The Shitbag Life

For those that know, you know. For those of you who don't know, you're about to learn. The "Shitbag life" as I prefer to call it, is a glorious state of being that I was reminded of this morning by one of our corpsmen liking a comment on a photo of one of my brothers from 3/7 atop a mountain. Let me tell you all, it is glorious.There he stands with faded out camouflage utilities, no rank insignia, no cover...I mean if someone really wanted to and they saw him at that exact time, the ass chewing he may have received (or not received depending on how cool the leadership that caught him was) would have been severe, not epic, but definitely worth laughing about now...some 10+ years down the road.But there he was, embracing "shitbag" life as a grunt...It's not necessarily a bad thing. Certainly, there are reasons for the attention to detail and this and that regulation and strict adherence to guidelines...but the shitbag life has a certain je nais se quoi about it.I guess if I had to define it, the "shitbag" life is about keeping life simple and stupid and not always saddling up for what you know to be only a dog and pony show. We get dirty, we kill people who kill people (because killing people is wrong).I guess along with that, if I had to really nail it down, the "shitbag" life is about being honest and authentic about who you are as a man. Hell yeah, I'm going to put my hands in my pockets in the field. Hell yeah, I'm not going to wear rank insignia down range so the enemy knows who is in charge (more stripey things equal more authority, shiny things equal even more authority p.s. if you don't know who outranks you in your immediate chain of command by the time you go downrange, you must be a special kind of stupid).There are certain things that take place in the military that if we listed them all here, we'd surely die of old age, but are only for looks, things that make zero sense but still happen. Shitbags rise above that and more often than not get in trouble for it, but as we wrote in our satirical article a few weeks back, shitbags often make the best killers. It's not always the case, but it happens enough that people should understand...sometimes it's an insult, but most of the time, it's a term of endearment.