Gunny D's Retirement

As John is executing a PCS and Charlie appears in a mountain time zone city known as a fun destination (!), I’ll be your weekend host. (Charlie: pics can be sent to vmijpp@hotmail.com. They’ll be safe with me.)

I grabbed some extra time at chow yesterday and attended the retirement ceremony for a great friend and old comrade in arms, Gunnery Sergeant D. Gunny D was in my old reserve unit, a Marine artillery battery. I was there for about seven years; he was there for his entire career. As we all wax nostalgic at events like that, I started thinking about some things.

Gunny D’s retirement was the end of an era for that unit. He was the only Marine still there who had been there when they were mobilized and sent to the Gulf War. They had their share of excitement in that 100-hour war; a full-on fight with Iraqi armor (with small arms and their M198s in direct fire), several Marines wounded, one killed. That was before my time, but apparently Gunny D was one of the star performers even as a junior NCO.

Fast-forward to February 1995. 1stLt P steps aboard, eager to restart his artillery career after a rocky active duty tour. SSgt D, no longer a junior Marine in any sense, is a platoon sergeant and his particular stamp can be seen all across the gunline. As well as training his section chiefs and his cannoneers, Gunny D also trained a 1stLt! Later when I rose through the officer ranks and eventually became CO, Gunny D was the rock on which we founded and re-founded the battery.

Most people think of the reserve side as being the easier of the two components. Not true. To be a good reservist, you need to build your life around the drill schedule. You miss opening days of deer season, you reschedule exams, you miss NASCAR races (a big deal in certain parts of the nation!), and your family life and employment take a lot of hits. To do this well for four or six years takes commitment. Do to it for twenty years takes extraordinary commitment.

So, as the ceremony was wrapping up, Gunny D was thanking a pair of 1stSgts who had formed him and trained him, and who were both in the audience. I couldn’t help but think that, maybe, fifteen years from now, there will be a retirement ceremony on the same spot (hell, with a lot of the same people), and that Marine will go on about how Gunny D taught him, trained him, kept him in line, and how he used those lessons when he trained his Marines. That’s how traditions and discipline are handed down, folks. And that’s the essence of being a Marine.

Maj P