Quote Originally Posted by ljperreira View Post
Do the men and/or women you serve with know you hold them in such low esteem? Many of the men I served with have gone on to do good things after our enlistment. And none of them have expressed any regrets for joining. I highly respect the men I served with, and while I can say we were a bit naive at first (being in our late teens, early 20s at the time), those "stupid" kids acted intelligent and mature when tasked with the tough missions that came our way. Whether it was evacuating the American Embassy and providing humanitarian aid in East Timor, providing riot control at the G8 Summit in Okinawa, or any other number of things, including Iraq, the Marines I served with always acted professionally. In comparison to most of the college kids I’ve had to put up with (and will have to put up with) on my way to becoming an educator, who cant even be trusted to drive their pretty cars their parents gave them, id rather be side by side with those "stupid" kids I served with, as you’re so willing to call them. And by the way, those "stupid" kids include many relatives of mine who also served. Besides family members who served in WWI and WWII, my father served in the Air Force, one brother in the Army in S. Korea, another brother served in the Navy aboard submarines, and myself in the Marine Corps. My brother in law is in the National Guard, and hes currently in Iraq. None of us have any regrets for the time we spent in.

Anyhow, congratulations on successfully derailing this whole topic.....Id rather be discussing the merits of the Lorica Segmentata, or the lack of merits for that matter, than dealing with your......never mind.
I can see that you're pretty emotional about this, but as a former Marine myself, let me say a few things. For one thing, you and I both know that there are plenty of stupid teenage Marines. Experienced Marines call them "boots" and they typically go through about a year-long process of getting their shit together once they hit the fleet, which is after a Marine finishes their initial training(for those who don't know). I think this must be the same for every soldier in the world who lives or ever has lived. It's basically the stupid newby phase, so don't get all sentimental when he says most recruits are stupid teenagers. Besides, what do you care what he thinks anyway? You know what you and your brothers did, and you know the quality of the people you served with. I was a grunt in Afghanistan, and Iraq, and many of the people I served with were good Marines, but there were plenty of dumb-asses as well. It isn't dishonoring the Corps to admit the obvious.

As for the LS, is the fact that it is a different kind of armor relevant? For example when the empire was fighting a lot of germans, they were facing a lot more clubs and other blunt weapons. Chain mail is all but useless against these types of weapons, because the bone gets crushed anyway. I imagine a banded form of iron mail would provide better protection against these simple but deadly weapons wouldn't it? Also, if you look at the LS, it just looks cool and powerful, even if it isn't so much. I wonder if the LS wasn't used as a psychological weapon more than anything. Kind of a symbol to represent the power of Rome. A whole legion marching with that shiny armor must have been quite a sight for a bunch of shirtless barbarians with clubs. (I'm sorry if these points have been made already, I didn't want to read every single post of this thread)