Team,
I hope that this note finds you well. We’ve had a great week as we’ve made some progress on our upcoming fundraiser, have received confirmation on our socks arriving next week and had an opportunity to walk down memory lane with a bunch of men we’ve come to admire. All in all, we’ve had a great week and have a lot of good things to report!
Thanks to everyone who stood forward last week to help us. We appreciate all of you who stepped up to donate as well as those of you who have taken a sponsorship or signed up to shoot at our upcoming “America Shoots for Her Troops” fundraiser on March 20th. We are already 50% subscribed and we are still 5 weeks out!
We’re grateful for your help.
We also got confirmation that our wait for our next sock shipment will be ending on Monday. We’ll be getting in our next 10K pair, so I began doing the prep work to get them out. I started reaching out to all the units checking to see if their mail windows were open. After a while, I realized that if we ship to all the units, we did last month, we are going to be about 3,400 pair short. So, the plan is that anyone who responds will get socks this month, anybody who doesn’t will get them next month. I guess I’m going to have to start upping my orders.
I was getting ready to start printing shipping labels until I realized that I won’t be able to ship until Tuesday due to the President’s day holiday on Monday. Oh, well. We’ll get them out this week though!!!
Thanks to all of you who make this possible.
Sometimes we forget how long we have been doing this. Since we started in May of 2011, we’ve shipped to hundreds of units who have been forward deployed in harm’s way. We’ve had the opportunity to meet a bunch of phenomenal Marines and their families. But with Marines, it’s always something that continually changes as they are rotated to their next postings on a bi-annual basis. Since they are normally replaced with individuals of equally high caliber, it all starts to run together after a while, but on Friday we had the opportunity to come face to face with a treasure-trove of past relationships during the retirement ceremony of our friend Sergeant Major Anthony (AJ) Pompos.
We got to know AJ when he was the Sergeant Major of our son’s battalion, 1/5. With 27 years in the Marine Corps, he’s pretty much done it all. A Marine who served in two wars, on the drill field, a trained sniper, with multiple combat deployments, he can aptly be described as a “Marine’s Marine.”
AJ went out of his way to build a relationship with us. He didn’t have to, but it was important to him. AJ was a 1st Sergeant with Bravo 1/6 during the assault on Marjah. He lost Marines there. At the time our relationship with the unit had deteriorated, but between him and their Commander, Mark Carlton, they brought us back to be an integral part of their team.
It was AJ who engineered the celebration of Donald’s “Angel Day” by pulling the entire Battalion together following a field exercise where we served them all burgers and apple pie. He has always gone out of his way to make sure that we knew how much we were appreciated and that our son’s unit was our unit as well. It was AJ who invited me to speak at the 100-year anniversary of the unit.
AJ is not our friend. He is a member of our family.
You can always tell the Caliber of people by the people who show up to honor them. If you looked at the people who showed up for AJ’s retirement you knew he was something special.
AJ’s final posting is at 29 Palms. It’s a drive no matter where you are. It took us a little under 3 hours to get there. Originally it was supposed to be held on the Parade Ground, but anyone who has spent any time at “The Stumps” will tell you that you can plan, but it’s just a guideline. The weather makes the final call. That morning as we were driving up in the rain and the wind, we got a text saying that it had been moved to the base theater.
When we got there, it’s a buzz of activity. In the middle of it is AJ being the Sergeant Major. Calmly giving direction. Making sure that the junior Marines know what is expected of them. There are no raised voices, just a buzz of activity.
As we wait for the ceremony to begin, we are greeted by many old friends. There is a Marine who we sent socks to when he was the Sergeant Major of a Combat Engineer Battalion who is now the Sergeant Major of the Second Marine Division out of Camp Lejeune. There is another Sergeant Major who we knew from 1/5 who we sent socks to in Iraq when he was deployed there with an Osprey Squadron. There is an iconic figure of the Battle of Fallujah who has always been kind to us since he was the Sergeant Major of 1MEF. I say that they greet “us”, they really greet Carla as she is the star of the show. But they are nice to me as well.
Retirement ceremonies are not long. In this case AJ is presented with the Legion of Merit for excelling in his duties while the Sergeant Major of the storied 7th Marine regiment. He receives his certificates from the Commandant and Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps and the President, and then his flag.
Then it’s time for comments.
His retiring officer was Colonel Matthew Good. He is a tested Combat Commander serving with 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance during Iraqi Freedom and is an old hand at 29 Palms. We’ve had the pleasure to get to know him over the past couple of years. While he tries to come off as a “good old boy” he is a determined and focused leader who makes sure that his people are well cared for. There is a reason why he and AJ worked so well together.
During his remarks, he made an unusual reference for a Marine Commander in that he likened AJ to the J.R.R Tolkien character “Sam” in the Lord of the Rings. He talked about how Tolkien had been a serving officer in the British Army in World War 1 and fought in the trenches. He said that knowing that you could see the trauma of the experience come out in his writing. He said that Sam was based on the non-commissioned officers that he served with. He singled out the line whereas he and Frodo came to the base of Mount Doom and Frodo could not move any farther he states to Frodo, “I cannot carry your burden, but I can carry you.” Colonel Good then talked about all the ways that AJ had carried not only him, but a 5,000-man Regiment of Marines for Two years.
He talked about not only his attention to detail, but also his compassion and empathy for the Marines who served under him. His tireless work to develop the junior leaders both non-commissioned and commissioned to challenge them to inspire their Marines through their actions instead of their words.
He talked about how AJ would try to get Marines when they first came to “The Stumps” to not look at the negatives, like the fact that there is a sewage plant right in the middle of the camp (Lake Bandini), but to “look deep”. To see the beauty of the surrounding mountains. To appreciate the fact that they could see the sun most days of the year when the rest of the country was snowbound. To take pride in the fact that their base was the center of the Marine Corps warfighting community. That every Marine who would go to war came to their base to train and that they were the home team. To take pride in the fact that Seventh Marine Battalions have carried the brunt of the deployments to Helmand during the deployments to Afghanistan and until recently had carried all the deployments on the MAGTF’s to Iraq.
It’s not a hell hole. It’s a crucible. AJ helped to forge great Marines there.
AJ’s remarks are not long. He thanks his friends who made the journey. He thanks his family. He thanks the Marines he served with and he tells a story that you can see molded his philosophy on leadership.
When he came back from his first deployment, he was home and talking to some members of his family. He was trying to share with them about his feelings about what he had seen and done, the friends who died and the trauma he had experienced. When it started to get uncomfortable, they changed the subject.
At that point in time, he made the decision that no matter what else was going on, if someone came to him in trouble or with a problem, he would take the time to listen. That no one would ever be able to say that he had not made time for them.
Did he accomplish it? Looking at the large crowd of distinguished Marines, as they all nodded approvingly at his remarks, I would say he had.
We wish AJ fair winds and following seas as he moves forward to the next chapter of his life.
We’re back at work on Tuesday. We’ll be pushing out socks and getting ready for our upcoming fundraiser.
If you haven’t made a donation in a while, we could use some help with postage. Please go to http://socks4heroes.com and donate today. If you have been waiting to sign up to shoot or take a sponsorship in our fundraiser, remember we sold out early last time so don’t wait! Please go to http://socks4heroes.com/events and register today.
Thanks for joining us in our position in this fight!
Jim Hogan
In memory of our son, LCPL Donald Hogan
Posthumously awarded the Navy Cross
KIA 8/26/2009 Nawa, Afghanistan
We honor his memory by caring for Americans wherever they serve in harm’s way.