Farmer, Father, Reader, Ranger - The (Mis)Adventures of Paul Blofis

Warriors

'Warriors'

04-Jul-2010, 1915 hours

CPT Paul Blofis, US Army (Ret.)

1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment

Blofis Family Farm, Bowdon, Georgia, USA

To say that Percy was astounded would be an understatement.

We were at my family's farm for a family reunion. However, our family didn't just include those related by blood or marriage.

It included those related by uniform.

The Blofis family had a history of men (and some women) in uniform, with service members, law enforcement officers, and firefighters encompassing a large portion of the family. These Blofis men and women would end up finding secondary families within their respective services, which the rest of the family would soon welcome with open arms.

For example, there's my brother, Martin, a retired Coast Guardsman in Hawaii. It was there that he met his wife, Leilani, a retired Honolulu Police Department officer. The two were talking to Uncle Silas, a retired Sheriff.

As for Pa, John Blofis, he was in Vietnam and Korea as a Marine. He sat at a table, sharing a drink with Papaw—Marty, a Marine that served in the Pacific Theater in World War II. Papaw actually had a twin brother that served not in the Marine Corps, but in the Army, being part of the famed 5th Ranger Battalion at Normandy, helping to secure the Dog White sector of Omaha Beach.

That twin was Grandpa Paul, one of the survivors of the Germans' fierce artillery and machine gun fire, with the actions of him and his fellow soldiers earning the Regiment its motto: "Rangers lead the way!"

Unfortunately, Grandpa Paul would go on to die a hero at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, not too long before the war ended. Papaw would go on to request that Pa name me in his honor.

I never met Grandpa Paul, but when I became a Ranger, I remember Papaw saying that it was like going back in time—the uniforms had changed, but my resemblance to his lost brother was uncanny.

"So let me see if I've got this right," Percy began. "Your family consists of people that put their lives on the line for a living?"

"That sounds about right," I replied with a shrug. "But it can't be like what you've done, right?"

"I'll be honest, based on what I remember about World War II and Vietnam in history classes, those were hell in their own right. The Middle East, too."

"Yep," I said, recalling my past deployments, including the Battle of Takur Ghar during Operation Anaconda. I lost brothers that day, and despite my training, I felt lucky to be alive.

"Paul... in our world, we do this stuff every now and again, but you all seem to do it all of the time. How do you do it? How do you handle all the pressure, the pain, the fact that it just doesn't end for you?"

"Now, to be fair, we spend more time waiting and training than actually facing danger," I recalled, mentally chuckling at the reminder of my old platoon sergeant's aphorisms. "Like the saying goes: 'hurry up and wait!'"

"Even then!"

"Well, I'll tell you somethin', kid. Patriotism does play a part, but it ain't the sole reason why we fight. Consider your world. Sure, you technically fight for Olympus, but do you really?"

"I'm not sure if I understand the question," he replied after a few moments of thinking, bearing a countenance of confusion.

"You fight for Olympus, but you don't fight for Olympus," I explained. "You fight for the ones beside you. It's the same for us: we sign up to fight for our country, but when we're deployed, it's all about the ones beside us. It's always been about our battle buddies, our brothers. That's not to say we don't care about our country and the people we left behind, but when you're at war..."