Text from a Chaplain serving the marines in fallujah... God speed warriors....
marines
On another level, the Chaplain can't help but aware of how bizarre his job would seem to civilians, this admixture of God and the Marine profession of annihilation. All he can do is assure the reader that if he were present, it would all be perfectly natural and clear. The Marines, no less than their foes are a tribe. Their religion, apart from anything the Chaplain can teach them, is each other.
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This is a tribe of warriors. They exist to close with and destroy the enemy. They have their tribal mores, rituals and rites. Their enemy has desecrated members of the tribe and taunted the marines. They've asked for a fight. The marines are in full pursuit and absolutely determined to annihilate their foe. I'm sure that sounds harsh to politically correct ears and those for whom this type of violence is anachronistic. It does not sound foreign here ... it is status quo. We are in a violent land, with an evil element and they are having violence visited upon them. There is no room here for half measures. This is a test of wills...one side will prevail. That is clearly understood and never discussed .. it is obvious. We aren't playing paintball .. we are at war.
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But the reader is not present. Through no fault of his own, he lives in a world as far away from Fallujah as the surface of the Moon. He might imagine, but never actually experience, the presence of evil. He may think he understands, but probably never will, just what a world of violence is kept at bay just beyond the horizon. And he may never realize, even with the best will, that we aren't playing paintball but are at war.
No matter. For the teenage Marines in Fallujah, the normal world doesn't exist either. Yet that isn't quite correct. Perhaps it better to say that for the Marines in Fallujah, the normal world is all too real.