Among its many claims to fame, San Diego is a military town, as I learned when I lived there in the 1990s. The Marines are at Camp Pendleton and the Top Gun pilots at Miramar. Coronado, where I rented an apartment, is home to the Navy SEALs. It’s almost impossible to go anywhere and not be aware of the military. Aircraft carriers dot the shoreline, fighter planes fly in formation overhead, and men and women in uniform perform drills on the beach.

Until I moved to San Diego, my primary experience of the military was through my uncle and his family. When I was a little girl, they visited us in New Jersey from their home in Ft. Hood, Texas, where they lived when they weren’t overseas. What I remember most from those visits was the haircuts of my four boy cousins, military-issued buzz cuts, less than an inch long. In San Diego, I saw those same cuts again, a symbol as ubiquitous as desert camouflage and combat boots.  (more…)

ShareThis