Pick up your rifle and follow me, I am Marine Corps Infantry!

I am by no means an expert on war, life after war, or the Marine Corps. I have only dabbled in these areas, and I have enjoyed it.

I served in the Marine Corps from 2000-2004.

My MOS: 0352 (TOW Gunner).

As a TOW Gunner my job was to shoot wire guided missiles from the tops of hummers at tanks, armored personal carriers, and people. My time in Iraq lasted ten months: 2003-2004. I enrolled in college directly after my honorable discharge and have since worked odd jobs from teaching English in France to working as a cashier for a family run shoe store in St. Louis, Missouri.

Now, five years after the Marine Corps, I have almost graduated from St. Louis University with a BA in English, and I have no freakin’ idea what the hell I’ll do next.

I say this because I am not alone. There are thousands of other war veterans out there who have no freakin’ idea as to what they’ll do when they EAS (End of Active Service) or graduate from college.

Will I reenlist?

Go into law enforcement?

Teach English with an emphasis on the art of war?

Apply to the ATF, the FBI, the IRS?

Or maybe…maybe I will join the French Foreign Legion? La vie est belle.

This is my blog, and as I write it I come to the end of my academic career. The big question I often ask myself is whether I did the right thing by enlisting first and then going to college, or should have I gone to college and then been commissioned as a Marine Corps officer, a freakin’ butter-bar?

Writing in the first person is a selfish act (in boot camp everything is spoken in the 3^rd person), narcissistic even, but the American public, the civilian sector, should know what their veterans are doing after going to war, on and off the battlefield. We are as clueless about your lifestyle as you are about ours. In war the biggest question was, “what’s going on back home?” During the 2003 Iraq invasion we could only write to you with paper and ink stick, snail mail we called it. A year later we were able to call you once or twice a month. And now, depending on which unit you’re assigned to, it’s possible to call home via sat-phone or webcam almost every day and night.

My purpose in America sort of feels how it did in Al Qaim and Diwaniyah five years ago. I mean, imagine all of a sudden having to drop everything you’re doing and move to Iraq or Afghanistan. Only you have to live life as if nothing has changed, except the geography. You don’t know the language, you don’t know the food, and you don’t know the customs. Well, that’s how it is for me, and other returning veterans I’m assuming. Sometimes you feel like an alien, and other times you feel like a predator.

Alien vs. Predator?