen to your team or other such nonsence) and then assuming you are going to die. Just bad concepts that we don't want our brothers to think about. Now I am not going to say that I am a 100% sure that I am going to survive, but my first thought isn't that I am going to die. I trust my training, my NCOs and I trust myself and with that I know that I am coming home.

In my opinion, everyone who believes that Marines always die or die more often then other branches are ignorant. We only might, might being key, die more because we are more often then not we are in much more dangerous areas. But to counter act the idea that Marines die in combat, we have more deaths back here in the states then we do in war.

I give much praise to those who came home from 3/5 and honor all of those that paid the ultimate price over there, let no one ever assume that I don't.