Biltzkrieg

Blitzkrieg:

“Tired of working 40 hour days? Too fucking bad!” said the man in the muscle-suit and afro wig. People gathered around my computer, seeking the source of the commotion. “Drink Patriot Hustler Energy, yeah!”

“Patriot Hustler Energy?” said the librarian, “What is that?”

I smiled. I left the browser window open to Utube and walked out of the Cecil H. Green Library. Eddie Roche and the L.A. Patriots were at it again.

“No, it’s not a sports franchise,” I told some kid over my shoulder last week, “not a rock band either.” I left it at that. 

Patriot Hustler is a well-oiled, media-black Opps. mission I took part in after I returned from the island. It’s a survival story. It’s Marine Corps history. It’s a brand. It’s top secret. It’s everywhere.

“What is Patriot Hustler Energy?” she’d asked me.

In a mouthful, Patriot Hustler Energy is an unorthodox, by-any-means-necessary energy supplement / attitude enhancer, chased back with a militant brain freeze of cash money and an after taste of sex…

“and sex sells,” I said.

“I see,” said the librarian.

I think she may have missed the true genius of it all. The humor, the passion at its heart is what drew me into the fold. That’s why I always peek in every now and then to see how the blitzkrieg is going. Years ago, in foreign lands under hostile hands, I survived and prospered with my fellow marine, Eddie Roche. Not to be facetious, but it was indeed the best of times and the worst of times. It was a nightmare yet it was nothing short of a renaissance.

To see where Eddie is today, where we all are for that matter, fills me with pride. The odds were stacked pretty foul in the other direction. But that goes back to the meaning of Patriot Hustler Energy:

No matter what the odds, if one believes with every fiber in their being that they can accomplish something, and they never stop, they will have it. It’s that simple. It’s never easy. That’s the catch, but it's true. Ed has it. That’s what I liked about Ed from the moment we met. And that is precisely what keeps me looking at men in muscle-suits with afro-wigs online at the Cecil H. Green Library on days like this.

To my hard-charging brother Marine, Eddie Roche,

Keep fighting the good fight.

Semper Fi,

SR. 

Infamy

Infamy
By Stephen Richter

"December 7th, 1941 — a date which
will live in infamy"

On the seventh of December, 1981, an
eleven-year old boy and his father stared
down at the remains of the USS Arizona
at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I remember
standing next to a family of Japanese
tourists. Their son was my age and I
wondered how they must have felt being
them, being there, at a site so charged
with emotion and all that it represented.
We watched a video in the memorial’s
viewing room and that same family sat
three seats down from me. I remember
feeling angry at them. Their son smiled
at me and I didn’t smile back. “Gomen
nasai,” he said. I didn’t understand
Japanese when I was eleven. It meant
nothing to me.

In October of 1993, I learned how it felt
to be a U.S. Marine, standing next to a
Japanese family, at the Hiroshima Peace
Park in Japan. And although I hadn’t
been alive when it took place, I still felt
very sorry and somewhat responsible for
that place and what it represented. I
apologized to the family I was standing
next to for some reason. The
grandmother had surely been alive when
it happened. “Gomen nasai,” I said. I
bowed to her and left. I was leaving
Japan for good that day.

September 11th, 2001
CNN - DAY OF TERROR
A 21st century 'day of infamy'

I remember watching CNN every day for
a week after 9/11, until I couldn’t stand it
any more. I remember looking at the
footage from Iraq and Afghanistan and
feeling angry.
December 7th, 2009

We are, eight years into the war on terror,
just a couple years shy of the Soviet
Union’s record ten year occupation of
Afghanistan. In the fall of 1993 I studied
the doctrine of guerilla warfare at the
JWTC (Jungle Warfare Training Center)
Okinawa Japan, in the Northern Training
Area below the prefecture of Nago. We
took a class on the mistakes the USSR
made during their decade-long
occupation of Afghanistan. “That is why
the Russians got their asses handed to
them in Kabul,” said Sgt. Samoa, “that
is why the United States will never do
something as asinine as try to occupy a
country like that for any extended period
of time - not after what we learned from
Vietnam, and definitely not in my beloved
Marine Corps,” he said. We all laughed.

Psychologists say that one of the most
difficult crimes for a victim to recover
from is Home Invasion

Ghandi once said that an eye for an eye
leaves the whole world blind.

As a veteran, a father, an American, and
a citizen of the global community, I can
only hope that on this December 7th we
can all pause for a moment of silence to
respect those who have been lost, on all
those infamous days in human history.

Whether we were there or not, we are all
responsible in one way or another, in
some way for what comes next. For all
those who have lost their loved-ones at
the hands of their fellow man,

Gomen, Gomen nasai...

SR