“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”
While planning a piece on the intense bond between those in the extended military family, I decided early on that I would open with the above quote. I prefer this version over the ‘modern’ and more popular, “blood is thicker than water.” Hailing from a family that sometimes forgot to put the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional, the shorter, prevalent variation left a bitter taste. I jumped at any chance I could to correct those who used it improperly. “Actually…” I would start, nasally, while pushing my glasses back up onto my nose. I’d dive into a correction that explained the real meaning of the quote. And so, I planned to continue my crusade, writing the words in big letters at the top of the page before planning or writing anything else.
Despite my fierce allegiance to the phrase, I couldn’t remember who originally coined it. I’m a stickler for proper attribution and I knew I wouldn’t be able to continue until there was a byline attached to the quote. There was a problem. I found plenty of “Famous Quotes You’ve Been Misusing” articles claiming the fact I’d long espoused, yet I found nothing to the identification of its mysterious author. It turns out that there’s a reason I couldn’t recall who had first said it: I never learned it. You may remember the inclusion of this phrase in a volley of articles from a few years ago.
Apparently, this is a great lesson in circular reporting because the earliest source of my version is a Jewish congregation leader – in 1996. In Arizona. So much for ancient wisdom. Meanwhile, the shorter phrase I hated so much appears as early as 1670. So much for modern. I spent another hour trying to disprove my findings to no avail. Finally admitting defeat, I leaned back in my chair, staring at the blinking cursor after the word ‘womb’ and wondering where to go next.
The discerning reader might realize that I opted to open with the quote anyway and wonder why I’ve only talked about military family once. After deliberating on my previous findings (read: moping about the death of my favorite quote), I questioned if the modified version packed less of a punch than its original cousin. Did this somehow mean that my cultivated family had diminished in value in comparison to my biological one? The answer rang in my head: a resounding no. In the same way that the original saying was modified to fit a new purpose, the friends we make in the service are molded into our family and integrated into our lives.
These are neither just coworkers nor roommates. These are the people that, through circumstance and sheer duration of time spent together, band as one to face uncertain futures and violent times. Friends become brothers and sisters. Bosses become role models and leaders. The person who took too long to go after the stoplight turns green, oblivious on their phone while you’re late to morning formation, becomes someone who could wind up saving your life.
Those who have seen war share an experience that is impossible to describe to a civilian population.
This is a good thing. It’s better that the average person not have to understand what it’s like to experience both the personal and bureaucratic sides of war. Unfortunately, veterans’ understanding of conflict can erect a barrier between us and our civilian counterparts. We intimately understand that people get hurt, that people are killed, and that people become callous to people dying and getting hurt. But we also understand the other side of war. That relying on others in a dangerous situation builds the ultimate form of trust and weaves those we share it with into our own families.
That’s the power of the military bond.
I was fortunate enough to have spent nearly four years with the same group of seven guys, from basic combat training to coming home together from Kabul – nearly four years of constant contact and shared culture.
To this day, I maintain nearly daily contact through social media with some of them. We didn’t always get along, they were pranksters and I was a bit too serious, but these are the people who know me.
Imagine the sheer amount of time we spent in each other’s company. We lived together, we ate together, we worked together, and we suffered the wrath of Sergeant Major together. We’ve seen each other at our best, whether it was a personal win or a professional achievement. More importantly, we saw each other at our worst. Privacy is a rare luxury in the military; when I’m having a bad day, thirty people were probably going to know by lunchtime. Intentionally or otherwise, I had no choice but to share many of my most intimate details with my battle buddies.
They were my restructured quote, my immediate family with additions that defy both geography and genealogy. If the members of my company made up my immediate family, the rest of the military service starts branching into our extended family. When I run into a veteran while out in town or in the classroom, there’s an immediate bond that we share that lends itself to easy conversation or trading rounds and stories at the bar. These stories invariably mention their own prankster roommates or strict senior leadership. When I hear that a coworker’s son is enlisting or that another student’s parents were in the military, it doesn’t take long for us to find common ground, either figuratively or even literally through common postings across the world. There’s the sibling rivalry; playful ribbing on different services and different generations. These people are “my people”, part of an elastic family that grows to encompass each new generation of service members and their families.
This train of thought is what kept the newer interpretation of “Blood is thicker than water” at the top of the page. It isn’t about where we come from but what we do with what we’re given. Blood, metaphorical or not, isn’t more viscous than any proverbial water. Those who’ve been inducted into the greater military family know that, when tested under fire, blood is indistinguishable from water. Maybe we can change the quote one more time.