A few days ago I sat poolside at a family resort on the Gulf of Mexico, soaking up way too much sun and not a little alcohol. The ladies had ventured out to sort through the commercial flotsam of the local shopping district, and the rest of the guys had ventured onto the high seas in search of scaly quarry. I, having become very susceptible to motion sickness in recent years, opted for a day of poolside respite.

It occurred to me, as I stared from beneath my Oakleys and ball cap, that I’d not had such an opportunity in more years than I could recall. No immediate obligations. Just time to sit, observe, and think.

It had been nine years since I returned from Iraq. Another lifetime ago, it seemed. I’m a veteran now, not someone still in the mix. I don’t run around with “OIF veteran” and USMC stickers on my truck, and I don’t wear the tee shirts or the ball cap. I like being invisible. I don’t talk about it unless asked, but it doesn’t bother me or define who I am. It’s just something I did.

But every once in a while, in rare moments like the one by the pool, the sobering reality comes back. A reality like none other. The sickening boom of an IED in the distance, immediately followed by machine gun fire. Artillery firing overhead. The “crumpf” sound of incoming mortars. The endless drone of diesel generators. Dead Marines. Live Marines. Tears of those who loved them. Photos in their pockets. Names. Faces. Sounds and smells. My God, the smells.

I’m not a nosey person, but I found myself eavesdropping on a couple of young guys hitting on the cute girl a couple of chairs down from me. They were just starting college, and she was just finishing. They were all participating in the dance, but none would admit it. Then for some reason I got a little pissed off. It was amusing really, the falseness of it all. It was all such bullshit. Just a handful of years prior to that, my fellow Marines and I numbly and mechanically processed and prepared dead Marines about the same age as these knuckleheads for their final journey home. Kids who joined the Marine Corps, perhaps with visions of wartime grandeur or maybe a genuine sense of duty, but who all met the same end: going home beneath the colors of their country in a flag-draped transfer case, leaving behind heart-broken friends and family. For what? That shithole of a country that has since reverted back to the same shithole it always was and will be? And here these kids were, absolutely oblivious to the savage reality and brutal end that other Americans their age faced just a few years prior. Damn that made me mad.

But as I sat and listened to the silly, shallow banter being exchanged between these youngsters just entering adulthood, I quietly let those feelings process, brew, and then sterilize themselves. I realized that this is exactly the way it’s supposed to be. Young Americans go off to war to do our country’s bidding, for whatever stated reason, ultimately so that other young Americans can lounge in the beachfront pool and try to get a date with other young Americans, completely oblivious to how awful a large part of the rest of the world might be.

And I was finally okay with that. Because all of us who have done it, or will do it, sign up of our own volition. We may or may not fully understand the things that drive us to do so, or what the eventual rewards will be, if any. But we do it anyway. For those of us that live to tell the tale, we lounge by the Gulf of Mexico while we watch America happen right before our eyes, and we know that it was indeed worth it. And it always will be.