Personal Narrative: My First Deployment Patch

Signing the contract, serving my country and knowing the end date in which I can come back home permanently, at the time, felt like it took an eternity. Most contracts are for eight years, four active and four inactive. But once it’s over, it’s as if it took a blink of an eye. There are many moments and things I will cherish during my time in the USMC but one of them specifically is my first deployment patch. That we attached to our body armour or “plate carrier.” This little threaded rectangle represents to me, my experiences in the service as a whole. The good, the bad and the memories that suddenly come flooding back as I look at it. The deployment patch has a velcro backing to easily slap onto the top of the front of a plate carrier. It’s a little rectangle that is about two and a half inches by four inches long. It has dark brown threading around the edge with loose threads that look like it’ll unravel eventually. The middle portion of the patch has a lighter brown color with more complicated and stronger stitching. It’s dirty with black spotting covering about half of the light brown color in the center portion. In the top right corner of the front is my blood type written “A pos.” In the middle is the “EGA,” the eagle globe and anchor, the insignia

At the time I was in the desert of southern california at a little base outside Twentynine Palms, one of the larger bases the USMC has in the U.S. When I look at this little threaded patch, I am reminded of all I have gone through to just get back home. The friends I made (whom I still talk to today) and the laughter I shared with them on the daily. It reminds me of when I left for boot camp. My mother crying the day my parents dropped me off at the mall before I left home for the first time. This whole transition I made from over six years ago to who I am