thedrifter
01-03-09, 06:42 AM
Marines send off a new one of their own
Kathrine Schmidt
Staff Writer
Published: Friday, January 2, 2009 at 3:00 p.m.
HOUMA — She graduated from H.L. Bourgeois High this year.
The people she met with patrolled the Pacific before the Cold War. One landed on beaches in amphibious tanks in Hawaii when it was still a territory.
But when U.S. Marine Corps veterans met Thursday with 18-year-old Felicia Chaisson, who recently finished Marine Corps boot camp, there was plenty they had in common.
“You qualified with an M16?” asked Billy Bourgeois, 68, referring to the automatic rifle.
Sitting perfectly straight in her blue dress uniform, neatly manicured hands folded in her lap, not a short blond hair out of place, Chaisson replied that she had.
And could she take it apart and put it back together again?
“Yes, sir.”
When Bourgeois heard that Chaisson had recently finished her 13-weeks of training at Parris Island, S.C., he and other local veterans wanted to get together for congratulations and support before she leaves Monday for the next phase, the month-long Marine Combat Training coming in North Carolina.
“What I’m really proud of is that she volunteered to go in when the world is chaotic,” Bourgeois said. “We’d like to promote it to other young kids lost in the world. It’s a way out to solve your problems, to be somebody.”
As a 17-year old junior quarterback at Thibodaux High, Bourgeois signed up in the footsteps of four senior football teammates, volunteering before he even graduated high school. “I felt like my world would fall apart if I wasn’t with those guys.”
So they went through their California basic training together.
Bourgeois served from 1957 to 1960, not seeing any action, he told her, but spent time throughout the Pacific ocean. He and his buddies have gone their separate ways. But the pride instilled helped him to succeed, he said, along with Lloyd and Philip Aucoin, 68 and 67, two other local Marine veterans.
He went on to spend time as a police officer and tool designer and now owns his own metallurgical testing business, Partek Laboratories.
At Copeland’s restaurant, the Marines compared notes on shooting designations and remembering their identification and rifle numbers, as Chaisson briefed them on the long hikes, the intensive drills, the combat simulation of crawling through sand with a weapon dragging the dead weight of a fallen comrade.
But how many pushups could she do?
“I don’t know,” she said. “I never counted.”
“It’s amazing what you can make yourself do physically,” she added. “What pain you can ignore.”
Loved ones also inspired Chaisson to join the service, she told the vets. Her grandfather was a Marine, as is a cousin. So is her boyfriend, Matthew Barrett, and a number of close high school friends.
Inspiration also comes, she said, from standing up for the country and convictions she loves.
“I’m full of opinions,” she said. “But I don’t want to just talk about it. I want to go do something about it.”
After the next phase of combat training, she’ll head to Monterrey, Calif., for intensive instruction in languages and translation as her Military Occupational Speciality, or training focus in the corps. While she doesn’t know what language she will learn yet as a crypotological linguist, she suspects it will be one from the Middle Eastern such as Arabic or Farsi, to help with intelligence in the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
She’d always wanted to be a translator, but decided to take the military route instead of college so she could prepare and protect herself overseas.
“You have so many doors open for you,” she said.
Because of the long training, she wouldn’t likely be deployed for three or four years. But being away from family is hard, Chaisson said. The recruit training was the longest she’d ever been away from home, and her parents were nervous about her signing up in a time of war.
But she told them she is well aware of the risk.
“It’s what we’re trained to do,” she said.
Beaming, the older marines looked on.
“You’re going to do well, kid,” Bourgeois said.
Staff Writer Kathrine Schmidt can be reached at 857-2204 or kathrine.schmidt@houmatoday.com.
Ellie
Kathrine Schmidt
Staff Writer
Published: Friday, January 2, 2009 at 3:00 p.m.
HOUMA — She graduated from H.L. Bourgeois High this year.
The people she met with patrolled the Pacific before the Cold War. One landed on beaches in amphibious tanks in Hawaii when it was still a territory.
But when U.S. Marine Corps veterans met Thursday with 18-year-old Felicia Chaisson, who recently finished Marine Corps boot camp, there was plenty they had in common.
“You qualified with an M16?” asked Billy Bourgeois, 68, referring to the automatic rifle.
Sitting perfectly straight in her blue dress uniform, neatly manicured hands folded in her lap, not a short blond hair out of place, Chaisson replied that she had.
And could she take it apart and put it back together again?
“Yes, sir.”
When Bourgeois heard that Chaisson had recently finished her 13-weeks of training at Parris Island, S.C., he and other local veterans wanted to get together for congratulations and support before she leaves Monday for the next phase, the month-long Marine Combat Training coming in North Carolina.
“What I’m really proud of is that she volunteered to go in when the world is chaotic,” Bourgeois said. “We’d like to promote it to other young kids lost in the world. It’s a way out to solve your problems, to be somebody.”
As a 17-year old junior quarterback at Thibodaux High, Bourgeois signed up in the footsteps of four senior football teammates, volunteering before he even graduated high school. “I felt like my world would fall apart if I wasn’t with those guys.”
So they went through their California basic training together.
Bourgeois served from 1957 to 1960, not seeing any action, he told her, but spent time throughout the Pacific ocean. He and his buddies have gone their separate ways. But the pride instilled helped him to succeed, he said, along with Lloyd and Philip Aucoin, 68 and 67, two other local Marine veterans.
He went on to spend time as a police officer and tool designer and now owns his own metallurgical testing business, Partek Laboratories.
At Copeland’s restaurant, the Marines compared notes on shooting designations and remembering their identification and rifle numbers, as Chaisson briefed them on the long hikes, the intensive drills, the combat simulation of crawling through sand with a weapon dragging the dead weight of a fallen comrade.
But how many pushups could she do?
“I don’t know,” she said. “I never counted.”
“It’s amazing what you can make yourself do physically,” she added. “What pain you can ignore.”
Loved ones also inspired Chaisson to join the service, she told the vets. Her grandfather was a Marine, as is a cousin. So is her boyfriend, Matthew Barrett, and a number of close high school friends.
Inspiration also comes, she said, from standing up for the country and convictions she loves.
“I’m full of opinions,” she said. “But I don’t want to just talk about it. I want to go do something about it.”
After the next phase of combat training, she’ll head to Monterrey, Calif., for intensive instruction in languages and translation as her Military Occupational Speciality, or training focus in the corps. While she doesn’t know what language she will learn yet as a crypotological linguist, she suspects it will be one from the Middle Eastern such as Arabic or Farsi, to help with intelligence in the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
She’d always wanted to be a translator, but decided to take the military route instead of college so she could prepare and protect herself overseas.
“You have so many doors open for you,” she said.
Because of the long training, she wouldn’t likely be deployed for three or four years. But being away from family is hard, Chaisson said. The recruit training was the longest she’d ever been away from home, and her parents were nervous about her signing up in a time of war.
But she told them she is well aware of the risk.
“It’s what we’re trained to do,” she said.
Beaming, the older marines looked on.
“You’re going to do well, kid,” Bourgeois said.
Staff Writer Kathrine Schmidt can be reached at 857-2204 or kathrine.schmidt@houmatoday.com.
Ellie