Force Recon Marine Sergeant Caleb Medley died during Military Free-Fall training on Wednesday, February 27, 2013. He is being buried today in his Colorado home town. Caleb had served a four year hitch in the Marine Corps, gotten out for a couple of years then heeded the call again when he re-joined the Corps last December.
Those who served with Caleb kept watch over him from the moment of his death to his interment. The death of a friend and comrade-in-arms is always a sad thing. One can’t help recalling his face and times together. Nor can one fail to wonder why. It is the eternal question asked by those left behind. The perception of youthful immortality is abruptly shaken to its’ core upon the first death of a comrade. Force Recon Marines like Caleb -and every other combat military occupational specialty – are either fighting our nation’s enemies or preparing to fight them. Caleb, like his team mates, was a volunteer many times over. He volunteered for the toughest of training from world famous Marine boot camp at San Diego, infantry training, reconnaissance training, parachute training and, ultimately, military free-fall. Caleb chose to become a finely tuned instrument of our nation’s defense and it is perhaps only in that that his family and friends may find some solace. He was a true American man performing his chosen skills that most Americans recoil in fear from. In a nation that takes its freedoms for granted at best and, at worst ridicules the sacrifices of our Founding Fathers, he chose to stand up for our freedoms by running to the sound of gunfire.
Abraham Lincoln, speaking of those fallen -and prophetically of future fallen – said it best at the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield:
“…..we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
