All of my previous profiles have dealt with National Guard soldiers who deployed to Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, or their families. This profile is a little different, written as a tribute to my good friends, comrades in arms and words, my brothers and sisters of the world wide web, the MILBLOGGERS. Not pajama clad, but camouflaged!
I previously attempted this profile of my fellow MILBLOGGERS. Earlier, I ended up writing about the significance of stories to soldiers, stories about their experiences, humorous anecdotes, remembrances, just stories, before I was very far into it at all. Best now to read that earlier post as preface to this profile of the MILBLOGGERS.
In Soldier Stories, I described concentric circles of shared experience, the strongest and tightest of all, the connection within a unit, and of shared command.
That’s how I think about MILBLOGGERS. Like the fellow soldiers of my unit, we’ve shared a mission. We fought together, in a very real sense, against media misrepresentations and the sometime indifference of our own nation or its leaders. We boosted each other up, we encouraged and sustained, we motivated. We worked through events together, covering scandal or history in the making, found perspective, described context, in short, told stories. Our stories, and our story telling, became the strongest bond of all.
My compatriot MILBLOGGERS may not wear the uniform anymore, and surely they write as private citizens, not soldiers or airmen or sailors or marines, but their identities are forever imprinted with their military service.
Hooah! Top! As Papa Ray says, “Continue the Mission.” Carrying on and moving out!
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