Last night several guys from my church, along with our pastor, went to see "Act of Valor", a movie starring real U.S. Navy Seals, based roughly on some real-world missions that Seals have completed. It was a gripping movie; not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, and not for people who feel no pride in being an American, or who do not get a lump in their throats every time they hear of the sacrifices that American soldiers make for their nation. I was extremely moved as I saw these wonderful, heroic soldiers in action. And, perhaps better than a lot of the viewers, I was immediately right there with them, feeling what they expressed and demonstrated from the depths of my very being. It was an experience that I find hard to describe, but which I feel compelled to try and explain, and compelled to tell the depth and extent of what I felt as a former soldier for these wonderful examples of real American heroes.
I am a retired military officer. That I use the term military officer rather than a retired U.S. Army Officer might be confusing to some who do not now me that well, but I use that term because, although I actually spent the majority of my miltary career in the U.S. Army reserve components (Louisiana Army National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserves), I also spent time in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, and the United States Air Force.
Now that I have thoroughly confused the reader, let me explain briefly. My uncle Bubba Ferrington was a career Marine Corps Flying Officer, retiring as a Major. He was my role model, and when, at the age of about ten, he gave me one of his old flight helments, I was hooked. I always wanted to fly figher aircraft, so as soon as I got into college, I got into the U.S. Marine Corps Officer's course known as Platoon Leader Corps-Aviation. Between my junior and senior years of college, I went to Officer's Candidate School at Quantico, Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC.
My fourth day there, they gave me a physical exam and discovered I had a hernia and processed me out, telling me that if I had surgery to repair the hernia I could come back after graduation and try again.
I had the surgery, and when I got ready to re-enroll in the program, a couple of things came to light which changed my mind:
l I discovered that if I washed out of flight school after completing Marine Corps OCS, then I would not simply be discharged, but would instead become a Marine Corps Infantry platoon leader. Frankly, in 1969, that was the very last thing on earth I wanted to be. I was going to fly fighters like my uncle Bubba, one way or another, but just in case I had some flaw in my character that would NOT let me do that, I certainly did not want to end up in Vietnam as a platoon leader in the Marines, where my life expectancy was somewhere around two weeks!
l When I went to career day at my college, Northeast Louisiana State College in Monroe, LA., the recruiter mentioned that the Marines were very short of helicopter pilots, and if I made it through OCS, there was a very good likelihood that I would end up as a helicopter pilot instead of a fighter pilot. Again, this was not an option that I relished; my idea of flying did not involved flying ninety miles an hour through hails of gunfire picking up and dropping off troops. About the only advantage of being a helicopter pilot over being an infantry platoon leader was that at least I got to take a bath on a rather frequent and regular basis; otherwise the risks were about the same.
After learning these revelations about my future options in the Marine Corps, I walked a few paces around the corner in the gym to the U.S. Air Force table, where I quickly signed up for their Officer Candidate School. In July of 1969, after graduation, I went to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonia, Texas where, after twelve interesting weeks, I graduated with a commission in the United States Air Force, and off I went to Navigator Training at Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento, California.
I spent the next five years in the United States Air Force where I lived my dream...almost. I did end up in the back seat of the world's best fighter at that time, the McDonald Douglas F4 Phantom II fighter bomber. I would have stayed in the USAF had my then-wife not hated it and after giving me the choice of staying in the Air Force at the expense of my marriage or getting out, I chose to leave active duty in the USAF, which to this point in my life I will say was the second-worst decision I ever made.
After being away from the service for ten years, however, I decided that I really did not "fit-in" that well in the corporate world, but needed to be back in the military which I had always know was my calling. I began investigating my options, and after learning that the F4 was being phased out of the Air Force's inventory shortly, and finding that there were no slots in the reserve Air Force components close to where I was living, I was convinced by a friend that I knew to join the Louisana Army National Guard, where I eventually became a transportation officer, a Transportation Company Commander, and retired after fourteen years in the Army as a Major in 1998.
So...as you see, I was a Marine, a U.S. Air Force officeer, and finally, an Army officer. I love soldiers. Each branch I was in had its unique characteristics, and I was proud of the role I played while in each, although the Marine Corps tenure was very brief and superficial to say the least, but giving me a very healthy respect for the training that those soldiers go through, and the quality of soldiers that they become.
I love soldiers. I have said this over and over, for years, verbally, and in writing as frequently as someone will listen to me explain why I love soldiers. In my life experiences, with very, very few exceptions, soldiers represent the very best of America's citizens. I find that soldiers are, again with very few exceptions, loyal, honorable, brave, and very capable of fulfilling their duties to our nation at a very high level of proficiency.
When I was a teen-ager, every young man of eighteen was required to register for the military draft, and if physically able, to spend two years in the service of his country. Until the latter years of the Vietnam conflict, the military was considered an honorable and valuable experience for young men, teaching them discipline, teamwork, morality, and good job skills. All my time in the military, I found those character traits to be present in the vast majority of the soldiers I served with.
We were all taught that we were to live by a code of conduct; a guideline of how we, as soldiers in the United States military, were expected to behave in our day-to-day existence while in the military; how we were to treat our fellow soldiers, our superior officers, those who were our subordinates, and how we were to conduct ourselves as representatives of our nation when in the civilian world, or when in combat.
Though I have been retired from active service in the military since 1998, I still view myself as a soldier. That has really become who I am, and I guess, always will be. There is an old expression in the U.S. Marine Corps, "...once a Marine, always a Marine!" I just say that once I became a soldier, that became my identity; I will always be a soldier, and I state that very proudly, for as I look back at my life over the last sixty-five years, I really can think of nothing that I have ever done for a career that gave me more satisfaction, or where I felt like I have contributed more to my fellow Americans than I did while wearing the uniform of my country.
To try to explain to people that have not been in the military why I feel as I do about soldiering is very difficult. The readers that have been soldiers will understand immediately, expecially those that have been in combat. I, and other soldiers that I have shared experiences with, try to describe the realization that we are facing a combat situation where there is an enemy doing his very best to kill us, and as we do, go through a multitude of emotions and reflective thoughts. As I faced combat for the first time, I remember one of my first fears was not of death, but of letting down my pilot or the other airplanes that were in the mission with me and somehow causing them to be injured or killed. Long before the night before my first mission, I had come to grips with the possibility that I might die. I remember thinking about my good friend Jeff Harris, the pilot that I went through my F4 training with, who was killed the day I left for Vietnam, May 10, 1972. My own mortality became very real to me that day.
I thought of Jeff, Major Whitt, another pilot I flew with in training that had been killed earlier, Andy, Scott, and others whose names have long since faded, but whose faces I still see, who died and who left behind families. I remember praying for hours before that first mission, trying to, as the old saying goes, make my peace with God, and gaining the understand that, regardless of what happened, regardless of my skills and my pilot's skills, my time would be up when God decided that it was up and not one minute before or after. There was a great peace that came over me when I realized that I no longer had to worry about how or when I was going to die, that God already had that worked out and that all I had to do was live my life as though my next breath could be my last. I remember that feeling coming over me as though it was yesterday, and that since that moment, death had no more grip over me. My prayers no longer were that I not die, but that when my time came, for God to be merciful and not make my death a painful ordeal for me or my family.
From that point on, I became focused on doing my job as well as I could, and trying to not let down my fellow soldiers. Last night, I was vividly reminded of those feelings by those young Navy Seals as they prepared for their mission on their last night at home before leaving for the mission. Their commitment was resolute, to the mission, and to their fellow soldiers. Each of them knew the risks they were taking; each of them knew there was an almost certainty that many lives would be lost on their mission, that they would be the cause of much of that loss of life, that the combat would be intense, the risks extremely high, and there was a very high probability that someone on their team would be seriously injured or possibly killed. Yet, even though the they well understood everything that was involved, none hesitated, none backed out, and as a unit, they went forth to accomplish their mission.
In the movie the leader of the Seal team wrote a poem that, in the event of his death, would be given to his wife for his yet unborn son. It was a poem written by the great indian chief Tecumseh, that really could be used as a creed for any soldier. It reads like this:
So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion;respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none.
When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.
When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.
Probably no-one but someone that has come to grips with their own mortality will understand and appreciate the wisdom of those words. For me, they awoke the memories and thoughts of my military experiences in a real and very personal way. As I looked into the faces of those men on the screen, I did not see actors; I saw my fellow soldiers, men who were not playing a part, but were demonstrating to the world the acts of selfless, dedicated patriots; people who knew that unless there were those willing tlay down their lives to defeat the evil in this world, that evil would soon dominate all freedom loving, good people in this world. As the old saying goes, "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing." I believe that to the bottom of my soul.
Five Star General Douglas MacArthur, in his last speech at West Point Military Academy, his alma-mater, gave probably the most inspiring speech I have every heard. It was entitled "Duty, Honor, Country".Never have I heard a more eloquent description of what a soldier was, is, and should be that was delived in this speech. Please check it out at the link below. General MacArthur's last Speech at West Point
In my life, I would add one more descriptive word to that speech, and I would call it "God, Duty, Honor, Country", for without God's amazing grace, mercy, and love, I would never have found the peace that I found in the face of combat.
After the movie, I could not rest, I was filled with rememberances, both of unmatched exhileration and abject terror, that I experienced in the military, I was reminded of the realities of death, and in those thoughts and in the words of the Tecumseh poem, the responsibilities of life. I was reminded that at the end of our lives, what is important is not how much money we made, what all we accomplished in our lives, but the impact that we had on those who we came into contact with, or whose life we had some impact on. I was reminded that more than likely, we will be remembered or not remembered because of the good that we did or did not do for others.
It also came to my mind that in America today, if we were to go around and ask most of America's youth today what was the most important thing in their lives, more than likely it would be something material or superficial. It is very telling that some of the most popular television shows on today involve young people that are rude, crude, vulgar, immoral, and arrogant. Television and movies enshrine stars that glorify homosexuality, pregnancy out of wedlock, great physical bodies and physical beauty, and the acquisition of stardom regardless of what they must do to attain it. At the movies last night, virtually every preview of upcoming movies dealt with prostitution, the occult, supernatural evil villans and heroes, zombies, or promicuous women taking off their clothes. It is all about me, me, me. The media has made decency, morality, fidelity, faith in God, and honor the objects of ridicule and mockery today, and instead it glorifies all that is evil, immoral, disgusting, and sinful.
But there was none of that in "Act of Valor". These soldiers loved their wives, were faithful to them, loved their children, taught them honor and courage and fidelity to family and their fellow soldiers, and gave us the picture of familes who supported their dedication to mission, feared for their loved ones, but understood the importance of what they were doing and supported them, even in death.
We as Americans have lost much of what makes these soldiers great, and what has made America great for over two hundred thirty years. We have lost the heart of a servant, and replaced it with a lust for power, fame, and fortune. We have replace "God, Duty, Honor, Country", with "The Ends Justify the Means". Nothing could be further from the truth. America needs a return to the values of our founders and national heroes. We need to return to our nation's founders of America; a nation of free people, unencumbered by an oppressive central government, but united under the values of a great nation, the values that have kept us free and prosperous since we declared our independence from the oppressive government of Great Britain so many years ago. "God, Duty, Honor, Country". A code of conduct that every American should embrace, enshrine in their hearts, and learn to live by so that American can once again become that shining light on the hill that God has so richly blessed up until now.
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