More on Camp Casey II

Continuing with info about our trip to Crawford, TX last weekend. The single most profoundly impressive person we encountered throughout our stay was Lance Cpl. Jeff Key. He is currently awaiting discharge from the Marines after acting against the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Here's a photo of him that I did not take:


Lance Cpl. Jeff Key, USMC
We first met Jeff Friday evening after arriving in Crawford. He had given a nice speech and then later came and sat down with us after I snagged him. I had wanted to find out if he knew our neighbor, a marine who was stationed at the same camp, Camp Pendleton. Our neighbor, while stationed in Iraq, had spearheaded a "Toys for Iraqi Orphans" drive which I extensively pushed and advertised last year on this blog. He talked to my wife and me for a while and we found him to be terribly charming.

During our conversation a recently discharged, very young and very shy Marine sat down at our table. He had served in Iraq and visibly was emotionally troubled. As soon as Jeff noticed him he ignored us (thankfully) and started to talk quietly to him and obviously console him for a long time in a very compassionate manner. We were just blown away.

The next night, on Saturday, Jeff performed a one-man play which he has done numerous times across the country (he has an acting background). The 90-minute play was composed of scenes recreated from excerpts of a personal journal he maintained while in Iraq, which he said helped him keep his sanity. It was deeply moving and gave us a keen insight into his personal thoughts and the decisions he made both before the war (enlistment) and while traveling throughout Iraq as a tank driver. His descriptions of his interactions with the Iraqi children and adults were priceless, as were his recreations of events involving fellow Marines including one of several from his unit who were killed. My wife said it was the best one-person performance she had ever seen.

Here's a photo I took on Saturday when he took the podium to deliver one of many speeches. He had been on the phone speaking to a new friend he had made in Utah and started telling us about his conversation:


Lance Cpl. Jeff Key (8/20/05)
Each night that we were at Camp Casey II he played taps (one of his Marine duties) at sunset to honor the dead soldiers Bush had sent off to protect the President's buddies' oil. On our last two nights he played taps in front of the "memorial crosses" (see photos in an earlier post below). As you can imagine, it was deeply emotional. In the crowd of 500+ people you could hear a pin drop.

At 6'5" Jeff is a towering individual and it was never a problem finding him in a crowd that, at peak times, reached around 1,000.

Irrespective of Key's political, sexual or religious inclinations, I found the man to be someone who makes me realize that, in our world today, we can have a military to protect us and be composed of service-men and -women who are compassionate towards foreigners. This in spite of being led today by a ruthless Administration in Washington D.C. whose only objective is to use the military for strictly person financial gain. I pray that someday, if not in my lifetime then hopefully in those of my children, there will no longer be armies on this planet. Until that time, I hope that the U.S. military will evolve such that it is composed mostly of caring and dedicated individuals like Jeff Key.