JUST A CORPSMAN By HM2 (DOC VADER) Benitez

(note, I didn't write this, just using it by permission, it tells a bit about what I do)I recently was engaged in a heated argument with a young sergeant during this argument the sergeant said to me “You are just a corpsman” This angered me to no end, as we continued with the patrol I thought about his statement. You are just a Corpsman.I realized that even though he may have thought he was

New nickname

My doctor dubbed me the Grim Reaper last night and to others, mentioned the name, Angel of Death. You know, that guy with the pale bony face who supposedly appears right before someone kicks the bucket? Not that anyone has kicked the bucket in my presence for a long time but because all of my injured Marines have been kind enough to do it when I happen to be taking pictures with my camera. Yes

Easter and Juno

Just lying in my bed watching Juno and my roommate is across the way is watching wrestling which seems to be on out here every other night. I’m totally digging the movie and typing this at the same time which calls for much editing later. But got to write when the feeling calls. We had a Bar-b-q for Easter Sunday, even though we’re at the edge of the world, our PX still carries frozen t-bones,

Coping Cliques

Coping CliquesWe each find our way of coping with the distance. Being a Corpsman of Marines, it's turned me into a watcher of people and being tapped as the unit photographer, that gives me an unbiased license to see everything.Humans are social beings, the interaction between people give me hours of enjoyment just observing. Lately my focus has been on the unconscious cliques people form to deal

It's a small world

Back in the late 90's I was stationed at NWS China Lake, a Navy base down the street from Death Valley and worked for this cranky old first class named Mark Lawrence. Mark was famous for making grown men cry, an act I had witnessed every couple of months while I was there. But for some reason, Mark and I got along like peanut butter and jelly and made a great team running the Aviation Medicine

When a sailor talks about coffee, he talks about it like he would a lover. Any Navy place you go to, there’s a coffee mess, usually with a tip jar towards supplies but it actually doesn’t matter if someone puts money in there or not. Because there is always going to be someone like me or my doc who will pay out of pocket to fill the thing up just to make sure it’s stocked.In Iraq, I’m drinking

Groundhog Day

The rituals are starting to sink in, the little idiosyncrasies, the quarks that each of us do to stay sane with the sameness. Our secret pet peeves are now common knowledge and the people we spend 16 hours a day with are as well known as the back of our hands. One thing about being out here, it wears out the buttons we all have inside of our head because someone is always there pushing them to

Blogging Thumbs Up

Last May when I went to the Milblog Conference, there was talk about us being in the last days of milblogging. That military was cracking down on blogging from the front. Being someone who has spent a fair portion of the last 4 years blogging from Iraq, I’m beginning to think it was all a Net Myth. Unlike many of the anonymous Milbloggers, my real name has been attached to my blog since day one