thedrifter
04-17-07, 08:22 AM
JOHN M. CRISP: One Marine's story
-- Scripps Howard News Service
Published: Monday, April 16, 2007
I'm not well acquainted with the security guards who patrol the college where I work. But they're conscientious and polite and they never complain when they have to open a building for you on a weekend. And they must do a good job because the campus crime rate is very low.
But when one of them mentioned one Sunday that he had resigned from the Marine Corps after 15 years, we talked.
I'll call him Jorge, partly because privacy allows him to speak more freely, and partly because he's a representative of a group that deserves recognition, the sizable contingent of Hispanics who serve in the U.S. Marines.
I've met some of them here in South Texas. Often they're not burly, tough-looking guys like you might expect. Many are modest in build and unimposing, more like bullfighters than boxers. But they're good Marines, tough, wiry and dependable. More than 30,000 serve in the Corps, representing a higher percentage by ethnicity than in any other service. At least 13 Hispanic Marines have been awarded the Medal of Honor.
Jorge says that after a childhood in Corpus Christi, Texas, his 15 years in the Corps revealed an exotic new world. He toured the usual Corps way stations: San Diego, Camp Pendleton, Twenty-Nine Palms, Okinawa. Then eventually Somalia, Hawaii, Guam, Bahrain, Dubai, Thailand, Bali, Australia. He became a construction chief and served in a specialty platoon. He says that the Corps was good to him, helping him in a number of practical ways and giving him confidence. In return, he was a good Marine. Along the way, he married and had two children.
Ellie
-- Scripps Howard News Service
Published: Monday, April 16, 2007
I'm not well acquainted with the security guards who patrol the college where I work. But they're conscientious and polite and they never complain when they have to open a building for you on a weekend. And they must do a good job because the campus crime rate is very low.
But when one of them mentioned one Sunday that he had resigned from the Marine Corps after 15 years, we talked.
I'll call him Jorge, partly because privacy allows him to speak more freely, and partly because he's a representative of a group that deserves recognition, the sizable contingent of Hispanics who serve in the U.S. Marines.
I've met some of them here in South Texas. Often they're not burly, tough-looking guys like you might expect. Many are modest in build and unimposing, more like bullfighters than boxers. But they're good Marines, tough, wiry and dependable. More than 30,000 serve in the Corps, representing a higher percentage by ethnicity than in any other service. At least 13 Hispanic Marines have been awarded the Medal of Honor.
Jorge says that after a childhood in Corpus Christi, Texas, his 15 years in the Corps revealed an exotic new world. He toured the usual Corps way stations: San Diego, Camp Pendleton, Twenty-Nine Palms, Okinawa. Then eventually Somalia, Hawaii, Guam, Bahrain, Dubai, Thailand, Bali, Australia. He became a construction chief and served in a specialty platoon. He says that the Corps was good to him, helping him in a number of practical ways and giving him confidence. In return, he was a good Marine. Along the way, he married and had two children.
Ellie