Marine Recruits Learn an Important Lesson: What Happened on 9/11 by Michael M. Phillips – Wall Street Journal
Marine recruit Juan Tellez has no memory of the Sept. 11 hijackings that started the war he may soon be fighting.
Why would he? He was born two months after the terror attacks took place.
The Afghanistan war, now in its 18th year, has been going on for so long that some of those volunteering to fight it were still in utero when it began.
Brig. Gen. James Glynn, commander of Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, expects a surge of post-Sept. 11 babies this summer, when a fresh crop of high-school graduates boards the bus to boot camp.
Mr. Tellez and a handful of other 17-year-olds are here already, with their parents’ permission. “They’re just starting to show up,” Gen. Glynn says.
In the self-abnegating manner of Marine boot camp, Mr. Tellez speaks of himself in the third person when considering the prospects of a combat tour in Afghanistan, where Marines are among 14,000 U.S. troops…