R.B. Miller Stepping Off

Stepping Off frequently lauds men who showed up for battle, irrespective of the outcome, and frequently criticizes journalists for hyping battles beforehand but minimizing them after the fact. The men who landed on Omaha Beach 75 years ago were brave. So were the men who landed on Utah, Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches. I knew a WWII vet who spent his whole enlistment chasing around the Pacific trying to catch up with the ship he was assigned to. Would he have fought just as bravely as the men at Normandy? I think so. I'm not diminishing the accomplishments of the men who took Omaha Beach. I've visited the cemetery there, spending many hours wandering the beach, rows of crosses, and the chapel. Designers of memorials alternate between nihilism and grandiosity, but the Normandy cemetery is perfect. Visit it if you haven't. Visit it again if you have. The men who fought there had no access to these: To say anything of these: They fought and d...

As described previously, the majority of my publications were short and in a particular section of the Weekly World News . In distant second place are a series of longer essays (usually 2000-3000 words) in the Marine Corps Gazette . Most were entered in writing contests, and I recently won my ~4th 2nd Place or Honorable Mention, not bad for an enlisted grunt. This was my first (and, by the contest rules, last) entry in the Hogaboom Essay Contest. Look for my article in approximately the October issue, and expect the excerpt below to have one fewer comma. By the way, contrary to the implication, I won $500, not a bad consolation prize. My least favorite consolation prize was for a writing contest in Outdoor Life  (something about how being a lousy hunter made me a better Marine). First Prize was a $22,000 guided elk and moose hunt in Canada. Second Prize was a cheap pocket knife normally given to subscribers to induce them to subscribe for another year. I won second. ...

The windier your country is, the more likely Marines are to invade it. I've taken this same basic picture at numerous base camps across the Middle East and Afghanistan, over several decades: The first response is always to make the johns more bottom-heavy: Occasionally, this is enough to prevent a blow-down: Every few weeks, this happens: Then the johns blow over again: After Marines have occupied a country for at least 10 years, they try this: As with most things, we overdo it:

I just came across this picture from 2010. At the time, I'd warned colleagues that Bigfoot had been spotted at Camp Dwyer in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Nine years later, I still haven't figured out what he was doing there, or whose side he was fighting for.

Although Gary commented about so-called "birth control glasses" during his time at Parris Island, none of this made the final cut in Stepping Off . Too many authors have covered this old joke in too much detail (i.e., that the glasses are so ugly that you'll never get to step one in becoming a parent: sex). This picture shows glasses fabricated by the federal government in 2010, almost three years after the first iPhone's release. The quality speaks for itself. I'm in the camp that's somewhat cynical when the government announces that it has a better business plan for the latest company to run afoul of lawmakers. The actual BC glasses at Parris Island were black, more of a horn-rimmed style, and much chunkier looking. They also came with a "brain strap" that tightened across the back of one's skull. Basically, the strap allowed them to fit glasses universally, with no regard to head shape: no matter what, the brain strap would hold them i...

Route 7 runs north from Nasiriyah to Al Kut. We spent about half of our time getting to Baghdad on Route 7. I was pretty happy with my early-2003-vintage camera, but remember spending over $200 for four 128 MB SD cards. Yes, NAND memory has come down in price in 16 years. If you think you've seen mud in America, go to war. It turns out that either Iraq or Afghanistan can provide mud and dust storms like you've never seen domestically. These 7-ton trucks are actually quite good, but you can still need two tracked vehicles to pull them out. This is just some shimmering toxic waste in Nasiriyah. If you think First World countries are polluted, go down two notches.