Funny thing about the Marines. As much as you think you hate it when you are in it, you tend to only remember the good times when you are no longer a part of it and woe the person who says a bad word about MY Marine Corps! Then, when you first step that un-booted foot on the civilian shore again your new concept of freedom takes on a life of it's own. Suddenly you can eat what you want, stay in the rack as long as you want, grow your hair down to your butt if that's what makes you happy and all sorts of un-marine things.

Naturally, this sort of attitude has great potential for disaster - and brother did I ask for it! All of a sudden I turn around and I am a FAT 55 year old capable of being weighed accurately only by a truck scale out on the interstate! Seriously, at 5'-9" tall and close to 400 lbs. that is nothing short of blobsville.

Long story short, self-esteem goes down the tubes, depression leads to eating, eating leads to depression, a cycle you can ride straight to hell if you aren't careful - and on this hog a helmet won't help! At the point where I thought I had reached bottom I discovered the book, Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution and saw light at the end of the tunnel. If I had learned anything at all about my yo-yo battle with weight over the years since leaving the Corps I had forgotten it and then it hit me; everything I had put in my mouth up to that point had done absolutely nothing for me but make me unhappy, why not try something new?!

And when I went through my Mother's losing battle with cancer my stress relief was eating. I am paying for that now but believe me, it's never too late to change, no matter what your age or condition. I have already lost a 120 pounds but a guy as big as me can lose that in no time.

Out! - College, work as a veteran's counselor and a job in sales followed in the years after I returned to my home town of St. Louis, Mo in 1972. The war was still dragging on and I was often asked to attend anti-war demonstrations, which I declined to do. I had simply had enough of it and just wanted to forget all that and get on with my life. Twenty-one year olds can do that. I still find it hard to believe that it has been 36 years since all of this took place and lately I have become motivated to re-connect with some of the guys I served with.

This new blog I have created will help me get some things off my chest, things I haven't spoken about to anyone until now. Hopefully it will encourage other Marines to do so as well. It also gives me the opportunity to talk about and promote the carbohydrate controlled nutritional approach to a healthy lifestyle that I have adopted at this stage of my life.

Surviving a year in Vietnam with nothing more to show for it than nightmares and a bad skin condition, I was able to quickly settle in to a two year stint at Camp Pendleton where the Marines threw me another curve and decided to make me an Admin Chief (civilian equilevent of office manager).

I ended up shuffling papers like a civilian pogue with a nine to five billet that was pretty much like a regular job. I lived off -base with my new wife in a fine apartment and played ball on the 7th Engineer Battalion Softball team. My first sergeant was a heck of a ping-pong player and taught me all he knew until all of a sudden my four year enlistment was over. I enjoyed the Corps and was tempted to re-up but my wife had this crazy idea that she wanted to raise our kids in one place!

Before heading off to Vietnam in 1969, right after our astronauts landed on the Moon, the Marines played another little trick on me and decided they needed more Combat Engineers than they did journalists. They sent me to Engineer School to learn how to blow things up and I enjoyed it so much I made the mistake of graduating first in my class. What an idiot! All of a sudden I became much more valuable to the Corps as an engineer than a journalist. Seems as though they had enough writers after all and when I got to Nam they threw me a bloody flak vest and sent me north - way north.

I had finally gotten my wish, I wasn't reporting the war, I was fighting it! I spent most of the first half of my tour building bridges, blowing up tunnels, sweeping roads for mines and generally leaving a smoking trail of destruction wherever I went. The only good thing about it was I made a lot of grunt friends who appreciated my skills at both spotting and spotting booby traps. I spent most of the rest of that year humping around between Dong Ha and Quang Tri, later to be transferred south to Da Nang where I finished my tour assigned to the Marine Air Wing, I have fond memories of how well the pilots of the "Wild Weasels, Gunfighter Squadron" took care of "their" Marines.

A Marine Combat Correspondent can still fight. Even though trained as a reporter fresh out of USMC Boot Camp, on an Army base no less, there is no forgetting you are a basic marine rifleman, first and foremost. You cannot imagine a worse fate for a new Marine , fresh from 12 weeks of boot camp hell, ready to avenge the deaths of friends as a marine grunt, then finding out the Corps has other plans for you and that your first duty station is an U.S. Army base.

But it happened to me. It's the height of the Vietnam War and all of my marine buddies are getting orders assigning them as 0311, grunts and related infantry MOS's and are off to jungle warfare training for more hell - learning how to fight this war - and loving it! Vietnam, watch out, here we come!

Even back then I wasn't so dumb that I didn't realize my luck. I made a fool of myself with a half hearted effort to get my orders changed so that I could die with the rest of my friends. I joined the Corps to fight - not write! But secretly, I was elated! I was so excited that I would be following in the footsteps of Ssgt Jack Rice, my uncle, the writer and my personal hero.