He who sheds his blood with me today shall be my brother

Today I had the unique experience of telling four of my Marines they were deploying to Iraq. My supply company had the responsibility of providing 20 Marines total for Operation Iraqi Freedom 9.1, and today we received the deployment roster.

I received the news in an e-mail this morning. Initially, it didn't seem so bad. I thought I would only have to contact one Marine because they were only taking one specific MOS (Marine jargon for "profession"). I contacted him at about 4:00 this afternoon, but really didn't know what to say. This Marine is one of the newest to my unit. He just graduated from boot camp this summer and was in my class at supply school. He has a close family and a long-term girlfriend who he was thinking about proposing to. He's in his first semester of study at Wake Tech... and I told him to put life on hold, starting in December. I don't know exactly what I said... it all seemed a blur to me, explaining the dates and the mobilization process. The bottom line is he's still giving up a year of his life that he can't ever get back. Hopefully his girlfriend will wait for him to get back. Deployments can get long...

After I got back from calling my first Marine, I noticed I had a new e-mail from my Master Sergeant:
"Cpl Abney - Please inform the Marines from 2nd listed below their time has come."

Three more names. Three more calls. One seemed prepared, and said he figured this call had been coming for a while. Another asked a bunch of questions about what would happen with his apartment lease. The third just had stunned silence.

I remember the first time I was told I might be deploying. I had just joined with my infantry company back in Madison and got a call from my team leader one evening. He said he was contacted by the chain of command and that all of us "new joins" who hadn't deployed the first time were going to be augmented to another unit for the duration of their deployment. Anyone listening to the phone call could tell it was killing him to break the news this way. I was his Marine, and I was deploying and he was the one who had to tell me. I didn't think much of it at the time... I was more concerned with whether I was really going to deploy or not. Today I got to experience what my former team leader did. I got to experience it three times. But there is a difference though that makes it easier for me than it ever could have been for him:

They are my Marines, and I am going with them.