Page 70 - Reflections of you 8-12

Gerelsuren

Grade 11

I am called to serve,

Today is the 3rd of November 2021, by the time you read this it will be the 3rd of November 2031, a week before

the USMC 256th birthday which you will hopefully celebrate in your dress blues with your platoon. Master
Sergeant, sounds like a farfetched idea but being if you can go through with all you were thinking 10 years ago,
then you already would’ve went on a tour in Syria and Iraq. Maybe you’d be looking at this letter thinking how
immature you were, thinking only about medals and ranks, but for me writing this right now, joining the Marines is

my greatest goal.

Fighting on the battlefield and holding the line between the enemy and your homeland may be a punishment to
some but to me it feels like the only way I would be able to call myself a warrior. Doctors, police officers and

firefighters save or change people for the rest of their life as a job on a daily basis but...

serving on the frontlines with my fellow soldiers seems like my calling.

Of course it is going to be tough, it is going to be painful, it is going to be incredibly challenging. I will feel

miserable during boot camp, deployment and whilst in service, no doubt about it but suffering from it is a choice. I
will get a rude wake up call, clean my rifle, check my post, get my duties for the day and finally clock out at
midnight, over and over and over again. I’d be stuck in a rat’s circle in boot camp to earn an eagle, globe and
anchor to call myself a marine, do it again in battle just with the added excitement of death to call myself a combat
veteran, go to officer school and hopefully by my late 30s and early 40s work at an embassy or at a base abroad

where things are calmer.

Of course at this point in time you already will know how it all worked out, if I went towards the warrior path, or if I

went and worked behind a computer advancing society a single binary at a time or work in an office as a politician
or a diplomat. All, careers I’d want and I just hope that the job you’re doing is at least one of these, but this letter is
done now. It has been an honor to make your acquaintance.