As I said in my previous post, I joined the U.S. Marine Corps right out of highschool. I sincerely joined to serve my country as I had developed a strong patriotic sense from my Grandmother who had lived through events like the Great Depression and WWII.
I loved stories of Medal of Honor heroes and great stories of self sacrifice. Looking back I realized that I loved these stories because I wanted to be in one. I grew up in a devout Baptist home, but I saw too many holes in religion if taken literally. I saw so much hypocrisy.
I now believe as men like Dr. Jordan Peterson believe that one should act in such a way as to suggest that a God exists. In other words one should take moral principles from the great major religions and recognize that God is a conceptual realization of the perfect principles of the dominance hierarchy delineated out and meant to guide us into becoming great individuals.
Anyways at the time I was in the church environment I became increasingly nihilistic. I did however truly believe in the principle of self sacrifice, that greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for a friend. I saw this as a way out of my nihilism. I saw this as the only way of making life meaningful.
Fast forward to joining the Marines, I joined as an Infantryman and was later selected to be a 0331 Machinegunner. I did very well in training and actually liked it in a way. Everything was very structured and once I got used to it it was no longer shocking. An example of how structured boot camp is is that whenever we showered they would tell us which part of our bodies to wash when and count us all down to make us go faster. Same with essentially everything then. I was meritoriously promoted after boot camp and went on to School of Infantry.
There I learned to be a MachineGunner. I loved shooting machineguns and learning about them and tactics.
As SOI came to a close we were told which units we were assigned to and sent to them after graduating. I was assigned to 1/6 Alpha Co. Wpns Platoon. As soon as we hit the fleet however things changed drastically. We had trained with such urgency in boot camp and SOI, it felt like maybe we would be going overseas to fight then. Unfortunately when we arrived in the fleet we learned that there really were no more combat deployments. Our unit was filled with people that had never been to combat but acted as if they had. I lost all respect for the unit very quickly. The amount of people screwing over other people was ridiculous, the amount of disorganization was even more ridiculous. From the Battalion Commander down to the individual Platoon Sgts only a handful seemed to care about the Marines under them.
I requested to go to a course to learn to be a marksmanship coach but my platoon sgt did not seem to care about bettering the marines under him.
It is interested to note that at this time I learned the value of patience. We were told to hurry up and wait all the time. Things like waiting 8 hours for trucks to get there to take us to the field. Or waiting till 10 pm to get our rooms inspected. I became increasingly disillusioned with the Marine Corps I had signed up for and the one I was in. Sure it was hard work, but we spent far more time waiting around to do nothing than not.
As time went on I developed some fairly bad back pains while hiking in the mountains of California. I went to see the doctor and I was put into physical therapy. After 9 months of that my medical separation board was finally started to separate me.
The 100% truth to this was that I believe I could have continued my service when my Med Board was going on. But the fact of the matter was that being in the Corps without being able to go to combat was of no interest to me. I had essentially healed by the time I was put on a Med Board but they were so eager to separate me they didn't entirely care.
I started off my career as what would seem a stellar Marine. Meritoriously promoted and chosen to be a Machinegunner, I never fell out of a hike and in fact carried other peoples gear when they fell out. Mentally I could survive the physical hardships the Corps threw at me, but I couldn't deal with the hypocrisy and sucking up to leadership that many did. Perhaps I just was not mentally tough enough, its entirely possible that that was what the real Marine Corps was supposed to be like and I just couldn't handle the difference between that and the brotherhood I wanted it to be.
After being honorably discharged I look back on it now and do realize the merits that the Corps had. I do miss my friends so in that way it was a brotherhood. I also miss the feelings I had in SOI of the urgency of training and how great it felt to feel like I was going to do great things. I do not miss the terrible leadership however. My take from this chapter of my life is to learn how to be a great leader, to serve those under you not the other way around.
(This is certainly just my experience and not at all indicative of what the Corps is today or even of different units when I was in.)