Home > A word is worth a thousand pictures

A word is worth a thousand pictures

by Open-Publishing - Friday 27 April 2007
10 comments

Edito Wars and conflicts USA

by Cpl Cloy Richards, USMC

6 Marines
3 standing tall and proud in the foreground
3 crouching in the foreground
6 Marines posing in Fallujah, supposedly the "Graveyard of Americans".
6 young, strong men with battle hardened countenances.
6 marines in great health posing with rifles, deep in enemy territory.
How brave they look, how American.

They can go to any country in the world, kick ass and take pictures to show the folks back home what their tax dollars are paying for.
That picture of my buddies and I, is forever in my mind, yet slightly
changed.

Private Perez was killed by a car bomber at a vehicle check point.

There’s only 5 Marines in the picture now.

Sergeant Silva lost the use of his left leg after a rocket attack and now is
addicted to painkillers and booze.

There’s only 4 Marines in the picture now.

Lance Corporal Dubois joined the Marines to help conquer his heroin
addiction. After 3 years clean and sober, he came home from Iraq a broken man, and turned back to heroin. He overdosed two months after we got back.

There’s only 3 Marines in the picture now.

Corporal Allen’s stress and emotional problems got the better of him and he
started beating his wife and children. 2 years after Iraq he’s in prison,
without a family.

There’s only 2 Marines in the picture now.

Private First Class Anderson got dishonorably discharged for drug use 5
months after we came home. Rather than turn to his family for help, he wanders the
streets of southern California, begging for money, food, work.

There’s one Marine left in the picture now, and it’s me.

Am I still alive? I might be physically breathing, but I’m dying inside. So really there
aren’t any Marines in that picture and without those Marines it’s just a
picture of a shattered city in a devastated country.

Forum posts

  • Six more reasons to despise George Bush...

  • Wow!! Thank you for your poetry, your insight. I am sorry for all you and your generation will have to do to satisfy the greed of ’the ownership society’.
    b

  • Huh? Angry Honorable Soldier????? I thought you said Marines? Hmmmm And Lcpl Dubois joined the Marine Corps to beat heroine addiction. You can’t join the Marines if you’ve been addicted to anything...much less a hard drug like heroine! You need waivers from damn near the Commandant himself if you even tried heroine ONE TIME! WTF people. I’m starting to see what this site is. I don’t know what I can trust on here now. I mean the picture shows 3 kids from the Young Marine program run by the Marine Corps. It’s like freaking boyscouts!!!!!! It teaches kids about... ahhh nevermind, you people are gonna believe what you want to anyway.

    Pierce

    • Well compassionate poster above, ALL MARINES begin life as BOYS and GIRLS, but we are talking about BOYS and this is how they begin...too bad you fail to see the significance.

      If you have a problem regarding recruitment, I suggest you write a letter to the U S Dept of Defence. Good luck.

    • i like ww i lkie it

    • Maybe I am missing the point. So by all means, explain what the purpose of this piece is. It sure was passed off as being true. Yet when it is exposed for what it is (propaganda) then all of a sudden it has some really deep meaning? Yes all Marines start off as boys and girls. But all Marines don’t die in combat. All Marines aren’t addicted to heroine (no active duty Marine is). All Marines aren’t shell shocked after returning home from war. So again, what’s the point of this piece? Oh BTW all serial killers start off as boys and girls too. What’s the point?

      Pierce

    • Actually, the US Military is so desparate for bodies they will allow most anyone to join the Marines, Army whatever. The basic requirment of the enlistee is that they are willing to die for the rulers, masters and murderous hate-filled racist thugs that control the US these days. The military is so needy they have increased the age limit to 47 years old. they refuse to diagnose wounded vets so those vets will be returned to Iraq. So, addiction to drugs or anything is not going to stop the military from accepting a person.

    • Pierce would have been correct before the Iraq War put such strain on US manpower resources. The Marine having been "clean and sober" for three years before going into combat might very well have gotten a legitmate waiver.

      I’m just wondering how the post-Iraq War period might resemble the post-Vietnam War period. I was a teenager back then and remember watching a lot of TV melodramas about "crazy Vietnam vets" who had been destroyed by the war and were performing lunatic acts. Does America have a better understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) now than they did then?

  • FUTURE CANNON FODDER.
    WAR IS A MALADY & THE FOLLY OF FOOLS.

  • Pierce made an interesting comparison, both Marines and serial killers start out as children. They often grow up to coincide too, as this war on Iraq and other contexts illustrate en masse.

    Anyway, as for someone who’s previously taken heroin being able to get into the US military service, I assume most people have already read about the DON’T TELL policy instructed by recruiters to potential enlistees, right! Don’t tell, and no one will know; and we’re not going to tell anyone either, it’ll stay secret between us, me the recruiter, and you the enlistee, if you follow through with enlisting. Meanwhile, the recruiter has ’bonus, bonus, bonus’ running through his mind, for once they achieve a certain quota of enlistees, I believe bonuses start to come in.

    Most US military recruiters today likely would not care if a potential enlistee has taken heroin before and would, if the person divulged this sort of info., instruct about the DON’T TELL (shut up about that) policy.

    The last article I read about that policy or practice said that recruiters also give enlistees tips on how to see to their addictions once in service, like hiding their doping pills down their underwear and always keeping the stuff on them, to avoid someone coming across the substance back at the barracks, whatever.

    NO SH*T. That and the other articles on this topic are of authoritative kind, and the last one was based on parents of one soldier who should have never been allowed to reenlist, for he’d enlisted like a decade before and had to be like immediately released from the service, having developed serious depression, talking about suicide, etc. He was then released and then was put on meds. When all this GWoT bs began, he was then married and had a child or two, but was still on meds. He should NOT have been allowed to reenlist, but he got in without a hitch.

    That story is furthermore based on an investigative journalism team which went to a few or more different recruiting offices to see what would be told to them if they were real potential enlistees and had some of these problems that are officially supposed to mean NOT ELIGIBLE for enlistment in the US military service’s branches. And they learned all of nitty gritty, dirty details of how the recruiters operate.

    Based on that, someone having previously taken heroin COULD INDEED get accepted into the US military; just that they have to adhere to the DON’T TELL (keep thy mouth shut about that ... whatever it is info.), and there’ll be a way for you to be able to have your meds, illicit or licit, while you just have to keep the stuff on your person at all times, to not get caught.

    As for whether or not the article of this page is indeed truth, or not, I don’t know, but the above is real world matter.

    Mike Corbeil