As a close "Old Goat" Master Chief said
"
No enemy could take him down in combat. The great equalizer had to sneak up on him in the darkness of old age and infirmaries."
http://burnpit.legion.org/2012/10/rip-csm-basil-plumley
This post is made in reverance not just to the man, but to the men we were, then men we are, and the men we will become.
There aren't many left who served in multiple conflicts, those who knew their job was not to keep themselves alive, but to see that their men (and now women) stayed alive.
I had a great uncle that served in WWI, WWII, and Korea before being put out to pasture before he could serve in Vietnam. Having lived with him in the last years of his life, he would have volunteered to go there also, if it had kept one more 'boy' from having to serve. He never talked of war, but man he talked of Paris, Belgium, of the cities and of the women.
My ex-father-in-law served in the Army, Navy and Air Force in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. He still has tales to tell, though again, none about the fighting or loss, more about the cold, the rain, the mud, and not a single bit of it a hardship.
I was privileged (though at the time I would have argued that point) to have served with 'Brown Shoes', the crusty old bastards that had one finger permanently crooked whether it held a coffee cup or not.
These old lifers didn’t have a purpose in life other than to give us young ones hell about doing the job right the first time, and then doing it again and again and again, until now almost 30 yrs later, there are many tasks I still perform in my dreams and by golly, I do them again until its right.
I had thought all of these men that were gone, their likes never to be seen again, and then I started thinking about the recent Navy Seal book, Never An Easy Day, (if you haven’t read it, don’t criticize it until you read the last page), and then I realized that with the number of conflicts, wars, firefights, what ever you want to elevate them to or denigrate them to, we still have men (and women) in our ranks molded from the same cold steel and battle hardened into the backbone of our freedoms today.
RIP CSM Basil Plumley, I know you won’t really rest, you’ll now have a better vantage point to oversee our Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen.
Salute.
Doglegg (MSGT, USAF, Ret)
RIP: CSM Basil Plumley
