Thank you for making that point. For the uninitiated and/or lazy out there, let me detail the various status that Marines can hold according to the gospel of me:
Active Duty Marine - Marine on active duty.
Marine Reservist - Marine in reserve status who can be called up to active duty.
Retired Marine - Marine who either spent 20+ years of active duty service time, of was medically retired.
Marine Veteran - Marine who successfully fulfilled his contract and was discharge without prejudice. Individual Ready Reserve Marines fall into this category, even though they can still be called to active duty if need be. IRR is sort of a grey area, up until the point the Marine Corps wants you back.
and finally
"Former" Marine - an individual who was discharge, with prejudice, from the Marine Corps for whatever reason.
It is acceptable to call anyone in the first 4 categories a "Marine". They earned the title through their actions and behavior. There is some debate as to whether Retired and Veteran Marines can have their current status revoked and be placed in to the Former category. There is no official panel to address the issue, so it is more a personal judgment call, rather than anything official. Also, an individual can be a POS while being in any of these categories. It's a personal choice, rather than something that is dictated by your status. The "former" Marine category does have a higher percentage of them than the others, though.
Exactly. I view Murtha as a “former Marine”.
Whenever I see the Marines in reserve status, and they think they are out for good, I think of those Marines who had fought on the Pacific in WWII in hellish places like Peleliu and Iwo Jima and thought (logically) that they had fulfilled their duty, only to be called back again when the Korean War broke out.
I can’t imagine what it must have been like to fight at both Peleliu and Chosin in the same lifetime...
Anyway, good post!