I get it, they are not healthy and countless scientific journals describe in vivid and exacting detail why you should not even begin engaging in the activity. What those journals and harassment by others, including my ex-wife (more on that later) fail to understand is the calming, near heavenly state, cigars are able to enduce.

I first lit a cigar, a cuban, back in 2006 while in Ramadi, Iraq. Veterans of the era can relate to the tumultuous time, I will spare you the details. While at the ‘Phoenix Academy’ in Taji, Iraq our team and others spent a few weeks going through a canned course on counter-insurgency Iraq style. Each evening we spent the time working out, dinning on Iraq-style chow, and right before we hit the rack a little ‘smoking and joking.’

On one such night, a good friend named Todd handed me a cigar and I was hooked. Huddled around in small circles, all sitting on our fold out camp stools, we talked about the mission ahead and any rumors overheard or created there on the spot. Some of the guys like Brian Letendre added a hilarity and camaraderie that remains with me till this day. Brian Letendre would later die in action in Ramadi in early 2006. The scholarship in his honor is linked here.

Throughout the deployment I would hit the roof of our compound in Ramadi, pull out a cigar and smoke with my fellow Marines. The great thing about a cigar is that you cannot rush a cigar. One is forced to slow down, contemplate, and enjoy. View the cigar as a forcing function nothing more and nothing less.

As with any new endeavor, mentors are a good source of knowledge lest you are caught ‘flat-footed’ amongst experts. One of my cigar mentors was a old-school Marine, Colonel Jack Holly. A retired US Marine who ran as a civilian, the massive logistics effort throughout Iraq. He and I would smoke cigars many times throughout 2007 and he would regale me with stories of the Vietnam War, his Naval Academy classmate LtCol Oliver North, and time generally spent in the Marines. Holly was discussed in the book “Big Boy Rules” from Pulitzer Prize winning writer Steve Fainaru. We met weekly and I learned quite a bit from the retired Marine.

My cigar smoking has not always been well-recieved though. My ex-wife once ripped a cigar from my mouth a few days after returning from Ramadi in 2006. She then proceeded to step on it, turning it into a flattened tobacco mess reminiscent of a squished sausage. I should have sensed something was massively wrong at that moment, but it took me 6 more years to come to my senses…life lesson.

In this era of over-caution and political correctness, flex your right to enjoy a good cigar.