Trauma, Tragedy & Triumph | Study

Joseph “Blake” DeLoach, who is 30 years old, was born is a small rural town in South Carolina, not far from the U.S. Marine training base at Parris Island. From the time he was a young boy, Blake remembers having a deep love for the military. As a child, he dressed up in Army fatigues and playacted missions in his yard. “Even as a child I knew joining the military was what I was going to do,” Blake recounts, “and as soon as I came of age I tried to enlist in the Marines.”