Patrols
"Remembering Why We Go:
From Home, We Serve"
The story behind the photo:
It wasn’t too long ago there were these things called Newspapers where people used as the primary source of news. Half a generation ago in 2008, my little hometown of Cimmaron Kansas still printed its own small-town paper and had a section called “Jacksonian Jaunts”. Cimarron’s paper, “The Jacksonian”, a local paper founded in 1885, has always taken pride in elevating its hometown heroes being a veteran rich community itself. It may be a town that only has a population of 1900, but what they lack in numbers they have paid for in devotion, grit and honor. The Jacksonian was pro-America without trying. No fluff, flattery, or gimmicks. Just a simple paper who didn’t have time for embellishments and exaggerations. Many of its columnists wrote pro-bono, simply because they loved the community, to include my father who reported the local wrestling for a season.
Around this time of life in Gray County, “The Jacksonian Jaunts” appeared. It entailed members of the community holding a paper on their travels across America and the globe. The local team gone to the state championship, or a couple on their trip to New York or Europe and so on. A quick photo holding a newspaper no one in that distant context had ever heard of that would make its readers back home smile and be reminded that this community was really as tight knit as it felt. All felt connected through The Jacksonian Jaunt in a kind a camaraderie of a different generation.
While I was deployed to Iraq in 2007-08, I received a copy of our local paper in a mail drop from my parents. Seeing a Jaunt from someone, it made my heart grow sick for home but implanted the idea to do one of my own! In an impromptu moment before we stepped off for a long patrol, I whipped out my camera and posed with two other Marines from my fire team.
If we elevate ourselves for a moment and consider the historical significance of what happened in that moment, I believe this single photo captures a unique piece of Marine Corp history. Here are three Marines from small town America, (myself from Kansas and my two buddies from Texas) posing with arguably an artifact of the past, a newspaper! The photo, when received back home, connected with friends and family in the community. “Even the small-town boys can play a bigger role in the international affairs of things like Operation Iraqi Freedom, even they can play a part in the schemes and politics that seem beyond our control.” And from our end “Mom and dad, we we’re thinking of you – and we we’re longing to come home, but first we have some things to do.” That is, after all, the ethos that had been engrained in us from our hometowns – that somewhere at the other side of this duty, there was a completion point so that we could come home, but we first must execute our duties faithfully. While deployed and looking at that paper of all my small-town happenings, we were reminded, “this is why we’re here.”
For a moment, we reminded my small town of something bigger than the rest of us that also connected us generationally and made them swell with the same pride that we have when I say – “I’m from a small town in western Kansas” or “I served in the United States Marine Corps.”
It wasn’t too long ago there were these things called Newspapers where people used as the primary source of news. Half a generation ago in 2008, my little hometown of Cimmaron Kansas still printed its own small-town paper and had a section called “Jacksonian Jaunts”. Cimarron’s paper, “The Jacksonian”, a local paper founded in 1885, has always taken pride in elevating its hometown heroes being a veteran rich community itself. It may be a town that only has a population of 1900, but what they lack in numbers they have paid for in devotion, grit and honor. The Jacksonian was pro-America without trying. No fluff, flattery, or gimmicks. Just a simple paper who didn’t have time for embellishments and exaggerations. Many of its columnists wrote pro-bono, simply because they loved the community, to include my father who reported the local wrestling for a season.
Around this time of life in Gray County, “The Jacksonian Jaunts” appeared. It entailed members of the community holding a paper on their travels across America and the globe. The local team gone to the state championship, or a couple on their trip to New York or Europe and so on. A quick photo holding a newspaper no one in that distant context had ever heard of that would make its readers back home smile and be reminded that this community was really as tight knit as it felt. All felt connected through The Jacksonian Jaunt in a kind a camaraderie of a different generation.
While I was deployed to Iraq in 2007-08, I received a copy of our local paper in a mail drop from my parents. Seeing a Jaunt from someone, it made my heart grow sick for home but implanted the idea to do one of my own! In an impromptu moment before we stepped off for a long patrol, I whipped out my camera and posed with two other Marines from my fire team.
If we elevate ourselves for a moment and consider the historical significance of what happened in that moment, I believe this single photo captures a unique piece of Marine Corp history. Here are three Marines from small town America, (myself from Kansas and my two buddies from Texas) posing with arguably an artifact of the past, a newspaper! The photo, when received back home, connected with friends and family in the community. “Even the small-town boys can play a bigger role in the international affairs of things like Operation Iraqi Freedom, even they can play a part in the schemes and politics that seem beyond our control.” And from our end “Mom and dad, we we’re thinking of you – and we we’re longing to come home, but first we have some things to do.” That is, after all, the ethos that had been engrained in us from our hometowns – that somewhere at the other side of this duty, there was a completion point so that we could come home, but we first must execute our duties faithfully. While deployed and looking at that paper of all my small-town happenings, we were reminded, “this is why we’re here.”
For a moment, we reminded my small town of something bigger than the rest of us that also connected us generationally and made them swell with the same pride that we have when I say – “I’m from a small town in western Kansas” or “I served in the United States Marine Corps.”
