So, next they go to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to visit SSGT (Retired) Paul Purdue. Purdue, you may remember, was originally from Wisconsin; he joined the unit at “Mobe Station” in Fort McCoy. But he was wounded in the 2004 2nd Battle of Fallujah, which was BOHICA Blue’s first-year Anniversary Special. Purdue was wounded by a suicide bomber and was medically evacuated to Germany, where the doctors had to cut off his leg. It was the same battle in which Captain Steve Wronick was killed, and Major Butter, the Military Working Dog, was knocked unconscious and had a near-death experience.

Since coming back to the United States, Paul Purdue was rehabilitated and now has an artificial leg. He also has a job with the US Department of Homeland Security, the “Citizenship and Immigration Services” department that grants citizenship to legal immigrants to the United States– it is what used to be called “INS” or “Immigration & Naturalization Services”. They changed the name when it got folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Federal civilian service has a lot of military veterans, and especially wounded veterans who still want to serve their country in some capacity but are no longer able to serve in uniform.

As for immigration petitions, the “Form I-130” is real, and that is how you apply for any foreign relative, be it a spouse, parent, or sibling. In the case of the Egyptian Pharaohs, there was a tradition of marrying brother & sister. The Pharaoh and his family were considered living gods, and you can’t have a god marry a regular, mortal person– so that kind of narrows one’s options. Out of curiosity I asked an actual Immigration officer what would be done in a situation like this, and he said that if those kinds of marriages were the custom in their home country, and they were already married, there’s not much we could do. But if they come to the US unmarried, and then try to marry here, it’d be against the law regardless of what they did back in their original country.

Fortunately, I don’t think there are any countries that allow sibling marriage. Ew.

Anyhow, I would normally have posted this yesterday, on Thursday, but it took extra time to get it done– and in truth I didn’t worry about it since I really wanted to post something on Veteran’s Day itself. So here’s to all the veterans, take care of yourselves and watch out for each other. If you’re looking for work, consider civil service at USAJobs. I know USAJobs is kind of a pain in the butt to work within, but the payoffs can be pretty good.