When I enlisted in the navy at 18 I wasn't very sure what was going to happen to me overseas. Our nation had just invaded a country to turn back another invasion and things were hot and getting hotter in the middle east.
Many of my friends were concerned about my joining the military. "You might get killed!" they would often say. I figured it was a possibility, but when you're 18 you know nothings going to happen to you because you're 18 and that's just not the way it works. We all know it happens to the other guy on the other side and you get to be the one to give it to them.
I went through my training and it was instilled in me that we had to make a decision then and there -what our lives were worth and what we were willing to do for them. Our instructors even had us put our heads down and think about it for a while and focus on the decision that our lives were worth more than those we were going to face. We were told to think about what we stood for, what we believed in, what we were serving for, who we loved. We were told to make that decision now because when the time came there would be no time to think. I recited over and over again in my mind, "me or you....I'm going home tonight, it's going to be you" as I prepped for an uncertain duty.
Then I got my first phone call a week after checking in my first duty station late at night, it was 11pm: "Millican, this is Grimmet, one of the detainees has escaped, knocked out one of the Marine Sentries, swiped an M-60 and is spraying the compounds with fire while freeing others and they are on the move. We have one Marine reported dead, others wounded, Delta Section is next up, grab your gear, get ready to go."
My world changed forever in one phone call. "Is this for real?" I thought. As I ran to headquarters I kept saying to myself "Me or you, me or you, I'm going home, it's going to be you...."
Over the course of my duty I was in harms way in one form or another many times and sometimes I didn't know if I was coming home even as I walked into a situation.
Military Service was a lot easier than civilian life, especially in a combat role because there was only one of two outcomes: you came home or you came home in a very nice box with a funeral escort.
I'm at peace with it now and was at peace with it then. Mostly due to my religious values I suppose, I never felt calmer and more alive than when I would go into a hostile situation, I realized, I was either going home here or going home to the Lord, either way I was going home.
Many portray war as a waste. A waste of lives. But I can say this as a veteran who didn't know if he was coming home a few times: we all die. There isn't a person who lived in 1776 who's alive today. Some lived past the war, and others died in it to win. But either way, they are all dead.
So my question to you, dear reader, my fellow American is: what is your life worth? What is freedom worth? If God promises us all He has if we are faithful, then what is it to be faithful and serve the cause of Liberty and die in the service thereof? Clearly God has blessed us with victory and prosperity in freedom and in peace. Liberty is worth serving and dying for.
This was and is the faith of our fathers.
~A U.S. Navy Veteran
