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Originally Posted by doggin94it
Got into a lot of firefights there, huh?
Thank you for your service, and if there actually had been a war between Cuba and the US you would've been in a bad position, so I imagine it was tense, but Child Please is right. You were a guard on a cold border along which no shots have been fired for what, decades? That's not combat duty.
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Shots were always exchanged while I was stationed there. There was even a missile fired near the Marine Barracks one night. Cuba is the place where the USA announced DEFCON 2. Mostly they shot to at us.
I had dinner last year in NYC with a Marine buddy of mine who was stationed with me then, we laughed about it. You have no idea what it is like to spend ONE night on guard duty in GTMO or the 38th Parallel.
It is dark, hot, humid and lots of sounds that you have to distinguish. Viscous mosquitoes. Scorpions. Snakes. Huge crabs. Lizards. The Minefield. Wild Boars. The Cubans were easy to deal with (lol).
We did not even get a full magazine of rounds back then. Guess they wanted us to use the rounds upon ourselves if the Cubans came full force (lol)
That is just one of the exciting places that I spent some time at. Marines are trained for killing and combat. When the Iraq war began in 2003, I went to sign up again. The Marines won't take you past the age of 29.
I never stated that I saw combat. I was sure looking for it!!!!! And I went to some of the right places to get. It is all about timing. Combat makes Marines comfortable. That's why there are only a 'few' of us.
Our retention rate is higher when there is a war. 70% of the Marines leave when there is no war.
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Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem.
Ronald Reagan, President of the United States; 1985
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