Ancient Ritual

We witnessed an ancient ritual last week, my youngsters and I: the victorious homecoming of Fox Co., 25th Marines, USMCR after a tour in the western deserts of Iraq. I felt bad for them, these proud weekend warriors. Despite advance press coverage of the parade route and time, there were precious few patriots to welcome them home. I'm not a patriot in the way we define it now. Oh sure, I raised $1,000 for the troops once and shipped them as many comfort items as I could cram into cardboard boxes. I donate money from every single biweekly paycheck to help wounded Marines get their lives back in order in the land of the free and the home of the brave. I write poems and songs about their pain, and I help them get money from the government when things go to hell and the VA can't be bothered. I've even accompanied several of them on that long, last trip deep down into the ground, into that final six-foot foxhole that will protect them forever, but no, I'm not a patriot, not to those who wave their flags and shout loudest on the radio. But once upon a time I too was a Marine, and I wanted to be there for my brothers. It doesn't seem to bother them that I never stuck a yellow ribbon on my car, these beautifully tanned, dusty-looking young men marching into history along Freeman's Bridge Road in Scotia New York. They march as experienced infantry have always marched, with a tired insouciance, a hint of slouch in the shoulders from carrying things most will never understand, or care to. If you had been there you would have seen a strangely fragmented celebration that only an "I don't really give a shit" America could produce. Old Marines in their Marine Corps League red jackets guarded the entrance to the assembly area as blue-jacketed Veterans of Foreign Wars manned the charcoal pits and lugged cases of beer, all while smiling, white-haired, white-shirted Ladies' Auxiliary handed out flags for those of us with nothing else to do. Strangest of all, a platoon of motorcyle mercenaries, the Freedom Riders, prepared the parade route, rumbling menacingly past in their glinting chrome and faded denim, followed by a green-skirted phalanx of tartan-clad bagpipers, holdovers from those glorious days of yesteryear when wars were simpler for everyone but the dead and the dying. Why, there were even firetrucks. Yes, everyone had their places this day, everyone played their roles, even the scattered media in their sloppy clothes and long lenses, but no one really seemed to care, no one was really there but for the family and friends of the tired men in sandy clothes and short hair, the very same ones who show up for the funerals. Oh we've moved on, haven't we, my friends? Six long years later we've moved on. But maybe we were never there.