Happy Birthday U.S. Army!
You Say it’s your Birthday…
20 Year Old Specialist Colt
I have a lot of friends who are Marines. They are understandably proud and needless to say there is a lot of good-natured, inter-service, ribbing. And while I would never admit this to any of their faces, because I would never hear the end of it, there are a lot of things I admire about the Marine Corps. Not the least of which is their esprit de corps, which is seen in their near fanatical knowledge of the Corp’s History. Probably the only other military organization that so revels in their history is the French Foreign Legion. Every November 10th, Marines everywhere, past and present, wish each other a happy birthday. We could take a lesson from them.
I was a lackluster (read lazy) student and got rejected by the four colleges I applied to. I enlisted in the Army Reserve at 18. I would have enlisted on Active Duty but at the last minute there was an acceptance letter from the University of Rhode Island and at that age I couldn’t turn down the sheer Bacchanalian opportunities that offered. So, I split the difference and did both URI/the Army Reserve and even ROTC. The recruiter didn’t mind, he still made his quota.
Delayed entry and being a passenger in a head on car collision meant that I went to what was then Fort Benning in August instead of May. We graduated in November, and I went home with the blue cord of an infantryman and realization that I wanted to do more. Four years later I graduated from URI and received my commission in the Army Reserve. I spent the next three years toiling, bored, as a junior officer in a training unit.
I transferred to an Army Civil Affairs Unit and nine months later was deployed to Kosovo. Then Iraq in 2003, a year of Active Duty stateside and Iraq again in 2008. I retired in 2015 realizing along the way that I had a lot of people who I considered brothers and sisters, a lot of friends made and a few lost along the way. Friends lost in combat and a few who survived the war but not the peace.
Today is the Army’s 249th birthday. When I enlisted at 18, I raised my right hand thinking I was getting a job. I got that and more. I joined something that stretched from 1991 all the way back to 1775. Now, years later I better understand why the Marines wish each other Happy Birthday on November 10th.