Back when I was a radio news guy I had to go cover a change of command ceremony at the nearby military outpost.
All the airmen, the color guard, the honor guard, all in a top notch military performance standing ramrod straight and all that. It made me feel all patriotic and stuff…
But I’m glad I didn’t join the armed forces.
I’m a fidgety kind of guy and I’m sure I would’ve been run out of boot camp. I have an itch here, an uncomfortable muscle there, and I’m sure someone would have come down hard on me for not being still.
I remember in high school we were in an assembly purely to hear a talk from a Marine recruiter. He told us all about the horrors of what the Viet Cong were doing to the people of South Vietnam and that the US needed to be there to stop the advancement of communism.
After the assembly the recruiter dude walked right up to me.
“We’d like to have young men like you in the Corps,” he said. “You’re tall.”
I was dumbstruck. I didn’t know what to say.
But then…
“I didn’t like what I saw on TV from Vietnam,” I said.
“You’d probably get embassy duty somewhere else around the world,” he said. “We like to put tall guys out on guard duty, makes the people in other countries think we’re giants here in America.”
He handed me his card.
I thanked him and he went on his way.
Needless to say I did not join the United States Marine Corps.
Not long after that the USA was done with the Vietnam War.
But…
Once I got a taste of adult life I reconsidered the “joining the military thang.”
It’s not that I didn’t start to “join up” in my lifetime. I started to join three times.
The first time it was a spring day in what I didn’t know was my last year in college. I wasn’t doing so well in my third year at the university. I moseyed off campus to a Chinese restaurant and picked up a couple of egg rolls and a soda. It was a cloudy, cool Appalachian spring day. I sat on the curb across the street from the restaurant and I thought, “I could be eating egg rolls in Hong Kong if I was in the Navy.” I don’t know where that thought came from but I decided to act on it.
I went back to my apartment and called the local Navy recruiter. The next day I was in his office.
“Have you ever smoked marijuana?” It was the first question he asked me as soon as I sat down.
“Ah…” I said hesitantly.
“No,” he said thumping his finger on the desk. “From now on if anyone asks you that question your IMMEDIATE answer is ‘NO.’
“Okay,” I said.
In no time Mr. Recruiter had set me up to take a series of tests, I believe they were called the ASVAB tests, the "armed services vocational aptitude battery.”
I scored a 96.
“With a score like that we’re going to put you in our nuclear program,” said Mr. Recruiter at our next meeting.
I smiled at Mr. Recruiter. Thoughts ran through my head. Me…a loopy, goofy part-hippie guy in charge of nuclear missiles on a submarine…I couldn’t see it. Besides, what if one of those things accidentally went off?
“Your test shows that you have excellent math skills,” said Mr. Recruiter.
I smiled again on the outside and thought on the inside, “You guys are really filling me with a lot of bunk.” I flunked Algebra the first time around in high school but aced it the next year, but I just couldn’t imagine I had mathematics aptitude. I wanted to be a Navy journalist but they were trying to make me a nuclear technician. So I said good-bye to thoughts of eating authentic Chinese egg rolls in Hong Kong.
The next time I started to join the military was right after I dropped out of college. I was living with my folks and working in radio. My brother came to visit that fall. He started doing a lobbying effort to get me to join the military.
“Join the army,” he said. He had spent a few years in the ranks. “You’ll get in there, they’ll teach you some discipline, give you a place to live, food, clothes, benefits, and you’ll see a lot of places. When you’re through if you save your pay and don’t blow it you’ll have a nice nest egg.”
Brother’s logic was good. But he was talking to a young man with a girlfriend, and just like I told the Marine recruiter in high school, I had seen all the Vietnam footage while I was growing up. Plus I had spent my growing up years listening to my dad yell at me a lot and I wasn’t in the mood to expose myself to years more of that crap.
I thought I’d give it a shot anyway, but I gotta tell you I just didn’t have my heart in it when I went down to the Army recruiter. I wowed ’em with my ASVAB score. They packed me up and shipped me off to the state capitol for a physical. I passed. They were ready for me, only they didn’t have any positions open for Army journalist.
“Oh well, guys,” I said as I sat in the recruiter’s office, “thanks for the trip to Richmond.”
As the years passed I began to see what my brother meant in his sales pitch to me to get into the Army. I often contrasted the supposed orderliness of military life against the perceived chaos of everyday civilian life.
I had gotten too old for the Army so I marched down to the Navy recruiter and decided that I would just do it, just join. But I had waited too long. I got as far as the physical. They didn’t like a couple of medical conditions that had developed since I was in my early 20’s. They said I would have to get a medical waiver.
The recruiter went on to say that in boot camp the young guys would probably have a time making fun of such an “old man” in their midst. I did get a kick out of the way they treated me during the physical. I guess it was my age or the way I carried myself, they thought I was an officer candidate I suppose and they kept calling me “sir.”
Over the years I’ve come to realize that the military is not for everyone. It probably wasn’t for me. One thing that struck me about the peacetime military is that of the people I’ve met, like those I met in Arizona in the Army near Fort Huachuca, they seem to spend a lot of time gigging each other, hassling each other…captains hassling lieutenants, lieutenants coming down on sergeants and so on…like an aggravated office politics kind of situation. I don’t do too well with office politics.
On the other hand, if I’d just joined in the 70’s just to eat egg rolls in Hong Kong I’d have been finished by now with a retirement check in the mail.
Oh well.
I always encourage folks in their late teens and early 20’s who have no idea where they’re going in life to try the military.
At least give it a shot, eh?
All the airmen, the color guard, the honor guard, all in a top notch military performance standing ramrod straight and all that. It made me feel all patriotic and stuff…
But I’m glad I didn’t join the armed forces.
I’m a fidgety kind of guy and I’m sure I would’ve been run out of boot camp. I have an itch here, an uncomfortable muscle there, and I’m sure someone would have come down hard on me for not being still.
I remember in high school we were in an assembly purely to hear a talk from a Marine recruiter. He told us all about the horrors of what the Viet Cong were doing to the people of South Vietnam and that the US needed to be there to stop the advancement of communism.
After the assembly the recruiter dude walked right up to me.
“We’d like to have young men like you in the Corps,” he said. “You’re tall.”
I was dumbstruck. I didn’t know what to say.
But then…
“I didn’t like what I saw on TV from Vietnam,” I said.
“You’d probably get embassy duty somewhere else around the world,” he said. “We like to put tall guys out on guard duty, makes the people in other countries think we’re giants here in America.”
He handed me his card.
I thanked him and he went on his way.
Needless to say I did not join the United States Marine Corps.
Not long after that the USA was done with the Vietnam War.
But…
Once I got a taste of adult life I reconsidered the “joining the military thang.”
It’s not that I didn’t start to “join up” in my lifetime. I started to join three times.
The first time it was a spring day in what I didn’t know was my last year in college. I wasn’t doing so well in my third year at the university. I moseyed off campus to a Chinese restaurant and picked up a couple of egg rolls and a soda. It was a cloudy, cool Appalachian spring day. I sat on the curb across the street from the restaurant and I thought, “I could be eating egg rolls in Hong Kong if I was in the Navy.” I don’t know where that thought came from but I decided to act on it.
I went back to my apartment and called the local Navy recruiter. The next day I was in his office.
“Have you ever smoked marijuana?” It was the first question he asked me as soon as I sat down.
“Ah…” I said hesitantly.
“No,” he said thumping his finger on the desk. “From now on if anyone asks you that question your IMMEDIATE answer is ‘NO.’
“Okay,” I said.
In no time Mr. Recruiter had set me up to take a series of tests, I believe they were called the ASVAB tests, the "armed services vocational aptitude battery.”
I scored a 96.
“With a score like that we’re going to put you in our nuclear program,” said Mr. Recruiter at our next meeting.
I smiled at Mr. Recruiter. Thoughts ran through my head. Me…a loopy, goofy part-hippie guy in charge of nuclear missiles on a submarine…I couldn’t see it. Besides, what if one of those things accidentally went off?
“Your test shows that you have excellent math skills,” said Mr. Recruiter.
I smiled again on the outside and thought on the inside, “You guys are really filling me with a lot of bunk.” I flunked Algebra the first time around in high school but aced it the next year, but I just couldn’t imagine I had mathematics aptitude. I wanted to be a Navy journalist but they were trying to make me a nuclear technician. So I said good-bye to thoughts of eating authentic Chinese egg rolls in Hong Kong.
The next time I started to join the military was right after I dropped out of college. I was living with my folks and working in radio. My brother came to visit that fall. He started doing a lobbying effort to get me to join the military.
“Join the army,” he said. He had spent a few years in the ranks. “You’ll get in there, they’ll teach you some discipline, give you a place to live, food, clothes, benefits, and you’ll see a lot of places. When you’re through if you save your pay and don’t blow it you’ll have a nice nest egg.”
Brother’s logic was good. But he was talking to a young man with a girlfriend, and just like I told the Marine recruiter in high school, I had seen all the Vietnam footage while I was growing up. Plus I had spent my growing up years listening to my dad yell at me a lot and I wasn’t in the mood to expose myself to years more of that crap.
I thought I’d give it a shot anyway, but I gotta tell you I just didn’t have my heart in it when I went down to the Army recruiter. I wowed ’em with my ASVAB score. They packed me up and shipped me off to the state capitol for a physical. I passed. They were ready for me, only they didn’t have any positions open for Army journalist.
“Oh well, guys,” I said as I sat in the recruiter’s office, “thanks for the trip to Richmond.”
As the years passed I began to see what my brother meant in his sales pitch to me to get into the Army. I often contrasted the supposed orderliness of military life against the perceived chaos of everyday civilian life.
I had gotten too old for the Army so I marched down to the Navy recruiter and decided that I would just do it, just join. But I had waited too long. I got as far as the physical. They didn’t like a couple of medical conditions that had developed since I was in my early 20’s. They said I would have to get a medical waiver.
The recruiter went on to say that in boot camp the young guys would probably have a time making fun of such an “old man” in their midst. I did get a kick out of the way they treated me during the physical. I guess it was my age or the way I carried myself, they thought I was an officer candidate I suppose and they kept calling me “sir.”
Over the years I’ve come to realize that the military is not for everyone. It probably wasn’t for me. One thing that struck me about the peacetime military is that of the people I’ve met, like those I met in Arizona in the Army near Fort Huachuca, they seem to spend a lot of time gigging each other, hassling each other…captains hassling lieutenants, lieutenants coming down on sergeants and so on…like an aggravated office politics kind of situation. I don’t do too well with office politics.
On the other hand, if I’d just joined in the 70’s just to eat egg rolls in Hong Kong I’d have been finished by now with a retirement check in the mail.
Oh well.
I always encourage folks in their late teens and early 20’s who have no idea where they’re going in life to try the military.
At least give it a shot, eh?
-30-
Here's a good military recruitment video: link
ReplyDeleteIn high school I was given the ASVAB test. I didn't care what it was for, I just liked taking tests-- especially if it meant getting out of class for a bit. I don't know what my score was, but they liked it. I started getting recruitment calls almost every day. I kept telling them I didn't want to join. That I didn't like or respect the military. They kept saying with a score as high as mine I could choose my assignment. I said "no thanks". They wouldn't stop! I finally told one recruiter that if I ever did end up in the military, the first thing I would do would be to shoot the drill instructor doing all the yelling, since he was more my enemy than any foreigner I'd never personally met. The calls stopped immediately. I suspect that might have been the first time I got on a list.
Dude! Excellent video....very thought provoking. Thanks for dropping by, Kent!
ReplyDelete