My son - the future Marine

It's becoming a reality.  My 'dawg.  My oldest.  The boy that made me a grandma too early.....his time is rapidly coming.

I mentioned before the he has enlisted in the Marine's.  He was given a delayed deployment until his divorce could become final, and now that it is, he has just been trying to choose his MOS (Military Occupational Service ) and wait for an opening.

He's decided.  He's gonna be one of these:

(image via here)

A Combat Engineer.  What is that?  Had to go to this website for some information:

Serving in the Marine Corps as a Combat Engineer can be very rewarding and challenging at the same time. Marine Combat engineers repair, alter, maintain, alter and adjust various structures and buildings. The Marine Combat Engineer is a jack-of-all-trades, a Marine who is called upon to be an expert soldier, but also to know a great deal about how to build, construct, and make things work.

There are a number of billets available inside the Marine Engineer Specialty. After boot camp, a Marine interested in this field will attend Basic Combat Engineer School, located at Camp Lejune, NC. As a combat engineer you will operate or serve as a crewmember on a variety of different Marine military vehicles. They work to perform a variety of different specialized demolitions in land mines and for urban land breaching is also taught. This is a job that requires you to be in good physical condition to perform as a Combat engineer. You should have normal color vision, and normal hearing. The Combat Marine Corp Engineer is a construction based MOS, but it also works to support different remodeling and reconstruction issues. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, as a result of the War on Terror, Marine Corps Combat Engineer specialists have been used heavily to help rebuild vital infrastructure, and facilities such as schools, clinics and other industries. Operational Combat Marine Corps Engineers works to perform a wide variety of different jobs. They work to perform different engineer and construction tasks, all the while being a fully qualified and ready Marine Corps Soldiers. Training will assist you to know how to locate and eliminate mines by visual or mechanical means. Servicemembers who are assigned to this MOS are taught construction and carpentry skills, as well as skills in demolition projects and destruction of objects. This can be a field with room for a lot of different types and styles of duty. You can be assigned literally anywhere that the Marine Corps Services, and be detailed as support for a variety of different Marine Corps Command groups.
Marine Corps Engineers work with military construction, working to repair, construct, and use metalworking and fabrication to perform different military duties. At times Marine engineers also work in the bulk distribution of fuels and other materials. You can learn how to deal with a variety of different jobs and engineer tasks.

Two days ago, he was given orders to report Monday morning for MEPS a final IST and then off to boot camp.  Since then, the date has been changed.  It seems to be a bit static.  Not gonna put one out there for now, but we do know that within two weeks, he will be headed for boot camp at Camp Pendleton in California.  After 13 weeks, and graduation, he will have earned the right to call himself a Marine.  He'll come home for a few weeks, and then head to his Combat Engineering School located at Camp Lejune in North Carolina.  That program is 8-9 weeks.  He'll come home for another week or two and then has been told he'll ship out to Afghanistan.

I am excited for him.  Anxious for him.  Proud of him.  Immensely proud of him.
I'll post more once the date is final.  I doubt I will get much notice other than, you got 30 minutes to come say good bye.
And then I will start planning my trip to Cali to see his graduation and then to NC to visit with the Colonel, his wife, and see my boy finish his training school.

A new adventure to be sure, but one that I am proud to be a part of.

Semper Fi and Ooorah!