“The Service” of the Citizen Soldier

By Lewis Brackett

June 21, 2025

Over 2000 years ago, most every spring, the young men would gather in their town squares. They  swore an oath of loyalty to The Republic.  They then formed up in Centuries or hundreds.

Going before them was the eagle, and beneath it, the plaque with the letters SPQR.  Meaning of course “For the Senate and We The People of Rome.”  For as long as the citizen soldiers marched, so did Rome. While their nobility of service and sacrifice endured, so did Rome. When that ethos ended, so did Rome.

A thousand years of Barbarism passed before the light of a New Republic flickered into being on a new continent across the sea. Once again, the citizen soldiers of a New Rome began to assemble in their town squares in time of peril, and, as centuries before, they stood ready to stand between their loved homes and the war’s desolation.

It has been four hundred years since then. Those of us in our generation stand to the colors in our turn, to secure the campfires behind us, as we face whatever peril there is before us. We stand to pay it back and to pay it forward. We endure the necessary and often arbitrary abuse that comes with military life. We stand despite the winter storms of the North Atlantic. We stand in the shivering watches in the Antarctic, and in the blazing heat of the wretched Mid-Eastern deserts. But above all, we proudly stand, because that is what a man, a Citizen Soldier or Sailor, Airman or Marine … does.

The author is a Coast Guard veteran who served four winters on Cutters on the North Atlantic in the late 1960’s. My Father served in WW2, driving landing craft into invasion beaches in New Guinea and the Philippines. One uncle went ashore on D-day in Normandy. Two others were shot down over Europe.  One came home. They all served.

Lewis Brackett in San Diego.   Read my historical novellas at  https://lewishb.wixsite.com/mysite-2

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