Of all the character traits that people tend to exhibit, I think the posers urk me more than any other.
Admittedly, just like most folks, I am guilty of embellishing some of my life’s exploits from time to time, depending on how many adult beverages I have consumed and what crowd I’m in.
There’s a saying among old Marines and that goes “the older we get, the better we were,” but even good-natured exaggeration has its limits when someone benefits at the expense of others.
I am speaking, of course, of soon-to-be dishonorably discharged Marine and extreme dirt-bag David Budwah of Sabillasville, Md.
In case you don’t know about Budwah, he has been going around wearing medals he didn’t earn and telling tales of battlefield heroism, although he has yet to serve a day in combat. Once he was discovered, he was taken down and will soon be headed to a military penal facility for what will hopefully be a very unpleasant stay before he goes home in disgrace.
Now I have known a few guys like him, who have been hurt in non-combat related accidents or who stayed in the rear of the theater and who have come home and acted like they took Fallujah single-handedly.
These wastes of life get all these trips to theme parks and sporting events where they are treated like royalty. All the while, the real heroes are sweating and gutting through the pain of physical therapy so that they can charge back into battle with their new prosthetic leg supporting them or lying in the ground in a dozen or more hometown cemeteries.
Now I also know a couple of true heroes: I know a guy who was buried in the rubble of a Beruit Lebanon barracks, who woke up and had to pull his leg off of the re-bar he was impaled on before he went about denying medical attention so that he could look for his men, until he was too weak from blood loss to keep going – I was honored to serve with this man afterward. I know a man who won the Bronze Star for Bravery under fire for exposing himself to enemy fire in order to save fellow Marines in Vietnam – I am honored to be his son.
I also know three young men very well who serve now and who ask for nothing in return but their pay and some leave time once in a while. One of them has been hit by debris and even had his vehicle flipped over from enemy IEDs, but his injuries, according to the Army, were not serious enough to warrant a Purple Heart.
I think about my friends, my Dad and my Sons, and I get so angry at the posers for the way they cheapen the actions of true heroes, all because they think it makes them more important and give their mediocre existences some sort of meaning.
Hey, I had my time in harm’s way, I didn’t leave as a hero, and I didn’t want to. To come home and bring my men home with me, and none of us be dead, was enough reward for me.
Bush, and now Obama, complain that they haven’t been able to present Medals of Honor to any living recipients from this conflict. Well, maybe that is because they aren’t looking hard enough. Because if there is one thing America isn’t short of, it’s heroes.
We also seem to have no shortage of scumbags like Budwah. With a little luck, he’ll serve his brig time with some guys who have a little real combat time. I’m sure they will have lots of fun exchanging war stories in the exercise yard.
