James Webb on His Call of Duty - for Memorial Day 2014

But which is easy to understand when you read this passage from his memoir:

"I and my fellow combat veterans stand on one side of a great impassable divide, with the rest of the world on the other."

"There's a great Marine Corps saying," said Webb. "'If you were there, I don't need to explain it to you, and if you weren't there, I can't explain it to you.' That's the divide."

James Webb: A Marine's impassable divide

May 25, 2014 - A veteran who answered the call of duty nearly a half-century ago has been trying to serve his country ever since, through the written word and through his public service as well. This morning he talks to David Martin:

In 1969 James Webb was a lean, mean fighting machine -- a Marine lieutenant in Vietnam, living a grim, almost sub-human existence of patrols and ambushes, sleeping on the ground and drinking water from bomb craters.

When he gets together with his fellow officers from back in the day, they sing a little ditty of their time in Vietnam:

"And it's off to Vietnam,
lose a leg or lose an arm,
and be pensioned by the Corps for ever more."

It's a far cry from "Halls of Montezuma," noted Martin.

"I think it kind of fits," laughed Webb. "Marine Corps gallows humor." read more>>>

" I Heard My Country Calling: A Memoir"