There is special signifigance to the date of 10 November.

It is the Marine Corps birthday.

And the Marines celebrate it, even in the field, if possible.

For those of you who may not know, the Marines were born on November 10, 1775, at Tun Tavern, in Philadelphia. On November 1, 1921, Major General John A. Lejune, the Commandant of the Corps, issued Marine Corps Order No. 47, Series 1921 which ordered that a special birthday message was to be read to all Marines, whereever they were, and that this message is to be read every year, on 10 November, from then on. This order is still being carried out.

You can read this message at http://www.mclwestchester.org/USMC/lejeune.asp

On the very day that Christopher Adlesperger acted above and beyond the call of duty, my son was about 7 miles away attached to a Marine artillery unit.

Rest in peace, LCPL Adlesperger.

georgej on October 5, 2006 at 2:42 AM

“I don’t know how I would handle it, the paralyzing fear. ”

I thought you wrote elsewhere that you were married to a member of the military for 20 years. Surely he must have been deployed himself at one time or another.

The “fear” is not paralyzing. I know first hand. It’s always there, though. But, trite as it sounds, life really does go on. Bills have to be paid, pets need to be fed. Though, truthfully, we said Grace at dinner more often, and we prayed my son’s safety and for all the troops, too. It helped knowing that friends and family were praying for him too.

On the day my son told us he got orders to go to Iraq, my wife had chest pains that evening, resulting in a trip to the emergency room. It was, fortunately, just an anxiety attack, not a cardiac arrest. But that was the worst time for us, I think. While the worry for his safety was always there, the Corps helped the families deal with it.

I’m sure the other services have a similar program, but the Marines have an effective family support program run by “Key Volunteers” who are spouses or parents of Marines in the unit. The KVs not only have contacts with the unit commanders overseas, but make sure that the families of deployeed Marines are kept up to date about their tour of duty.

The gouge from them was pretty good, in point of fact. And there were numerous “family day” events where we got formal status briefings and information about benefits and so on.

One thing that was very useful — and is a departure from other wars — was that I could email my son every day and keep up to date with him. The KVs set up a web site and the deployed marines would upload pictures on a regular basis. I never knew how big a camel spider was until I saw one of the pictures. And we regularly attached photos of us here at home in our emails to him.

The ability to communicate with them via email was more important than anything else, I think.

Email was reliable and fast. We, my son and I, didn’t do IM, but others did. The 9 hour (for us in the midwest) time zone difference meant at one end or the other, real time messaging meant being up in the middle of the night.

My son could have blogged, but he didn’t — he’s not that kind of communicator – nor as verbose as his old man is ;^). But he and I chatted back and forth via email at least 4 or 5 times a week when he was off duty.

The were only 2 times that email (and IM) was cut off. One time was during the Fallujah operation. The Marines pulled the plug on the servers for 2 reasons — (1) operational security, and (2) to make sure that KIA and WIA notices came from the official sources first and not via an errant email. The Marines are very firm on making sure that an officer break bad news to families, and that the families do not get confused by rumours or conflicting stories from “helpful” people via the Internet.

The only other time there was an email outage was when my son was deployed to Camp Kalsu for two months because of limited bandwidth at the facility at the time. Emailing him was probamatical due to the rough nature of the base at the time, and the fact that it was located right in the middle of “Indian Country,” south of Baghdad. Incoming mortar rounds tend to “break up” the conversation.

Honora, I would tell your employee to (1) send him email or IM messages as often as possible. (2) Send personal comfort items in packages. Mail and packages get to the troops on a space-available basis and it took usually 2 weeks.

KBR runs the PXs and messes in Iraq. It’s not quite like Wal-Mart, he said, but most of the personal stuff (toothpaste, etc.) he could purchase inside the wire. They also have phone banks for the troops to use to call home.

You would not believe the DVD library sent directly from Amazon via APO he had — and that he left behind for Marines that relieved him when he rotated back! Yeah, they had DVD players, stereos, and he had his own personal laptop he took with him from home.

Welcome to 21st Century warfare!

georgej on October 5, 2006 at 3:53 PM