A Good Read.

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » January 28, 2003, 11:26 am

I got this in my email this morning and I thought I would share.

SUPER BOWL BATTLE IS DWARFED BY WHAT BAND OF BROTHERS FACES
Bryan Burwell
St Louis Post-Dispatch Sports Columnist
01/22/2003 10:25 PM

SAN DIEGO - It was just around midnight Tuesday night, and the outdoor
courtyard at Dick's Last Resort was throbbing with the rowdy energy of a
spring break bacchanal. There was loud rock music blaring out of the stereo speakers, and the air was filled with the distinct and somewhat revolting aroma of deep-fried bar food, cigarette smoke and spilled beer.

Dick's is the sort of bar-restaurant ideally suited for Super Bowl week
mischief, because it has a down-and-dirty roadhouse feel to it. The
waiters, waitresses and bartenders are charmingly rude, and the wood floors are covered with sand and all sorts of indistinguishable debris. The clientele on this evening is a fascinating mix of twenty-something college kids, thirty-something conventioneers and 40-something Super Bowl high-rollers.

Yet there was one table in Dick's courtyard Tuesday night that was
noticeably different from the others. There were six young men at the table and one young woman, and while they were drinking like everyone else in the room, there was something all too serious going on at this table that let you know that their thoughts were a long way from the mindless frivolity of Super Bowl week.

Maybe it was the close-cropped "barracks haircuts" that gave them away. All the men's heads were cut in that familiar look of a professional soldier,
skin-close on the sides, and on top a tight shock of hair that resembled
new shoe-brush bristles.

"We're Marines," one man told me. "And tomorrow we're boarding a ship for... well . . . I really can't tell you where, but you know."

Of course we knew. In less than an hour, they would report back to a ship
docked along the Southern California coast, then on Wednesday head across the Pacific Ocean, bound for a potential war in Iraq. So this was no Super Bowl party for them. This was their last night out on the town. One Marine was saying goodbye to his wife. The others were not so lucky. They all just sat around the table, throwing back beers and wrestling with the sobering uncertainty of the rest of their lives.

"We're going to war and none of us knows if we're ever coming back," said
another Marine, a 28-year-old from Southern Illinois. They all requested
that I not use their names. "Just tell 'em we're the men of (Marine
Aviation Land Support Squad 39)," they said.

On Super Bowl Sunday, the men of MALS 29 will be watching the game from the mess hall of their ship. "That is, if we're lucky and the weather is good and it doesn't interfere with the satellite signal," said the Marine with
the bald head and burnt-orange shirt. "But I gotta tell you, I'm not that
big a sports fan anymore. It's going to be the first pro football game I've
watched in . . . I can't even remember."

Why is that?

"Well, here's my problem with pro sports today," he said. "I don't care
whether it's football, basketball or baseball. Guys are complaining about
making $6 million instead of $7 million, and what is their job? Playing a
damned game. You know what I made last year? I made $14,000. They pay me $14,000, and you know what my job description is? I'm paid to take a bullet."

When he said those words, it positively staggered me.

Fourteen thousand dollars to take a bullet.

Not a day goes by that I am not reminded of what a wonderful life I lead. I
am paid to write about sports and tell stories on radio and television
about the games people play. But sometimes, even in the midst of a grand sporting event, something happens to put the frivolity of sports into its proper perspective, and this was it.

Fourteen thousand dollars to take a bullet.

As I sit here writing from my hotel room, I can look out my balcony window and I see a Navy battleship cutting through the San Diego Bay, heading out to sea. I can see the sailors standing on the deck as the ship sails past Coronado Island, the San Diego Marina and the downtown Seaport Village, and I wonder if any of the men from MALS 39 are aboard.

It was only 12 hours ago that I was sitting at the table with my guys,
buying them beers, and listening to their soldier stories. The Marine from
Southern Illinois who sat to my right pointed to the bald Marine in the
orange shirt who was seated to my left. "You know, I don't even know this
guy, can you believe that? We just met a few hours ago when we came into Dick's. Oh, I've seen him on the base, but I've never met him before
tonight. But here's what's so special about that man, and why I love that
man. He's my brother. Semper Fi. I know a guy back home, and he is my best friend. I'm 28 years old and we've known each other all our lives. But
today, that friend is more of a stranger to me than that Marine sitting
over there, who I've never met before tonight. That's why they call it a Band of Brothers."

The little Marine in the orange shirt lifted his glass toward the Marine
from Southern Illinois and nodded his head. "That's right," he said.
"That's my brother over there, and I'm gonna take a bullet for him if I have to."

He said it with a calm and jolting certainty. There was a moving, but
chilling, pride in his words.

All around them, people were drinking, shouting and laughing. The college
kids and the conventioneers and NFL high-rollers were living the good,
carefree life. Across the street, a storefront that was vacant two weeks
ago was now filled with $30 caps, $400 leather jackets, $40 mugs and $27
T-shirts with the fancy blue and yellow Super Bowl XXXVII logo embroidered on it.

From every end of the streets of downtown San Diego's fabled Gaslamp
Quarter, Super Bowl revelers toasted the Raiders and the Bucanneers with
grog-sized mugs filled with beers and rums. But just around midnight in the middle of the courtyard of Dick's Last Resort, a far more deserving toast was going up to the men of MALS 39. We clicked our glasses together, and a few minutes later, they quietly slipped out the courtyard gates.

Suddenly, the Super Bowl didn't seem so important anymore.

Canoe · Post by **Canoe** » January 28, 2003, 12:04 pm

Good read, thanks bubba.

vn_Tanc · Post by **vn_Tanc** » January 28, 2003, 12:09 pm

IMO we should all think hard about the reasons why before sending these guys to take bullets for a pittance.

If they go to war I hope they find the evidence to justify it.

miir · Post by **miir** » January 28, 2003, 12:19 pm

6 young men X $14k will buy George W Bush a lot of oil.

Lalanae · Post by **Lalanae** » January 28, 2003, 12:27 pm

In the seconds that one's appendages are blown off their body and death takes over, do you think they feel there is any justification for what is happening to them?

Imagine yourself in that moment. Imagine your loved ones in that moment.

Kylere · Post by **Kylere** » January 28, 2003, 12:44 pm

Some of you are confused my your own petty personal politics.

The point of this is not about the concept of war it is the fact that we as a society value some puke who can accurately catch a football 1000 times more than a soldier/marine/airman/sailor who is willing to put his life on the line for his country.

Lalanae · Post by **Lalanae** » January 28, 2003, 12:55 pm

LOL Kylere, YOU as a consumer support the industry. You think those guys would get paid that much if your so called "real Americans" didn't pump so much $$ into the sports industry? Its basic economics. If you really are that indignant about it, stop watching sports.

You call anti-war sentiments "petty personal politics" but you are so blind you can't even think through your own indignation to realize you are partly to blame for what you are indignant about!

LOL you are an endless geyser of entertainment!

Arsecn · Post by **Arsecn** » January 28, 2003, 1:08 pm

Semper Fi!

/salute

Kylere · Post by **Kylere** » January 28, 2003, 1:18 pm

Lalanae wrote:LOL Kylere, YOU as a consumer support the industry. You think those guys would get paid that much if your so called "real Americans" didn't pump so much $$ into the sports industry? Its basic economics. If you really are that indignant about it, stop watching sports.

You call anti-war sentiments "petty personal politics" but you are so blind you can't even think through your own indignation to realize you are partly to blame for what you are indignant about!

LOL you are an endless geyser of entertainment!

No, I call your use of everything to support your viewpoint petty politics. I watch football on TV, that is the full extent of my support of professional sports, I back the Lions, Tigers and the Red Wings as they are the teams I most closely identify with as they were the 'local' teams where I grew up. But I buy no hats, jackets, stickers, decals, magazines, action figures etc to support them. I personally think professional sports should cap all positions and all sports at a level equal to median level of teacher salaries in the US, but I realize that this is my opinion and do not try to convert others to the concept.

You preach, and when the choir does not respond, you become angry. I look at reality.

Lalanae · Post by **Lalanae** » January 28, 2003, 1:29 pm

How am I not looking at reality? Death is the ULTIMATE reality. You blinded-by-glory fools do a good job avoiding the true nature of war: death. I certainly wasn't preaching, just putting the facts up in your war-horny faces. It was a challenge you failed. Can you think about dying by your severed body parts? Do you think at that moment you'll be saying "Boy, I'm glad I died for my country"

vn_Tanc · Post by **vn_Tanc** » January 28, 2003, 1:35 pm

I personally think professional sports should cap all positions and all sports at a level equal to median level of teacher salaries in the US

You god-damned communist! The markets MUST be free! Even if the people aren't.

Yeah it's bullshit just like the bbc story I listed yesterday. It's a fucked up world where we know the price of everything and the value of nothing which is why I get paid 3x more for sitting in a comfortable office making computer games than my ex got for caring for the sick and elderly.

Although I'm an atheist there is one piece of advice in the Bible that holds true: Love of money is the root of all evil. If that's true we're all going to the hell in which I don't believe.

For anyone thinking of responding to this with a bullshit capitalist rant about supply and demand, trickle-down economics and wealth-creation please just fuck off right now. You are the spawn of satan and if you spew that tripe without being a multimillionaire who's actually benefitting from it you're a braindead dupe of monetarist propoganda as well.

Kylere · Post by **Kylere** » January 28, 2003, 6:35 pm

Money is cool.

The problem here is that as someone and the originator slips my mind, "War hath no fury like a noncombatant". I have fought in that desert, I know it is better to fight a conventional force than a nuclear, chemical, or biologically equipped enemy. Those who have not faced the sharp end, and have no risk of doing so, are not willing to see a ton of facts versus an ounce of their opinion. We will not see eye to eye on this Lalanae, so can we stop beating the horse now.

Chidoro · Post by **Chidoro** » January 28, 2003, 6:45 pm

So I take it you don't think people are paid what they're worth? What the market demands? What people who choose a profession are willing to accept?

That's nice

Cotto · Post by **Cotto** » January 28, 2003, 6:50 pm

I have nothing but respect for anyone in the military. They work fucked up hours, are paid to die, and treated as statistics when they do.
I'm sure glad David Beckham is getting his what-ever million a year for kicking a fucking ball around a pitch.
I know I couldnt do what those 14k guys do, cause basically I'm a fucking coward.

Nothin but respect for em.

Jugata · Post by **Jugata** » January 28, 2003, 7:21 pm

How many American casualties were there in the last war (non-accidental)? Just curious.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 28, 2003, 7:35 pm

U.S. casualties: 148 battle deaths, 145 nonbattle deaths

Army: 98 battle; 105 nonbattle
Navy: 6 battle; 8 nonbattle
Marines: 24 battle; 26 nonbattle
Air Force: 20 battle; 6 nonbattle
Women killed: 15

U.S. wounded in action: 467

Sueven · Post by **Sueven** » January 28, 2003, 8:15 pm

The problem with capping salaries in the fashion that you describe is that those extra millions would then go to the owners. Either way, someone undeserving is getting fabulously wealthy, I'd rather it be the people that actually is providing the entertainment.

Denadeb · Post by **Denadeb** » January 28, 2003, 8:41 pm

I can relate to that story and it is very moving.