Missing, lost, absent members

Discussions about our lives, families, jobs... things may get a little personal
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JustinR
Posts: 1852
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2008 2:53 am

Re: Missing, lost, absent members

Post by JustinR »

Well...bummer. :|
"The armory was even better. Above the door was a sign: You dream, we build." -Mark Owen, No Easy Day

"My assault weapon won't be 'illegal,' it will be 'undocumented.'" -KL
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Kommander
Posts: 3761
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2008 10:13 am

Re: Missing, lost, absent members

Post by Kommander »

This is not the first time that I have seen the Corpsman/Marine issue come up. Some vigorously defend them as essentially honorary Marines, others want them to be extremely specific about what they were. I do think it would be kind of silly if you had to prefix every "no shit there I was" story with an explanation that yes you were with the Marines, going on missions and whatnot with them, but were not actually a Marine but a Corpsman.
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Jericho941
Posts: 5180
Joined: Sun Aug 24, 2008 8:30 am

Re: Missing, lost, absent members

Post by Jericho941 »

Greg wrote:You've gotta stop reading Vox. Or Slate, or Gawker, Salon, HuffPo, etc
I don't, generally. Or was this a joke about how my post is like a clickbait listicle? In which case, fair enough.
Kommander wrote:This is not the first time that I have seen the Corpsman/Marine issue come up. Some vigorously defend them as essentially honorary Marines, others want them to be extremely specific about what they were. I do think it would be kind of silly if you had to prefix every "no shit there I was" story with an explanation that yes you were with the Marines, going on missions and whatnot with them, but were not actually a Marine but a Corpsman.
In this case, it's less about the status of Corpsmen and much more about the light in which Aesop intended to cast his own experience.

Generally speaking, military types tend to be sensitive about these kinds of details. For example, in all honesty I could say I have two combat tours in Afghanistan under my belt, and leave out the fact that it was as a POG/REMF/fobbit/etc who never fired his weapon in anger. So, if I had done that, I could talk about things like M4s and SAWs and house clearing as if I was an authority on the subject simply by omitting the trivial detail that, oh by the way, I only fixed fighter jets. Maybe I could talk about grease guns, flamethrowers, armored warfare and so on with the credibility of someone who's BTDT even if my relevant experience is almost identical to everyone else's: historians, the internet, and hearsay/scuttlebutt. Really, I could put on airs of righteous indignation that my word would ever be questioned even if it boils down to "I heard from a guy" in reality.

FWIW, I honestly thought Aesop was an artillery Marine at some nonspecific time during the 1980s.
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Rich
Posts: 2592
Joined: Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:11 pm

Re: Missing, lost, absent members

Post by Rich »

That's like me with my Assault Tool Box in Southeast Asia. The one time I was issued a weapon, the absence of ammunition was a little obvious. That hasn't stopped me from telling tales however, because I'm Irish and I has the Gift of Blarney. :roll:
A weak government usually remains a servant of citizens, while a strong government usually becomes the master of its subjects.
- paraphrased from several sources

A choice, not an echo. - Goldwater campaign, 1964
Greg
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Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2008 2:15 pm

Re: Missing, lost, absent members

Post by Greg »

Jericho941 wrote:
Greg wrote:You've gotta stop reading Vox. Or Slate, or Gawker, Salon, HuffPo, etc
I don't, generally. Or was this a joke about how my post is like a clickbait listicle? In which case, fair enough
No, I meant the little list you posted seemed to really well encapsulate the article generation process that seems to be so typical nowadays of hopelessly undereducated Dunning-Kruger cases, whose ignorance is only exceeded by their arrogance and the degree to which they assume (absolutely unearned) moral superiority. Those being the exact sorts of folks who generate all the content on the left side of the 'net. (So if you don't like the sort of bilge your checklist describes, stay away from ..... )

People on the right can be assholes in their own way, but they tend to at least have actual life experience and some sort of real-world skill.
Maybe we're just jaded, but your villainy is not particularly impressive. -Ennesby

If you know what you're doing, you're not learning anything. -Unknown
Sanity is the process by which you continually adjust your beliefs so they are predictively sound. -esr
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Frankingun
Posts: 1925
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2008 2:03 am

Re: Missing, lost, absent members

Post by Frankingun »

I do like the decorum here, it's much better than much larger forums.

Oh, and buy ammo and magazines.
Buy ammunition and magazines.

You'll shoot your eye out!

Another blog.
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Weetabix
Posts: 6106
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:04 pm

Re: Missing, lost, absent members

Post by Weetabix »

Frankingun wrote:I do like the decorum here, it's much better than much larger forums.

Oh, and buy ammo and magazines.
+2, I suppose is the way to express it.
Note to self: start reading sig lines. They're actually quite amusing. :D
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