Lucky

Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile,
While you’ve a lucifer to light your fag,
Smile, boys, that’s the style
--Smile, Smile, Smile, George and Felix Powell
________

The top graphic is featured on the Table of Contents page. It is reminiscent of a sign hanging in a jumble shop in a particularly dismal and damp part of Scotland: "Mustn't Grumble!" the sign exhorted, and you had to chuckle, because naught could be done about the miserable weather.

Ranger concludes there are two USMCs after reading this article in his July/August Purple Heart magazine. One has Peter Pace with 4 Stars and no Purple Hearts. The other has LCpl. McClellan with no stars and 3 Purple Hearts. These Marines live in different universes.

Ranger takes issue with a rhetorical point: VFW misstated LCpl. McClellan's bullet wounds as injuries. You are injured when you fall off a barstool, an injury likely to befall a VFW member in good standing. But MCClellan was hit by a 122 gr. bullet traveling as 2,450 ft/sec. This is ballistic trauma; a wound, not an injury. Let us call things what they are. His shit got blown away.

The article, "By the Grace of God," was written by the Lance Corporal's mother Connie McClellan. It should be noted that Mrs. McClellan is a member of the Presidential Prayer Team, a group which beseeches its members to pray for different agendas and personages affiliated with the administration each week. Last week, it was Alberto Gonzales--a man in need of prayer if ever there was one.

But Atty. Gen. Gonzales is surely less meritorious in action, and less physically blighted than LCpl. McClellan.

"While serving as a machine gunner in Afghanistan in 2005, at the age of 19, John was shot twice in the same arm, in the same week."

"On September 11, 2006, John was deployed to Haditha, Iraq. Fifteen days later, on September 26th, while on patrol, he was shot in the head by a sniper. The bullet penetrated just in front of his left ear and exited the back of the lower left side of his head."

Mrs. McClellan writes, "The miracles that God has done in the situation are many," followed by a list of recoveries made possible by medical interventions. She ends, "I truly, sincerely believe that God is there for us every step of the way, but prayer is critical for inviting God's intervention."

One can forgive the dreams of a grateful mother, but the facts are incontrovertible. One can also argue that God might not have allowed her son to sustain a brain injury at a sniper's hands, and that her son would not be alive had it not been for the initial five hours of surgery removing brain tissue and skull fragments, followed by intensive therapeutic interventions.

Ranger just doesn't see this as a story of hope. It is a story of desperation of a nation and a Marine Corps with a a faulty warrior ethos. In a reality-based world, LCpl. McClellan should have been removed from active combat and placed in an administrative, non-combat slot following his first two wounds. After two Purple Hearts he earned that right, and as an institution the USMC should instate this as a policy.

But since they are warriors, they can ride their personnel into the ground. It is not appropriate for a military chain of command to be so oblivious to human realities. The LCpl. McClellans of the world deserve more consideration from their leadership guardians.

The Presidential Prayer Team opted to run this pre-injury photo of LCpl. McClellan:

One might almost think all was well.