Bad Apples!

We have all seen it or at least heard about it; people lying about serving in uniform. That is something that gets my blood to an absolute boil in about .3 seconds. The only thing that is worse than that is when someone in uniform has to lie about what he or she has done to get attention. “A Marine Corps sergeant was sentenced yesterday to 18 months confinement and fined $25,000 for pretending to be an injured war hero to get free seats at rock concerts and professional sporting events.” (1)

I have no time for people like this and in my opinion this person should stay in jail forever. In this time we are in, fighting on two fronts and losing our Marines to death and injury this person fakes injury and lies about heroic things that he never did just so he could go to free concerts and football games. We have real heroes out there who are not getting the help that they need and this person took the resources away from the people who really need it.

The worst thing about all of this is this person was a Sergeant in the World’s Finest Fighting Force and he knew better than to do something that was so against what we are taught as Marines; Honor, Courage, Commitment. He let himself down as well as the Marine Corps as a whole. We work hard as Marines to live by those three important words and when people like this do things that go against our values it gives us a black eye. But we are Marines and we will keep marching forward and continue in our mission to be the World’s Finest.

Semper Fidelis Marines
Justin Brandenburg
October 23, 2009

(1) Associated Press / October 22, 2009