Marines And Super Marines

Posted July 17th, 2009 at 6:05 pm in Listen Up Marines!

Did you ever refer to yourself as an ex-Marine within the hearing (say about 2 klicks) of an active duty career or retired Marine? Man, they will set you straight in a hurry! Once a Marine, always a Marine! They don't much like the former-Marine thing any better but nobody yet has come up with a better way to describe a person who was former-ly on active duty. A former marine wouldn't say, "I am a Marine" to a dumb civilian because A. you just became one yourself, fool and B. they just would'nt get it.

It's no big deal when our Canadian neighbors to the north mistakenly refer to us as Ex- Marines as we have seen in the case of Tim Guderian (a former marine that won the 200 mil powerball in Canada). We know they don't mean anything by it but I wonder if they or anyone else realizes just what a travesty it is to use that stupid little prefix. Heck, even a Mom can slip with the Ex thing (but then again if the Marine Corps would have wanted you to have a mother – they would have issued you one). I always wanted to say that!

Those who have never been a part of the Few, the Proud are just not capable of understanding what it is that a marine goes through to earn the title. We may have served and got out, retired, no longer serving or too banged up to be of any use to anyone but we are still members of the finest organization of fighting men and women ever to come down the pike. And we deserve better.

I have long felt the need to come up with some unique substitute for the word former. A word that is original, means almost the same as former and is worthy of being adapted to the unique language of the Corps. The ability to adapt to just about any thing or any circumstance is the hallmark of the Corps. Why would we have trouble with something as insignificant as a word? So here is what I propose:

I looked up both ex and former in good ole Websters and here is what was listed for both, used in the context of prefix to the word marine: prior marine (Ugh), past marine (nope), previous marine (nah), one-time marine (sounds like something a Vietnamese bar girl might say), alum marine (uh uh), alumnus marine, erstwhile marine, latter-day marine (these past three are no good either), bygone marine (the best of the lot so far), once marine (yeck) Not a whole lot of great choices is there? However! There is one word that I found that has serious potential, drum roll please…

Supra Marines!

That's right! The word is Supra. As in Supra-Marine, a man or woman who once was on active duty in the Corps whether they be retired after 30, in for a couple and honorably discharged or whatever, a word that means the same as former. If you don't believe me, here is the poop on supra from Thesaurus.com!

But this is where things get interesting. Knowing how us Marines like to adapt words to suit our own special language how long do you figure it would take for Supra to be marine-ified into Super? Now, being referred to as a Super-Marine suits me just fine – kinda fits in with all this super-hero stuff that's popular in the movies now.

And marines are heroes aren't they?