I Did Not Serve

I did not serve. I didn’t join any military service or any religious order nor go to the peace corp. I grew up, put myself through college and then went to work. There were flirtations with possible officer’s programs. I was “close” for getting into the Air Force Academy (free education), but the psychological test was hard. It asked me whether I would rather go to a dance, watch airplanes land and take off or stay at home and read. There are five thousand things I would rather do than the three, but I had to choose one of the above. I may also have missed out because I was a little color blind.

Somewhere after my nineteenth birthday, I realized I had no desire to be a pilot. That was also when we found out that a hot war in “Indo China” was brewing. I was in the Army ROTC at the time and was fast realizing that the Army and all its chicken shit regulations, procedures and protocols were beyond my endurance. I’m sure if a gun were being held to my head I could have made it through to some sort of end, but it saw, closely, that it was not a life I wanted to put up with. A little later I was convinced that the Marines PLC would be the right thing for me. The marines were serious. They were about getting things done, like invading a sovereign state that had not attacked us except on what they considered their land (Halls of Montezuma) and rounding up a bunch of Barbary pirates and getting their own tails whupped (Shores of Tripoli). I’ve always been burdened by knowing our country’s history and the often sorry excuses we had for going to war. These things and a few others, notwithstanding, helped me let the summer experience of the Platoon Leader’s Corp pass me by. But Vietnam was looming and right before I graduated from college I dashed down and got myself admitted to the Air Force OTS. The week before I was to join up, my daddy called me and told me the draft board would let me take the job I’d been offered at Texas Instruments – it had engineer somewhere in the name. We were going to make a giant computer that the military envisioned itself using. Later, I got a high lottery number and then passed by on one side or the other of the draft net.

Daddy didn’t serve either, except as a farmer and navy base builder. He was too old for WWII anyway – in his thirties. His father before him did not serve, being born during the end of the Civil War and thus too old for any twentieth century war to end all wars. His father, however, was prime to be conscripted into the “saw bones” brigade – doctors who followed the troops and relieved the survivors of bloody remnants. But he hid out. He spent the early 1860s somewhere in the countryside of South Alabama or Mississippi and occasionally made a baby with his wife, who told no one where he was. Later, in Texas, he gave service to those he chose and contracted typhoid and died, having a post mortem declaration that he had “served” his community.

Perhaps none of my direct ancestors fought in wars, in the last millennium. I have no record of any doing so on my mother’s side either. There was a cousin who went native, like in “The Heart of Darkness”, and some record of a great uncle of my grandmother being some sort of officer in the Confederacy.

I probably would fight a war that put my family in harm’s way. I am convinced that none of the wars fought since I was aware (say 1948) were worth what they cost. I believe that the people who died there died in vain. The wars were not in my best interest or in the interest of the United States of America. They were pitiful attempts to prove some sort of point like – “We have to make a stand”, “If we don’t attack, they will think we have no stomach for war”, “If Saigon falls, so will Manila, Bangkok, etc.”

I know that we, as the richest nation need to defend ourselves. I don’t know the full argument yet – maybe I’ll work it out later. But for now, I am trying to find out how to identify roadside bombs before they blow up “our troops”. I do not believe as some do that those who choose to be warriors should pay the penalty for the leaders who send them to war.