I am a Marine Corps Corpsman. Once a Corpsman always a Corpsman.
Semper FI

I am Married and Loving it. Thou I have been a bear to live with for the past many years; she is still with me. I can't understand Why she still is but; I love her more now than I did when I first married her. She and the My two Girls are the Life anchor to this insane World of mine. I did 9 years in the service most of them with the Marines as a Corpsman 2nd FSSG, 2nd Med Bn. Camp Lejeune; also In MIchigan in the 4th Mar Div, 24th Rig. I also did time in the 142th Forward Support Hospital Nationial Guard. Total time was from 1986 to 1995.

I like to Hunt, Fish, Play with my kids and spend time getting beat in cards by the wife. I also Like to ride my horse.

I became a Master Mason in Michigan and plan on going into the York Rite to finish my travels as a Knight Templar.


I wrote this in Desert Storm 1991 Its called
(Reaper)

At night I hear the haunting sounds of the desert, the explosions of the bombs and the missles of war.
The wounded are crying out for someone to help,
All i can do is try my best to save them.
My heart bleeds for those who are beyond help,
For I know who is about to steal theirs souls.
As I gaze into their dying eyes looking toward the sky,
I fear what they are about to see; The Reaper.
All in Black, riding a horse black as death itself, With eyes as red as blood, I fight against his icy grip.
Trying to cheat him out of a soul or two, But sometimes the cheaters get cheated.

When i sleep I hear the screaming of the dead,
And the laughter of the Reaper.
For he has taken another soul.
I wake in a cold sweat, and thank God that he is not coming for me; This time.
For when he does, who will be there to help me cheat him.
The thoughts of the Reaper haunt my every night,
And the sounds of his laughter leaves me with silent screams for Help.
Who will help me when he comes for me to cheat him out of my soul?


What Is A Veteran

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service:
a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye.

Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pin holding
a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg -
or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul's
ally forged in the refinery of adversity.

Except in parades, however, the men and women who
have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem.

You can't tell a vet just by looking. What is a vet?

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi
Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored
personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel.

He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks,
whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a
hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of
exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.

She - or he - is the nurse who fought against futility
and went to sleep sobbing every night for
two solid years in Da Nang.

He is the POW who went away one person and came back another -
or didn't come back AT ALL.

He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat -
but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account
rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to
watch each other's backs.

He is the parade - riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons
and medals with a prosthetic hand.

He is the career quartermaster who watches the
ribbons and medals pass him by.

He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns,
whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever
preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor
dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield
or in the ocean's sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket -
palsied now and aggravatingly slow - who helped liberate a
Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were
still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.

He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being -
a person who offered some of his life's most vital years in
the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions
so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.

He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness,
and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on
behalf of the finest, the greatest nation ever known.

So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country,
just lean over and say Thank You. That's all most people need,
and in most cases it will mean more than any medals they could
have been awarded or were awarded. Two little words that mean a lot,
"THANK YOU."
author- Father Denis Edward O'Brien
USMC

He waits, silent clutching his Unit One Wondering about this time A flash as a 'copter drops a flare And midnight turns to noon And hell reaches them all racing forward, past sanity Insanity calls pushing him forward Regardless of death to a fallen friend Bullets falling that scream Die falling inches away Working his best Moving up, blood racing in his veins and dropping in a wound Made hours ago He thinks of himself His sergeant says stop but he remembers a Creed Taken years ago And again moves forward into hell blood and gun grease the sound of death The words of life his morphine spent And his plasma used Nothing left but a Creed sounds in his ears above 'copters and total hell Up to a fallen friend Who looks up to a face of Christ and smiles Bullets shatter the night Somewhere a mother perhaps a wife Thank God for a life She says a prayer for an unknown person who saved his life. Yes somewhere, some person a lone person Looks upon a lifeless body Running faster to a calling Remembering a Creed Taken years ago He halts to gaze upon A corpsman lying still.

Corpsman
In August of 1942, the first major USMC assault landings against the Japanese Empire occurred in the Solomon Islands, Pacific. The island chosen for the invasion was Guadalcanal.

As they moved inland, four Marines were walking point into the jungle. Advancing into an open area without cover, they came under heavy fire from the entrenched Japanese. All four Marines were wounded but managed to crawl into a shell crater, about fifty yards from where they had emerged from the jungle.

A Hospital Corpsman ran from cover into the crater with the wounded Marines, and ran back to cover, under fire. Having dressed the wounds of the Marine, he sprinted back for another, only this time he was hit. Not stopping to dress his own wounds, he carried the second Marine to cover receiving a second wound. After giving aid to the Marine, the Corpsman was hit for a third time going into the crater. Staggering toward the treeline with the third Marine, he was again struck by enemy fire.

When the third Marine's wounds were dressed, the Corpsman started after the last Marine in the crater. The Corpsman still had not stopped to care for his own wounds. In a final valiant effort, he stumbled toward the crater, where he was brought down by concentrated enemy machine gun fire. He lunged forward into the crater falling across the fourth Marine, finally giving up his life.

Reaching up to his own bleeding wounds, the Marine wrote on the back of the Corpsman's bullet riddled shirt,


"WHERE ANGELS AND MARINES FEAR TO TREAD, THERE YOU'LL FIND A CORPSMAN DEAD."


This was that dying Marine's final tribute to his shipmate's supreme sacrifice in fulfilling his oath, "TO AID THE WOUNDED, IN THEIR MOMENT OF NEED."

Let us not forget that there was in fact a Corpsman with the Marines as they raised the flag on Mt. Suribachi. Hospital Corpsman John Bradley was there and was one of the three survivors from the raising to leave Iwo Jima. John Bradley died January 11, 1994 at the age of 70.

I feel compelled to pay respect to those who serve with and treat those Marines in their time of suffering. For those of you that don't understand the love hate relationship with the Navy, I can only say that at no time and in no place will you need to worry about the medical care received by Marines. There are only three kinds of doctors -- corpsmen, Corpsman, and CORPSMAN.

One might ask for a definition of a Corpsman and while I was setting this page up I ran across a mighty fine site called what else "Navy Corpsmen", where I found what can only be described as the best definition of a Corpsman anywhere. It reads as follows:

CORPSMAN - Usually a young, long haired, bearded, Marine-hatin' Sailor with certain medical skills, who will go through the very gates of Hell to get to a wounded Marine.

It may surprise some but the Navy Corpsman has a long proud tradition of serving with the United States Marine Corps. They have fought with us, fought along side of us, and sadly have made the ultimate sacrifice for us. Their Medal of Honor citations read like they were Marines... and by God I will honor them like the Marines they so proudly served!