Fallen Marines on Our 13th Anniversary

Memorial Day 2015

(Photo: Funeral of WW2 Marine Eddie Cotten, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Suffolk, VA, March 2015, by Meriwether Ball)

Thirteen years ago today CorpsStories.com was launched.

Tens of millions of readers later, we remain, in large part because of nearly a thousand hometown news stories of fallen Marines.

No colorful, moving ads to jam up your reading. No annoying audio to interrupt your absorbing their lives. Just the beautiful writing of a local reporter who visited grieving loved ones to build a sad but important story.

We MUST know these men and women. If we chose not to, how can we value our citizenship? How can we value our freedoms and liberties? We cannot. We can travel the world over, see the difficulties others bear without American freedoms, but we can never understand it’s essence without knowing those who intentionally went into harm’s way to keep it from coming to us.

In these many years my research about news has taught me much about fallen Marines. I could have titled this with a trendy headline, “Five Thing You Need to Know About Fallen Marines,” but that’s not my style.

Instead let me just share one.

Whenever I have met a grieving loved one, visited a grave of a fallen Marine or Corpsman, read their documents in archived libraries or newspaper storage facilities, one thing ALWAYS occurs.

I have a sense that I am in contact with a timeless, reverant, unparalled in its importance, portion of humanity.

Marines are different. They operate on a plane of reality above most of us. They are titled with a duty and honor departed from the rest.

Say what you will, dismiss this if you must.

But on the other side you will see, they are the top tier of angels.

Amen and Semper Fidelis.