Unfortunate?

It’s days like today that I start feeling sorry for myself and hopelessly useless. Vain I know, but they’re my feelings and I’ll feel them however I choose. I spent twenty years of my life doing senseless bullshit in the Army and never once did I have the opportunity (misfortune?) to serve in combat. That’s what it was for the most part, just bullshit. Policing up cigarette butts at Fort Bliss, countless map overlays at Irwin, the times I spent several days with no heat on mountaintops in Korea or Colorado, and the list goes on and on… I even wasted away three and a half years on recruiting duty where I only helped two people join the Army that actually mattered: one a dropout living on the street and the other a prior-serviceman. Yes, I am a pretty sad specimen of a “veteran.”

This is where it gets really sappy. I know or have known good friends, some even family members that have been to every conflict, police action, or war in the last fifty years. Hell, the last 100 years! Why didn’t I get the chance to do what I was trained, prepared, and willing to do? I don’t long for their glory, but just wish I had done my part to protect our freedoms. It’s just pathetic, twenty years wasted.

Then I realize why I’m here…

My duty is to tell their story. My Dad, who served in the U.S. Navy during WWII and was on three different ships because two of them sank in battle. The loss of life he witnessed is beyond the normal person’s capacity and it haunted him until his dying day. SFC Jared C. Monti, not because he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, but because he was the most selfless and loyal person anyone could have ever known. The prior-serviceman, that graced the pages of People magazine after he saved lives clearing trenches in Desert Storm, or the dropout that went to Ranger school and on to making a difference in everything he did. The story of John Reardon who saw many battlefronts, yet fell to stress at his desk after a morning run while trying to teach others how to be a soldier.

I have endless tales yet to tell of the gallant men I have personally known. It is my only hope that I may influence even one soul to act, to become a resemblance of, or to honor those that have given up so much for their freedoms. My self-pity while wretched, is what drives me now to tell you of the many stories of our benefactors, our saviors of liberty, and the heroes that have come before us. Visit with me and let me acquaint you with their tales.