San Diego and Marines

I spent Saturday afternoon with a friend of mine in San Diego. We tried to get up to Mt. Soledad to see the newly saved cross and war memorial, but it was closed for the afternoon for a special event honoring 21 Marines who had been killed recently. So we had to head back down the hill.

For the rest of the afternoon, we took the two-hour harbor cruise, which I had never done before. One hour covers the south part of San Diego Bay, with all the Navy ships on one side and Coronado Island on the other, although Coronado isn't really an island. It's a penninsula. The other hour covers the north part of the bay, with Point Loma and Ballast Point (where my dad's submarine used to be docked when he was stationed there) and the "islands" made when the harbor was dredged.

I took the picture above as one of many pictures of this seagull, who followed the boat hoping for someone to throw it some food. The Coronado Bay Bridge is in the background.

It was relaxing listening to the guide tell us about the matching aircraft carriers docked next to each other, the USS Nimitz and the USS Ronald Reagan. They're the same class of carrier built 28 years apart. My pictures of them didn't come out well, because I had to shoot into the sun. There were other carriers and destroyers and ship types whose names I don't remember, but what stuck in my mind was the way the capacity was described on some of them. The guide listed the crew contingent, and then said how many Marines they carry. For some of those carriers, their purpose is to take our Marines into harm's way.

Today at church, one of our Marines and his wife came forward for prayer, and another Marine and his chaplain did the same. Their unit (the chaplain included) is deploying to Iraq tomorrow night. We prayed for their safety in Iraq and for the peace of mind of their families here at home. I don't know which of the carriers we saw yesterday will be the one to take our men to Iraq.

After church, a couple friends and I saw World Trade Center. We had waited until we heard enough good reviews about the movie to overcome our reluctance to see anything Oliver Stone makes. It was worth the wait.

In the scene where the two former Marines are searching the WTC rubble at night and they find the trapped policemen, Sgt. Dave Karnes says, "We're not leaving, we're the Marines. You are our mission." A strong round of applause broke out in the theater at that.

San Diego is a Navy town, but North San Diego County and the very south end of Orange County are Marine areas. We love and support our military here, and we support their mission. We don't relish the thought of our men and women being in danger, but as the tagline at Mudville Gazette says, "Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." That about says it all.