Paying honor where honor is due. Let me start by saying this: There is no greater love than a fellow who lays down his life for another. When I joined the military, it was made very clear to the ones taking the oath that they may have to give up their life by signing up. Anyone putting on the uniform with this intention deserves the merit for doing so.
This is where it gets murky and things become difficult to discern. Not every service member has the same job, career, mission, or experience. We write a blank check for Uncle Sam to do with us what is needed to protect our country and its freedoms, even if it takes our life. How he writes that check is very different from one service member to the next. For some, it’s a very small check with a very low price on it. For others, the check costs the full price to pay all.
I have seen both extremes of the cost, from a service member doing four years behind a desk with absolutely no overseas tours to service members having their very life’s blood being slowly wrung out over 12 overseas tours and going through all kinds of hell.
I have been all over and seen all the branches in action around the world. I have been through tactical schools run by each of the departments as well. From the Air Force’s Phoenix school, to the Marine infantry school, to the Navy tactical school run by SEALs, to almost every flavor of ice cream in between. Many civilians who don’t know better, except what they see on the Hollywood screen, like to immediately ask what branch of service a veteran was in, thinking that will satisfy and declare what they did for our country. There is a stigma that if someone was in the Coast Guard, for example, that they didn’t even work hard; that if they were in the Navy, that they were just peeling potatoes on a ship somewhere; or that if they were in the Air Force with their tap shoes that they were worthless wimps. I must speak up here for every branch because I have seen warriors in all branches in one place or another during my travels.
A twenty-or-so-year-old kid who works on the flight deck—one of the most dangerous jobs in the fleet—works his heart out all day to the point of exhaustion, and he probably has to wake up at 02:00 for a fire drill because he is also on the ship’s firefighting team.
One great comfort that I have is that there is a record of all of us in Heaven—perfect, uncorrupted, and accurate, and it will be shouted to all mankind, to every soul, and to all the angels at The Great White Throne of Judgment.
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