Downingtown, PA 18 March 2020
It is only the first day of the Great Pennsylvania Shut Down and I’m already reduced to (gasp) doing a little house straightening up. Really. Honest.
I found a book I had forgotten I owned: Deadline Artists. It is a collection of some of the greatest American newspaper columns, although it missed the late, great Bill Lyons of the Philadelphia Inquirer in its Sports section. (I still can’t find his column in which the lede was something along the line of: “The pattern was full at Philadelphia International Airport as the Berkshires and Hampshires lined up to take off…..” One of our teams had done something unexpectedly great. Maybe it was the 2007 Fightins’. If anyone has it, please let me know. But I digress.
In a time when people are all running around in a panic, this gem from the great Ernie Pyle hit home:
THE GOD-DAMNED INFANTRY
Now to the infantry—the God-damned infantry as they like to call themselves.
I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end they are the guys that wars can’t be won without.
I had the honor and privilege of leading Marines in combat. The mental images painted by those 5 simple sentences ought to be a rallying cry for us all. My Marines lived on WWII-era C-rations, the same 12 meals over and over, for weeks—sometimes months—at a time.
The shirt on your back, if you even wore one under your flak jacket, the trousers held together with the black safety pins that came one to a bandolier of ammunition, the M-1942 light marching pack that could only hold a poncho and poncho liner and that luxury of luxuries, an extra pair of dry or less wet socks, that was all you had or needed to survive. That and a sense of humor.
It was hard humor. Dark humor. Biting humor. From men who would then cut a last cigarette in half, or share that last nearly empty canteen, or wait to be the last one to eat to make sure everyone got something. We lieutenants were taught that in OCS and TBS: Officers eat last!
Our 18 year old platoon sergeants, rifle, machine gun, and mortar squad leaders, and fire team leaders were just naturally gallant that way. God's most magnificent creation is the Marine.
Yeah, our humor and our take on life was dark and gallows serious. We laughed at the serious and at the absurd because, well, who wants to see a grown man cry (although we did some of that, too, when the loss of a shipmate was just too damn'd much to bear). And that habit of our youth has stayed with us and may lead friends, family, and strangers alike to think we aren't taking the Kung Flu seriously.
We do, but habits picked up in the crucible of war, in places like The Arizona Territory at the Hot dog and An Bang (1), on Go Noi Island, and in a hundred little villes here and there, has tied us together with bonds that cannot be explained.
Merely cherished.
So, when people are hoarding toilet paper, moaning about having to stay in warm, dry houses, or having to drive through some place to get their morning munchies, just don’t expect the God-damned infantry to care very much. Instead, learn from us.
If life seems to suck (it really doesn’t, you know), embrace the suck.
Show someone how much you really care by saying to a friend or neighbor, “Hey, Ass-hat. I’m going to the grocery store. What stupid stuff can I get for your lazy carcass so you don’t have to go out too?” Say it and then do it, hiding some little treat in the bag before you drop it on their front porch and step back ten feet.
We are going through a tough time in America. Some of us have known tougher. Let’s get through this together. We can do it. We already have the God-damned infantry to show us how.
Semper Fidelis.
