Military Service

My kids are too old to be asking me things like "What did you do in the war?" and I was out of the Air Force before any were born, so our discussions of military service have been perhaps less intense than they ought to have been. In addition, I was in the Air Force Security Service, an intelligence organization, and a very tight lid was kept on what was done for many years. Recently it has been (mostly) declassified, and with a reunion several weeks back of Security Service members, I've had cause to reexamine my attitudes about service as well as to look harder at what was done when I was there.

When I was growing up, the draft was still in force. I'm not prepared at this juncture to address the concept of a draft, or of compulsory national service of one sort or another - that'll be topic for a rant one day when I feel like getting beat up.

Two of my kids thought about going into the service - and I encouraged them to do so. Neither did - apparently they thought I was a bit cavalier in my day giving up four years of my life. At the time, it sounded to me like a better deal than spending 18 months face down in the mud, or three years traveling the ocean by rail. Hindsight tells me that my logic at that time was probably flawed, but that the time was (mostly) well spent.

Even without the pressure of the draft, I would do it again, and would hope to make better use of some of the time than I did. I was young then, and have allowed myself to be told that, because I was under 30 the appropriate term for what I was was youngandstupid.

I went into the service in July of 1961 - at the time, Viet Nam wasn't really interesting and the rest of the world was except for cold war stuff reasonably safe and sane. I had wanted to go to Germany ever since my father returned from Berlin at the end of the Berlin Airlift. When I went into the Air Force, it was in my mind that I would go to Aircraft Control & Warning school, et some electronic training, and then go overseas, hopefully to Berlin, at least to Germany. I was pretty naive, I guess, and managed not to hear the recruiter say "We can just about guarantee that for you, but the needs of the Air Force will trump your wishes."

Basic Training in San Antonio in July is pretty awful, particularly for a guy that considered a chess game to be an active sport. Phys Ed didn't kill me, but there were days I wished it would. The heat was appalling, but we slept at night because we were just too damned tired not to. In later years I came to an understanding of just what it was that Basic Training was meant to do, and developed a grudging admiration for how well it worked in a short period of time - but at the time, I didn't like anything about it.

At the midpoint of Basic, some of us were called to the side, congratualted on great test scores, and offered language screening, which would be in air conditioning. We all wanted that, so off we went, and at the end of three days most of us had gone back to the aquadron, but some remained who, according to the Air Force had demonstrated the ability to learn and use a new language. For those that remained, there was Chinese screening. At the end of three days I was among the ones still there, and they started filling classes to go to Yale and learn Mandarin.

They finished those classes before they reached the R-names in the alphabet, the next need was Russian, so in October I found myself on an airplane headed for Syracuse University to learn Russian. The fact that I had failed seriously the previous year to learn German at Penn State convinced me that they were confused, but off I went anyhow, our aircraft landing in a snowstorm.

Not much to say about the school itself save that it was intense - 7 or 8 in a class, one or two native-born instructors - and we had to learn because for some of them English was a foreign language. It was a fair amount of work - and I ought to have applied myself better, but I was only 19 when I got there, and suddenly my parents couldn't see me any more.... More to the point, it was New York, and we could drink!

I got through the course in July of 1962, and headed for San Angelo, Texas for a more ineresting course, got stuck there (another rant) and got to Germany in April of 1963, working as a Voice Intercept Processing Specialist.

I loved the work, loved Germany, and did what I wanted except on duty. Our job was that of listening to radios, and copying what we heard for analysts to wander through and pick out any intelligence that was there to be found. At the time, what we did was a secret, and folks weren't even supposed to know what languages we had learned - ordering a beer in a saloon in something besides German or English could get your butt chewed half off! Even though we worked in a building with no windows right next to a field of antennas the size of a town larger than the one I grew up in, changed shifts every 8 hours, and walked in and out with earphones on our shoulders, what we did was a deep dark secret.

Security Service has been called a tightly knit group of loosely wrapped people, and it was not the real Air Force in many ways. But it was service to the nation, and at the time we learned many things that, without the aid of the loonies in the bunch we might've not known. We made a difference.

I see those four years as part payment for being able to live in this great nation. We had something to do and we did it, and if I may say we did it damned well. We were part of something greater than each one of us, and took pride in what we did.

I think that those years were some of the most important in my life in terms of learning about life, about history, about folks in a foreign nation, about how language impacted thought processes and many more things I cannot recall offhand.

I met many German families - many who had served in the second world war, and learned something about forgetting. I cannot begin to enumerate the many small bits of knowledge I acquired from Germans who talked to me, took me into their homes, helped me with the language, and generally treated me like family.

The Service was a really important part of my life. I am opposed to conscription, but believe that everyone ought to give some time to servinv the nation in one way or another. There was really nothing that i had to do that was more important at that time - and I grew up a lot more than I might have had I not gone into the Air Force.

I would favor service of some sort for everyone - not necessarily military. It really ticks me off to see youngsters laughing at those who make that sacrifice, labeling them as stupid or worse. The Air Force was the first experience I had to tech me what commitment was really all about - going in was the first hard decision I really had to make, and after having made that one, there were many to follow - but I knew I was committed to those four years, that there was no get-out-of-jail-free card to be had, and that I was in control of how bad it would get, or how good it could be.

These days, when I talk to young people, particularly those who are wondering what to do with their lives, I enocourage volunteering for some time in the service. For some, it can be a good career opportunity, for others not - but every peoson who signs up for a set emnlistment will emerge from that period with certain knowledge of at least 200 things that they wise never again to have to do - and this is important knowledge.

What I did was interesting, occasionally exciting, sometime sboring, but something that made a difference. The folks volunteering today will make a difference, and will find their own lives enriched for the experience if that is their expectation. On the other hand, if they figure it'll be stupid and boring, that's what they'll find.

We now have a professional military, rather smaller than before, but with members understanding the meaning oif commitment, and not having been dragged into it.

We owe them thanks and our respect, for they are about the things that have to be done, and have put themselves in harm's way for the rest of us.

Of those with whom I served, at least one is a physician today, several are in international business using their linguistic skills, many more are just folks like me. Most have exceeded expectations of their lives that they might have had before entering the service.

Please do not look down on the military, for it represents the best of us, and will make the sacrifices to which we give only lip service. I am a veteran, and proud of it. If your kids are at loose ends, help them to choose a service and spend some time there. It might turn into a career, it might turn into a couple of years in ugly places - but those kids'll emerge with a sureness of purpose and a knowledge of the world that will exceed your own - and they'll be ready to take life by the tail and swing it around their heads.