The following is supposedly the retirement address of Marine Col. Wayne
Shaw who recently retired from Quantico after more than 28 years of service.
It is making the rounds and is worth the 5 or 6 minutes it takes to read.

"In recent years, I've heard many Marines, on the occasion of
retirements, farewells, promotions and changes of command refer to the "fun"
they've had in the Marine Corps; "I loved every day of it and had a lot of
fun" has been voiced far too often.  Their definition of "fun" must be
radically different from mine.
Since first signing my name on the dotted line 28 years ago I have had very
little fun.  Devoting my entire physical and mental energies training to
kill the young men of some other country was not fun.  Worrying about how
many of my own men might die or return home maimed was not fun.  Knowing
that we did not have the money or time to train as best we should have, was
not fun either. It was no fun to be separated from my wife for months on
end, nor was it fun to freeze at night in snow and rain and mud.  It was not
much fun to miss my father's funeral because my Battalion Commander was
convinced our
peacetime training deployment just couldn't succeed without me.  Missing
countless school and athletic events my sons very much wanted me to see was
not much fun either.  Not being at my son's high school graduation wasn't
fun.  Somehow, it didn't seem like fun when the movers showed up with day
laborers from the street corner and the destroyed personal effects were
predictable from folks who couldn't hold a job.  The lost and damaged items,
often irreplaceable family heirlooms, weren't much fun to try to "replace"
for pennies on the dollar.  There wasn't much fun for a Colonel with a
family of four to live in a 1200 sq. ft. apartment with one bathroom that
no welfare family would have moved into. It was not much fun to watch the
downsizing of the services after Desert Storm as we handed out pink slips to
men who risked their lives just weeks before.  It has not been much fun to
watch mid-grade officers and senior Staff NCOs, after living frugal lives
and investing money where they could, realize that they cannot afford to
send their sons and daughters to college.  Nor do I consider it much fun to
reflect on the fact that our medical system is simply broken.  It is not
much fun to watch my Marines board helicopters that are just too old and
train with gear that just isn't
what is should be anymore.  It is not much fun to receive the advanced
copies of promotion results and call those who have been passed over for
promotion.  It just wasn't much fun to watch the infrastructure at our bases
and stations sink deeper into the abyss because funding wasn't provided for
the latest "crisis".  It just wasn't much fun to discharge good Marines for
being a few pounds overweight and have to reenlist Marines who were HIV
positive and not worldwide deployable.  It sure wasn't much fun to look at
the dead Marines in the wake of the Beirut bombing and Mogadishu fiascoes
and ask yourself what in the hell we were doing there.
I could go on and on.  There hasn't been much fun in a career that spans a
quarter century of frustration, sacrifice, and work.
So, why did you serve you might ask?  Let me answer that:  I joined the
service out of a profound sense of patriotism.  As the son of a career
Air Force Senior NCO, I grew up on military bases often within minutes
flying time from Soviet airfields in East Germany.  I remember the Cuban
Missile crisis, the construction of the Berlin Wall, the nuclear attack
drills in school, and was not many miles away when Soviet Tanks crushed the
aspirations of citizens in Czechoslovakia.  To me there was never any doubt
that our great Republic and the last best hope of free people needed to
prevail in this ultimate contest.  I knew I had to serve. When our nation
was in turmoil over our involvement in Vietnam, I knew that we were right in
the macro strategic sense and in the moral sense, even if in the execution
phase we may have been flawed.  I still believe to this day that we did the
right thing.  Many of our elite in the nation today continue to justify
their opposition to Vietnam in spite of all evidence that shows they were
wrong and their motives either naive or worse.
This nation needed to survive and I was going to join others like me to
insure it did. We joined long before anyone had ever referred to service in
the infantry units of the Marine Corps as an "opportunity".  We knew the pay
was lousy, the work hard and the rewards would be few.  We had a cause, we
knew we were right and we were willing when others were not.  Even without a
direct threat to our Nation many still join and serve for patriotic reasons.
I joined the Marines out of a sense of adventure.  I expected to go to
foreign countries and do challenging things.  I expected that, should I
stick around, my responsibilities would grow as would my rewards.  It was
exciting to be given missions and great Marines to be responsible for.
Finally, I joined for the camaraderie.  I expected to lead good men and be
lead by good men.  Marines who would speak frankly and freely, follow orders
once the decision was made and who would place the success of the mission
above all else.  Marines who would be willing to sacrifice for this great
nation. These were men I could trust with anything and they could trust me.
It was the camaraderie that sustained me when the adventure had faded and
the patriotism was tested. I was a Marine for all of these years because it
was necessary, because it was rewarding, because our nation needed
individuals like us and because I liked and admired the Marines I served
with ... but it sure wasn't fun.
I am leaving active service soon and am filled with some real concerns for
the future of our Marine Corps and even more so for the other services. I
have two sons who are on the path to becoming Marine Officers themselves and
I am concerned about their future and that of their fellow Marines, sailors,
airmen and soldiers.  We in the Corps have the least of the problems but
will not be able to survive in a sick DOD. We have gone from a draft
motivated force to an all volunteer force to the current professional force
without the senior leadership being fully aware of the implications.  Some
of our ills can be traced to the fact that our senior leadership doesn't
understand the modern Marine or service member. I can tell you that the 18
year old who walks through our door is a far different individual with
different motivations than those just ten years ago.  Let me generalize for
a moment.  The young men from the middle class in the suburbs come in to
"Rambo" for a while.  He has a home to return to if need be and mom has left
his room unchanged.  In the back of his mind he has some thoughts of a
career if he likes it or it is rewarding.  The minorities and females are
looking for some skills training but also consider a career if "things work
out."  They have come to serve their country but only in a very indirect
way.  They have not joined for the veterans' benefits because those have
been truncated to the point where
they are useless.  No matter what they do, there is no way it will pay
for college and the old VA home loan is not competitive either.
There are no real veteran's benefits anymore... It is that simple, and our
senior leadership has their head in the sand if they think otherwise.  As
they progress through their initial enlistments that are four years or more
now, many conclude that they will not be competitive enough to make it a
20-year career or don't want to endure the sacrifices required.  At that
point they decide that it is time to get on with the rest of their lives and
the result is the high first term attrition we currently have to deal with.
The thought of a less than honorable discharge holds no fear what so ever
for most.  It is a paper tiger.  Twenty years ago an individual could serve
two years and walk away with a very attractive amount of Veterans benefits
that could not be matched by any other sector or business in the country.
We have even seen those who serve long enough lose benefits as we stamped
from weaker program to weaker program.  This must be reversed. We need a
viable and competitive GI Bill that is grand fathered when you enter the
service, is predicated on an honorable discharge and has increasing benefits
for longer service so we can fill the mid-grade ranks with quality people.
We must do this to stop the hemorrhage of first term attrition and to
reestablish good faith and fairness.  It will allow us to reenlist a few
more and enlist a few less.
The modern service member is well read and informed.  He knows more about
strategy, diplomacy and current events than Captains knew when I first
joined.  He reads national newspapers and professional journals and is tuned
into CNN. Gone are the days of the PFC who sat in Butzbach in the Fulda Gap
or Camp Schwab on Okinawa and scanned the Stars and Stripes sports page and
listened to AFN.  Yet our senior leadership continue to treat him like a
moron from the hinterland who wouldn't understand what goes on.  He is in
the service because he wants to be and not because he can't get a job in the
steel mill.  Three hots and a cot are not what he is here for.  The Grunts
and other combat arms guys aren't here for the "training and skills" either.
He is remarkably well disciplined in that he does what he is told to do even
though he knows it is stupid.  He is very stoic, but not blind.
Yet, I see senior leaders all of the time who pile on more.  One should
remind them that their first platoon in 1968 would have told them to
stick it where the sun doesn't shine.  These new Warriors only think it...
He is well aware of the moral cowardice of his seniors and their habit of
taking the easy way out that results in more pain and work for their
subordinates.
This must be reversed.  The senior leadership must have the morale courage
to stop the misuse and abuse of the current force.  The force is too small,
stretched too thin and too poorly funded.  These deficiencies are made up on
the backs of the Marines, sailors, airmen and soldiers.  The troops are the
best we've ever had and that is no reason to drive them into the dirt. Our
equipment and infrastructure is shot.  There is no other way to put it. We
must reinvest immediately and not just on the big ticket items like the
F-22.  That is the equivalent of buying a new sofa when the roof leaks and
the termites are wrecking the structure.
Finally, let me spend a minute talking about camaraderie and leadership. I
stayed a Marine because I had great leaders early on.  They were men of
great character without preaching, men of courage without ragging, men of
humor without rancor.  They were men who believed in me and I in them. They
encouraged me without being condescending.  We were part of a team and they
cared little for promotions, political correctness, or who your father was.
They were well-educated renaissance men who were equally at home in the
White House or visiting a sick Marine's child in a trailer park.  They
could talk to a barmaid or a baroness with equal ease and make each feel
like a lady.  They didn't much tolerate excuses or liars or those with too
much ambition for promotion.  Someone once told me that Priests do the
Lord's work and don't plan to be the Pope.  They were in touch with their
Marines and supportive of their seniors.  They voiced their opinions freely
and without retribution from above.  They probably drank too much and had an
eye for beautiful women as long as they weren't someone's wife or a
subordinate.  You could trust them with your life, your wife, or your
wallet. Some of these great leaders were not my superiors --- some were my
Marines.
We need more like them at the senior levels of Government and in
Military leadership today.  It is indeed sad when senior defense officials
and Generals say things on TV they themselves don't believe and every
service member knows they are lying.  It is sad how out of touch with our
society some of our Generals are.  Ask some general you know these ten
questions:

1. How much does a PFC make per month?
2. How big is the gas tank on a Hummvee?
3. Who is your Congressman and who are your two Senators?
4. Name one band that your men listen to.
5. Name one book on the NY times bestseller list.
6. Who won the last Superbowl?
7. What is the best selling car in America?
8. What is the WWF?
9. When did you last trust your subordinates enough to take ten days
leave?
10. What is the leave balance of your most immediate subordinate?

We all know they won't get two right and therein lies the problem.  We are
in the midst of monumental leadership failure at the senior levels. Just
recently Gen Shelton (CJCS) testified that he didn't know we had a readiness
problem or pay problems....  Can you imagine that level of isolation?  We
must fix our own leadership problems soon.  Quality of life is paid lip
service and everyone below the rank of Col. knows it.  We need tough,
realistic and challenging training.  But we don't need low pay, no medical
benefits, and ghetto housing.  There is only so much our morality should
allow us to ask of families.  Isn't it bad enough that we ask the service
members to sacrifice their lives without asking their families to sacrifice
their education and well being too?  We put our troops on guilt trips when
we tell them about how many died for this country and no hot water in
housing is surely a small sacrifice to make.  "Men have died and you have
the guts to complain about lack of medical care for your kids?"
The nation has been in an economic boom for damn near twenty years now, yet
we expect folks in the military to live like lower middle class folks lived
in the mid fifties.  In 1974, a 2nd Lt. could by a Corvette for less than
his annual salary.  Today, you can't buy a Corvette on a Major's annual
salary.  I can give you 100 other examples...  An NROTC midshipman on
scholarship got $100 a month in 1975.  He or she still gets $100 in 1999.
No raise in 25 years?  The QOL life piece must be fixed.  The Force sees
this as a truth teller and the truth is not good.
I stayed a Marine despite the erosion of benefits, the sacrifices of my wife
and children, the betrayal of our junior troops and the declining quality of
life because of great leaders, and the threat to our way of life by a truly
evil empire that no longer exists.  I want men to stay in the future.  We
must reverse these trends.  There will be a new "evil empire" eventually.
Sacrifices will need to be made and perhaps many things cannot change but
first and foremost we must fix our leadership problems.  The rest will take
care of itself, if we can only fix the leadership problem.
Then, I still can't promise you "fun" but I can promise you the reward and
satisfaction of being able to look into the mirror for the rest of your life
and being able to say: "I gave more to America than I ever took from
America.... and I am proud of it."

Semper Fi and God Bless you!