Blithering On

" I know the difference between right and wrong, and I can tell good from bad. But I also know that the more difficult decisions come when we have to choose between good and better. The toughest calls of all are those we have to make between bad and worse.” In the summer of 1978, I met the man who, a decade later, would write those words.  I was a sergeant and had just been transferred to K Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment (K Co., 3/8), about to turn 21 years old. Since I was nearing the end of my enlistment, it didn't make sense to put me in charge of another squad only to leave again in a few months, so my new company commander asked me to manage the company training program. That meant, in part, that I wrote our training schedules and firing range and ammunition requests and delivered them to the battalion headquarters about once or twice a week. About every other trip over there, the operations officer, a major and the man whose statement about making tough deci

I wrote the other day about serving with Staff Sergeant B.C. Collins and the impact he had on my life and career in the Marine Corps, so I thought I'd write about two other Marines who put themselves on that same battlefield in Vietnam with B.C. Collins that day, one of whom was also a great influence on me. First, a little background... First Lieutenant Frank Reasoner was a former enlisted Marine, a "mustang." Reasoner was a sergeant when he attended the Naval Academy Preparatory School in 1957, but he couldn't get into the Naval Academy. Undeterred, he walked up to Capitol Hill to the office of Senator Henry Dvorshak of Idaho and told him that he needed an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The Senator must have been impressed with Sergeant Reasoner because he awarded him the academy appointment he wanted. Reasoner successfully completed his education at West Point and was commissioned as a Marine second lieutenant in 1962. Reasoner was an infa