Merry Christmas Marine
For the second time in my life, I enter the Christmas season knowing my oldest son will be absent. Not really surprising since a lot of gifted and talented 22 year olds spend the holidays with friends from school, girlfriend's parents, or friends on the ski slopes. Good kids, just like my son. Good kids, but not my son.
The first Christmas we were apart, he was safe with the Drill Instructors of the United States Marine Corps in San Diego. This time, he is half a world away at a forward operations base in western Iraq. I share the pain that any parent feels when their kids aren't home for the holidays. I hope that the parents whose sons and daughters are not home for college, social, or romantic conflicts can appreciate mine.
Instead of Christmas presents, I assemble packages on a very strict timetable, knowing that anything I send to my son will have about a two week lag, at best. The staff of my court has continually hounded me on something to send as a Christmas gift to him. When I broached that subject with my son on one of our far too infrequent satellite phone conversations, his response was "nothing for me personally, just some stuff for all the Marines here with me".
Marines live and die with a dedication to their God, their Country, and their Corps. Semper fidelis. They share the toiletries, candy, ammunition, water, paperbacks, junk food, diaper wipes, news from home, and the other things that young men need in a war in a far away desert. They share the pain when their fellow Marines are killed and maimed doing the job that they all volunteered to do. My son tells me that the best kept secret of the Marines in Iraq is their morale. He and his fellow Marines actually find great humor in the gloom and doom reporting of the war that permeates the liberal American media. They know, first hand, that they are winning this war and that they are needed and loved by the vast majority of the Iraqi people. Marines are not concerned with the incredible misinformation that the liberal media is spinning to the American public, they do their job with quiet confidence in their cause, their country, and their Commander in Chief. Even in conditions that most of us would find unbearable, Marines adapt, improvise, and overcome. That is the way of the Corps.
This Christmas will not be as merry as some of those of the past. I will get into the spirit, but I will be haunted by the memories of Christmas past and a happy little boy opening his presents around our tree, a little boy who loved a whole drumstick from the Christmas turkey, a little boy who usually fell asleep shortly after finishing his pumpkin pie with whipped cream. If my timing is right, and things go good at the fleet post office, and the mail convoy is not engaged in transit by the enemy, maybe that little boy will open a package on Christmas morning in a desert far away. The package won't have the presents, the drumstick, or the pumpkin pie, but maybe it will make him happy. Maybe he can take a nap on Christmas afternoon.
Christmas will go on for all parents who spend the holidays with a child absent. We will decorate the tree and enjoy the company of our family and friends. Memories will be happy and some will be sad, but we will all carry on with the Christmas spirit that defines families. My son will spend Christmas with his other family, the family that has, for more than two hundred thirty years, defined honor, courage, and commitment to this great country; the United States Marine Corps.
I wish that my little boy could be with me this Christmas but I understand that I must divide my time with his other family. As we enjoy the Christmas season, all of us might do well to remember that my son's other family is the reason that we are free to enjoy the holidays, and to sleep warm and secure on Christmas Eve.
Merry Christmas Marine, be safe and come home soon.
Bill Harris is a District Judge in Fort Worth, Texas. His son is a United States Marine on active duty in the Anbar Province of Iraq.
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