Military Life

I get up in the morning at about 5 a.m. and drive 17 miles in my gas hog over poluting 97 Ford F-150 because I can't afford the payment or the insurance of a better car. I get to work on time or earlier with the knowledge that if I'm late I run the risk of getting pay taken from me, not to mention that if your on time you'll spend all day catching up because you weren't there early enough. I spend most of my days working on helicopter electronics systems and thinking about if what the news said last night will send me overseas and away from my family. I come home to a nice house where my wife greets me everyday and I play with my kid until it's time to go to bed. Everynight I open all the cabinets in my kitchen and make sure there is enough food to make it to the next pay period, and I catch myself double checking the condition of my daughters clothes to see if I maybe need to spend money I don't really have on new clothes. I spend the first and the fifteenth asking my wife if she or my daughter needs anything knowing that when I pay the bills and budget for gas and emergencies for the next two weeks I will not have a dime for myself or for them if they don't speak up when I ask. I listen to family and friends who didn't join the military plan their next vacation while I wonder if the tax money will just be enough to allow us to drive home to Indiana to see our friends and family.
I depend on christmas for all clothing and any luxuries at all(God bless a military mans family). I go to third world countries and sleep in tents or worse with no ways to keep away from the elements at the drop of a hat and without complaining. My promotions and pay are all based on how fast I can run, pullups I can do, sit ups I can do, my marine corps knowledge, how well I can shoot, and last and least of all my job performance. I get yelled at by civilians for just doing what my boss tells me to. I miss massive amounts of my daughter growing up and time with my wife, not to mention my more extended family. I've worked 6 months straight in the states at my home duty station 12 hours on, 12 hours off 7 days a week for no extra pay at all. I've worked countless 24 hour shifts only to get 2 hours off and do it again. My fellow marines and my fellow service members in other branches of the armed services all do this without complaining and I would have kept going too without saying anythin until I heard that some of the democrats think we get to much money and that we shouldn't have a military as strong as it is.
The most important thing to give to the military men and women is morale. You take morale away from us the minute you talk about down sizing us, or taking money away from us personaly or from the military branch we serve. Personaly, I(and most of the other people I work with) hate politics, but we have to stand up for ourselves because at some point you have to take a stand against the injustices certain politicians put on us. I'll give you an example, we went to Iraq because we were told to, not becasue we wanted to. We are over there now doing what we are suppose to do and now there is talk of leaving a job unfinished. How would you feel if your roofer did that to you? No one in politics know weather or not we want to finish the job because you never ask the military as a whole but, you'll get up there night after night and say we need to bring them home. That's well and fine but it's our job to finish and we don't know how to quit. On top of all that, we come home to people that hate us and news stations that just report what is bad over there. What about all the good we do and have done. The good raises morale. The bad does nothing but get you down about a life that already sucks by the standards of most people. If you really want to hear the worst then find someone who has to live in the barracks due to rank or because they are married but their spouse lives out of state.
As a reader of this article, I charge you with the burdon of appreciating the service member that may live on your street, go to your church, or that you see going to whatever local store you go to.