Blithering On

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...

There are many men and women who served their country honorably and heroically who later lived and died without seeing their stories come to light so they could be duly honored in their own time. Sometimes, we're able to peer into that sacred fraternity though the bits and pieces we assemble from the lives of their comrades. It's in honoring them that we're able to witness the importance of honoring them all, even if belatedly so. One of those heroes was my father-in-law, the late Colonel Simon J. Kittler. Si grew up in a troubled household in Michigan, but he was still able to secure a Congressional appointment to the United States Naval Academy in 1949 as a member of the Class of 1953. He was one of four brothers who received congressional appointments to the Naval Academy. After he was commissioned as a second lieutenant on June 5, 1953, he fulfilled a dream inspired by his childhood employer and mentor to lead a platoon of Marines in Korea.  Once he returned to the Unit...

I was thinking about a Marine I once served with the other day and I thought I would share some memories here. His name was Staff Sergeant Bryant C. Collins. Those who could refer to him by something other than his rank called him B.C. I wasn't one of those people as I was just a 20-year old sergeant when I met him, and I didn't have anywhere nearly enough stature to try to presume to be that familiar. He had been awarded the Navy Cross--the nation's second highest award for valor in combat--in Vietnam. With a little more than two years of peacetime service under my belt at that time, my credentials didn't compare. He checked in to my unit--G Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment--as my platoon sergeant. We were the weapons platoon, a platoon that operated the company's M-60 machine guns, light anti-tank weapons, and 60mm mortars. I was in charge of the mortars. I met him almost immediately after he arrived. After he took care of the administrative parts of ...