Military medicine got so good that the modern veteran is no longer a name carved in stone. For two centuries roughly two to three Americans were wounded for every one killed in action. Since 2001 it is nearly ten. The wounded did not stop happening — they stopped dying. Honouring the dead was always the easy part. The ledger still open is the one for the living.

1

To take charge of this post and all government property in view.

2

To walk my post in a military manner, keeping always on the alert and observing everything that takes place within sight or hearing.

3

To report all violations of orders I am instructed to enforce.

4

To repeat all calls from posts more distant from the guardhouse than my own.

5

To quit my post only when properly relieved.

6

To receive, obey and pass on to the sentry who relieves me all orders from the Commanding Officer, Officer of the Day, and Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers of the guard only.

7

To talk to no one except in the line of duty.

8

To give the alarm in case of fire or disorder.

9

To call the Corporal of the Guard in any case not covered by instructions.

10

To salute all officers and all colors and standards not cased.

11

To be especially watchful at night and during the time for challenging, to challenge all persons on or near my post and to allow no one to pass without proper authority.

• I Marine Expeditionary ForceCamp Pendleton, California
• II Marine Expeditionary ForceCamp Lejeune, North Carolina
• III Marine Expeditionary ForceOkinawa, Japan
• 1st Marine DivisionCamp Pendleton — Guadalcanal, Chosin, Fallujah
• 2nd Marine DivisionCamp Lejeune — Tarawa, Saipan, Desert Storm
• 3rd Marine DivisionOkinawa — Iwo Jima, Khe Sanh
• Marine Barracks Washington8th & I — the oldest post in the Corps, est. 1801
• MCRD Parris IslandWhere east-of-the-Mississippi Marines are made
• MCRD San DiegoWhere west-of-the-Mississippi Marines are made
• Marine Raider RegimentMARSOC, Camp Lejeune

On 23 October 1983 a truck bomb destroyed the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Americans — 220 Marines, 18 sailors, 3 soldiers. Still the deadliest single day for the Corps since Iwo Jima.

Two days after Beirut, US forces landed on Grenada. Nineteen killed, 116 wounded, in a campaign most Americans have forgotten entirely.

After the failed coup against Noriega in March 1988, Reagan ordered 1,300 additional Army and Marine troops into the Canal Zone; they arrived 5 April 1988 under the ELABORATE MAZE contingency plans. Twenty-one months of standing the line before a shot was fired in anger — and no casualty row anywhere.

The invasion itself. Noriega surrendered on 3 January 1990. Twenty-three Americans killed, 324 wounded.

A famine relief mission that became a gunfight. Eighteen Americans died in Mogadishu over 3–4 October 1993 alone.

Four Americans died, none of them to hostile fire.

There is no casualty column for the Marines and soldiers who stood in Panama through 1988 and 1989 watching a regime come apart, because none of them were killed doing it. The national ledger has no row for standing in harm’s way and being lucky.

That is a flaw in the ledger, not in the service. A veteran is not defined by whether the enemy managed to hit them. If you were there, you were there.

Two Marines at Quantico modified Doom II into a four-player fire-team trainer, for roughly the price of one retail copy of the game.

The Army built, published and gave away its own shooter, and ran it for twenty years as a recruiting instrument. At least $32.8M of taxpayer money through 2009 alone.

Roughly $5M of Army money. The first military training application ever shipped on a commercial console.

Built under contract to PM TRASYS, distributed Corps-wide at zero per-seat cost.

Convoy-ambush rehearsal for up to fifty soldiers at once. Projected to train ~20,000 a year.

Spoken-Arabic trainer. In one Marine battalion two members of every squad completed forty hours of it.

A massively multiplayer wargame the Navy used to crowdsource strategy, including counter-piracy.

Built from Full Spectrum Warrior’s own art and engine, repurposed as exposure therapy for combat PTSD. The circle closes.

Arma 3 has sold over ten million copies and is constantly described as “what the military trains on.” It isn’t. A legally separate company, Bohemia Interactive Simulations, makes Virtual Battlespace — the actual training product, fielded at more than 80 Army simulation centres under a $10.3M Marine Corps contract in 2012. BAE Systems bought BISim for $200 million in 2022.

The Veterans Crisis Line is free, confidential, and staffed around the clock — you do not need to be enrolled in VA care to use it. Dial 988, then press 1. Text 838255. Or chat at veteranscrisisline.net.