“Many were eighteen, and I was someone who might have known them socially, in another place and another time.”
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I was born in Jacksonville, North Carolina, home of Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base. As a young girl I lived on base for several years after my mother married a Marine. I was a town girl before I was a Marine brat, so I went from the yellow bus full of kids making fun of the Marine green buses to one of the kids on those green buses.
Jacksonville is like most military towns. Littered with pawnshops, strip joints, car lots, and furniture stores. Wherever you go there are young men, looking lost, or out for something, or somewhere in between. They were not individuals, just one mass splintering up and down the highways, on foot or crammed into cars if they were lucky. They were often dismissed by townspeople as Jarheads, in an effort to maintain the illusion that they were not actually a part of the town.
But there was something in me, even before I was a child on Camp Lejeune, that did not see them as one thing, but instead as individual men–or more aptly—as older boys.
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I worked as ticket girl in a discount theater close to base when I was sixteen. The young Marines would come to the window to buy their tickets, and they would make remarks about me that I couldn’t fully comprehend back then. (We were much more naïve teenagers in the 80s.)
My girlfriends would get so indignant when they would say these things to us, when they would look at us that way, or whisper as they passed us along the endless conveyor belt of Jacksonville Mall.
Stupid Jarheads, they would say.
But there was something in me, even before I was a child on Camp Lejeune, that did not see them as one thing, but instead as individual men–or more aptly—as older boys. I was never able to be mean, snotty, or act above them like so many other teenage girls did. I don’t know exactly what made it different for me, but I’m glad for it when I look back on those years.
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After I moved onto the base and became a military child, not just a child of a military town, it was as if I went through a portal into a strange world on the other side. Now I was living in this place where everything was uniform, from chaos to order. The young Marines marched and chanted, they saluted my car, and they were respectful at the base theater. And as I was growing older around them, I began to truly internalize how close in age we were. Many were eighteen, and I was someone who might have known them socially, in another place and another time.
The relationship between the town and the Marines Corps seemed to change that day as well. The Jarheads were now sons, brothers, best friends.
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Then on October 23, 1983, my perception once again deepened in meaningful and permanent ways. That day a powerful bomb was driven into the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. Over two hundred were killed, and their brothers were left with a brutal task—dig them out from a horrific tangle of concrete and metal.
The relationship between the town and the Marines Corps seemed to change that day as well. The Jarheads were now sons, brothers, best friends. The television and the papers brought us news of fallen eighteen and nineteen year-olds, of returning Marines with physical and mental wounds that would never be healed. In October of 1983, they were heroes, not Jarheads.
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I recently returned to Jacksonville for the 30th anniversary of the Beirut bombing and was greatly relieved to see the constructed memorials, planted trees, and preserved memories. The town had not forgotten—it remained changed.
After the crocuses of April effortlessly break their ground, and May brings you to a high school graduation, perhaps you might look out into the face of the graduating class and remember they are the same as many of those who were lost in 1983. Perhaps you will see the young men the United States continues to send off to foreign mountains and deserts, sacrificing their lives in service. Perhaps then, you may consider the words “military child” in a whole new light.
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Image credit: nukeit1/flickr
*Editor’s note: For purposes of this article, the author references only male Marines. This in no way is meant to diminish the service and sacrifice of our female Marines, both veteran and active-duty.
Great post! Thanks for sharing
I was one of those guys at that time. I left Camp Lejeune about nine months before someone I knew died in the bombing. I remember the J-Ville Mall as a long walk from Camp Johnson. I went back for a school about the years later and was amazed at the change. Court Street was only a memory and the town was a lot friendlier. The monument outside Camp Johnson was sparkling new also. I retired in 03. I honestly haven’t thought about my time there as a very young Marine in years. Thanks.
Patrick, thank you for the supportive words. And for your service. Semper Fi.
After reading your article, i have to say i agree with your thoughts. Being a young Marine back in 1983 stationed here at Camp Lejeune i felt we were very much out of place when we went out in jacksonville. But after the Bombing changed alot of peoples minds, we were now seen as just a bunch of young kids doing what most did’nt want to do. We were looked at like hey that Marine is about the same age age my son. the city of jacksonville at that time adopted and thought of the young marines as there own.… Read more »
I’m really not sure how I felt about this article – I admire you stand up for those in the U.S. military. At the same time, probably because my experience with Marines wasn’t the same as yours, I never saw them as “stupid Jarheads.” I see a lot of individual Marines as stupid and/or jarheads…I feel like there’s a lot of them, and it makes sense considering the benefits you get from serving the country…but there’s those who were smart, and those kinda just in between. I think most everything, if not everything, is relative. There’s a spectrum of behaviors… Read more »
Hi Rich, thank you for your comments. Your points are well-taken, and I don’t disagree in general. For me, it was the experience of a military town, and the almost complete separation between them and us. For instance, even though they were the same age, you simply would not see a young Marine and a high school Senior hanging out at the arcade. It also wasn’t my intention to romanticize. Without going into my whole story, rest assured I am all too aware that there are good and bad in the Marines as there are in any group. It was… Read more »