Terminal Lance #447 “Leave Blocked II”

Marines accrue 2.5 days of paid leave per month, to a grand total of 120 days of leave for a regular 4 year enlistment. Generally speaking, at least for an infantry company, you can only use those leave days during allowed “leave blocks.” This leads to a natural deluge of requests at around the same time, with everyone waiting anxiously for them to be marked “Approved” on MOL. Of course, the only thing standing in the way of your leave being approved is your chain of command, who always seem to want to make the process as painful as possible.

This becomes tremendously arduous when you’re somewhere like Marine Corps Base Hawaii and have to fly a minimum of 5 hours to get home to anywhere on the mainland. Plane tickets are expensive, and they only get more expensive the longer you wait.

But First Sergeant doesn’t care.

First Sergeant doesn’t give a fuck.

First Sergeant has his entire family on the island and he’s not going anywhere. First Sergeant feeds on the misery of his Marines, it is his lifeblood. He drinks the tears of Lance Corporals as coffee every morning.

Hey, worst case scenario, just spend Christmas in the barracks and save that leave for sweet, sweet Terminal.

In other news, I’m making a conscious effort to get Terminal Lance a little more grounded, back into the menial and every day. I often feel pressured to make every comic strip some grand, sweeping insight over life, rather than just making a funny joke about the every day suck. I suppose that just comes naturally to most creative products, but Terminal Lance is a comic for the Marines by a Marine, and it needs to stay that way.

Stay tuned for more.