Commentary
I am not a combat veteran. The closest I’ve come to facing the enemy is holding a rifle or sidearm at high ready when approaching a panga full of uncut cocaine and a handful of exhausted smugglers. They were never armed with anything more dangerous than a fishing knife. If they had guns, they tossed them as soon as they saw the blue lights, knowing full well that we were keyed up and ready to kill if they so much as twitched in a threatening way. We came close more than once.
Even so, the day of growing anticipation as the cutter closed in on the target, the gearing up and loading of weapons, the briefing by the captain, and finally being lowered into rough seas at sunset, all of it building on itself to a breaking point—that never comes. Months of doing that over and over, on top of the stress of being enlisted in a service that has tied itself in knots trying to be politically correct and inclusive at the expense of its morality and logic. Trying to make sense of that day-in, day-out reality, trying to understand decision-making processes that waste so much time and resources, takes its toll. You’re told to care about and have pride in your work, to constantly improve, but not to push too hard for change because the nail that sticks up gets the hammer….