November 11, 2013

Today is a holiday that we know as Veteran's day.

For many, it is just another day off.

For some, it brings memories of good times, for others, bad - but increasingly it brings nothing at all, because veterans are slowly becoming few in number, and the respect and honor accorded them appears to be diminishing as they become more rare - and this is a shame.

Once upon a time (or, if you were a sailor, this is no shit!) being a veteran was a pretty normal thing to be.  I am old enough to remember the draft - and to remember when going elsewhere to avoid it was not so cool.  As a matter of fact, many who served chose enlistment as an honorable way to avoid the draft, and to avoid duty that was certain, even in peacetime, to become not-fun.

I was a draft dodger - I served four years in the Air Force rather than spend 18 months face down in the mud in the Army.  It was my choice to do so, and I was, and am, glad I made that choice instead of accepting whatever the draft board had in store for me.  What I did was interesting, we were told it was important (and hindsight shows that to have been true) and I enjoyed much of those four years, particularly those I spent in Germany.

I was in from July 1961 through July 1965.  Viet Nam had not yet got ugly, Korea had been over for almost ten years, and when I went in, I wanted to go overseas.  My father, who was not a veteran had spent critical time in 1949 in Berlin, Germany, keeping the aircraft that kept the city from starving flying and able to communicate. The time later became known as the Berlin Airlift, and is historically interesting and important.  Anne Tusa has written a very god book about the Airlift - if you are interested, I encourage you to get it and to read it.

My duties were not as dangerous as those of my father - I was not in a city surrounded by ideological enemies - it was in a relatively small city in Germany.  Overall, I enjoyed being there - the natives were friendly, the food and beer was good - what could go wrong?

What we did was a deep dark secret, but the overview was easy to figure out - we all worked at a place outside town - a fenced place with a windowless building and armed guards, where every 8 hours a bunch of guys (before the time that women were part of this career field) with headsets over their shoulders walked in and out of the guarded gate. It was possible to assume with some reasonable certainty of correctness that the folks walking in and out might have been using those headsets to listen to something.  Outside the fence there was an antenna field the size of a small town - mostly rhombic antennas (the largest kind known to man) of a size to receive certain frequencies well, all pointed in roughly the same direction.  It was reasonable to assume that we were not listening to BBC....

Our position as enlisted men was also a bit on the odd side - other services would have used officers to do what we did - and we did it very well, too.  We knew that if things got ugly we would be the last to be evacuated - we supplied information that would be needed until we were overrun, but we accepted that as part of the job - or more likely just figured as so many people so young did that we were immortal, ten feet tall and covered with hair - and that we were untouchable.  We never got to test that, and I am not at all sorry that we never got to test it.

I loved the work, even when it was boring.  Old Cold Warriors were pretty busy sometimes - but we all know that what we did made a difference.

Other veterans were in harms way - many of my colleagues who stayed in the service after the first 4 years were up ended up in Viet Nam after it got ugly.  Some died doing their job in airplanes, some died on the ground by accident of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I'm sure nobody thought about it all that much - we did what we came to do, that others might avoid being in a wrong place at a time when they would die.

Being a veteran brings mixed feelings to me - I got to be one after a large personal failure - and my enlistment was in some ways a penance for things I left undone.  But I am proud of having served, and have encouraged many kids who have asked to just take the time out of high school and go ahead and enlist - at the end of the term you will know at least 200 things you never in your life want to do again, you will have learned about people in other places, particularly if you go overseas, and you will emerge understanding the difference between commitment and involvement.  you may also find an environment to your liking, and a good career.

In the final analysis, though, I am proud to have served, I honor those who served before me, with me, and after me, and I am a better person for having served. I met people who made an impact on my life, both serving and outside the service in the locations in which I served.  I learned languages, and learned about people in foreign lands by living with them, not just by reading about them.  The four years?  I had nothing better to do at the time, and those years will always rank among the years in which I learned the most - about myself, about other people, about friends (and some non-friends) and about  people who talked funny.

Those who serve are owed our respect - they wrote a check on their lives that could have been cashed at any time, in order that many others would not have to write such a check.

/sermon ends

thanks for listening (reading?)