Why I choose to serve

Here is a blog from my Facebook posts. I orignally started it because I thought it would be simple. Eight pages into the next entry with no end in sight, I realized this to not be the case. So the remainder is sitting in a word processor document file somewhere until the whole story is completed from stern to keel and well polished. I have no idea when that will be.

Wow, all I can say is that I’m still shocked by what happened at Ft. Hood today. I haven’t turned off CNN for like six hours. As someone who has both served in the U.S. Army and as someone whose fought and still fighting a life long battle with mental illness, it really hits home and is bothersome to me on several levels and ways. Ironically enough it was my intention to type out a blog about my own experiences in the military today even before I learned of this. It had been on my mind for several reasons. Last night I had watched the HBO Documentary called “Section 60” which referred to the burial plot at Arlington National Commentary where fallen members of the Armed Forces of Iraq and Afghanistan are laid to rest. In a very non-biased way it covers the stories of these fallen heroes and those of their loved ones. It should be seen by every American Citizen. Along with that, someone earlier today had posted a very motivating music video about soldiers kicking butt and taking names. It really illustrates the mindset and mentality the military attempts to get you into especially in Infantry Boot Camp, and really the mentality you have to take on to truly be an effective soldier and take on what you are asked to take on by the Army. And in the process of all this I looked at the calendar and realized Veteran’s Day is next week. (11 November) I know this because it is also my baptism date which is a very big deal in the Lutheran Church of which I was raised in.

I think I’ve said all I have to day about the Tragedy at Ft. Hood, just check the postings I’ve left on my wall if you really want to know. Therefore I am still going to go on with writing the blog I had originally intended to write. But first a few things I want to say upfront. When I speak on things as emotional and as important to me such as military service and veteran’s issues I make every attempt to explain and state things in such a way that they cannot be misunderstood as well as explain why I’m saying what I’m saying. This requires me to qualify my remarks quite a bit. So you may find some of the punctuation and format in this blogg unusual. There is a reason, when I feel the need to qualify my remarks, I intend to do so in such a way that you can quickly reference back to my original thought and continue along with the thought flow. Otherwise this thing will make sense only to me, and come off as mindless ramblings by everyone else.

First qualification of remarks is more of a disclosure. My military experiences consists of six years in the Ohio Army National Guard as an enlisted man. One of those years was spent on Active Duty assisting with homeland security operations at Ft. Knox as part of Operation Noble Eagle I. I in no way intend to come across as a certified bad ass who seen tons of combat. My experiences pail in comparison to those who have seen combat overseas. I was stationed stateside and since this first paragraph is really geared towards those who wear or have worn the uniform as they are the ones most likely to be offended if I try and make myself out to be more than I actually am, I’m about to lay down some military lingo and slang. I was part of a CONUS deployment and I in no way intend to come off as someone whose been in the shit. Now for the longest time I felt a great deal of guilt and shame for not volunteering for combat and only in the last year or so changed my tune. So please also understand I’ve had enough active duty time to be considered a full veteran legally entitled to VA benefits and I am a member of the American Legion. I don’t apologize anymore for not volunteering overseas deployment and I am proud of having served. My unit was among the first to answer the “Call to Arms” following the 9-11 Attack, and we were part of the largest mobilization of National Guard combat units since the Korean War.****As a side note this was a fact we were informed of within the first five minutes of reporting and reiterated by senior officers repeatedly. It did NOT help anyone’s anxiety levels and worse still completely freaked out our families. Especially since we were NOT informed of our intended destination or mission for another 14 days !!!**** Still I look back on the fact that I was part of this with great pride. While I didn’t get to go overseas and dodge bullets, nor did I sit idly on the side lines during that scary time in our Nation’s History. Soldiers rarely if ever get to chose their mission, they only get to chose to answer the call to serve.

Enough on that.

First topic Why I joined. Simple yet complex.
As I child ever since I can remember, I wanted to join the military. My first conscious memory of this actually was watching the movie Top Gun. From that point on I knew at some point I wanted to join the military, I wanted to wear that uniform. Not unlike most boys growing up in a small town during the Ronald Regan administration, I was always playing soldier, always running around with toy guns. I’d drive my father to tears asking him about his own experiences as a M-60 tanker with the US Army and would listen with baited breath when my Grandpa Arnos would talk about his experiences as a combat engineer with the U.S. Army in the south pacific during WWII. Grandpa would talk about it but never much. While he never came right out and said it, Grandpa obviously had seen and lived through some rough things over there. In hindsight I feel he probably just did not want to relive those memories. Whatever happened over there I know for a fact he took more than his fair share of shrapnel wounds because even into his mid 70’s he was still digging metal fragments out of his skin as it came to the surface from the wounds for which he was awarded a Purple Heart and one maybe two oak leaf clusters.

As I learned to read, I became almost obsessed with military history. I’d read about all wars but for some reason was most interested with Vietnam War History and still am to this day. I mean I bet there are only a handful books written by Vietnam Veterans on their personal accounts that I have not read. Keep in mind about this time with patriotism at an all time high, Vietnam veterans were just starting to get the acceptance and recognition they deserved, also enough time had elapsed between our withdraw from that war that the American public was comfortable really digging in and learning more about what happened over there and hearing their stories. The Vietnam Memorial was built in or around that period of time (late 80’s-late 90’s) and in this new climate there were an abundance of inexpensive paperback books written by these veterans detailing their own experiences over there. I read them as quickly as I could find them and still prefer those to plain history text books.

Now I explained that so you’ll understand how I ended up joining the Army National Guard instead of the U.S. Army or gone into a ROTC program at college. I joined the Army over other branches because of wanting to follow in Grandpa Arnos’s and my father’s footsteps. I wanted to follow the Arnos tradition of service in the U.S. Army in a combat MOS.

I really DID want to go active duty special forces as an Army Ranger straight out of high school. The reason I did not ? Grandpa and Dad would have killed me !! Both said and said repeatedly and very loudly the closer I got to graduation from high school, “After college you can do whatever you want, but you WILL go to college before you do anything else!!!”. We’ll now examine where they were coming from and their individual perspectives on why they didn’t want to see me enlist. First Grandpa who had seen combat didn’t like the prospect of his grandson going into the military because he fully understood that combat isn’t anywhere as close to being the fun and games young men often think. He’d seen buddies killed and horribly wounded, he understood the human costs and he didn’t want to see me pay that price. Dad absolutely felt the same way, for the same reasoning but his overriding reason was also very different. He’d spent his time in the military over in Germany as part of the NATO forces and didn’t see combat himself, so he didn‘t have as much perspective on combat. He was in the Army during the Vietnam conflict and even people who’ve spent their entire career in the Army lament about how bad things were during that time. I’ll refer you specifically to the autobiographies of General Colin Powell and Norman Swartzcoff as well as anything written by the late Colonel Hackworth. Drug use was rampant, discipline was very lax, living conditions on most posts criminally deplorable and the quality of the personal the Army was recruiting weren‘t exactly considered the cream of the crop. (This is in no way meant as disrespect to any veterans who served during that time). Since no one, who was serious about improving their life and making something of themselves would join the, U.S. Army, the Army was recruiting and drafting people who could not read, had criminal backgrounds and people who simply did not want to be there and acted out as a result of not wanting to be there. It was a common practice for Judges at that time to give juvenile offenders the choice of joining the Army or going to jail. My father tells a few stories that illustrates just how bad it was. In Germany the drug of choice wasn’t marijuana but actually hashish. One day shortly after Dad had made buck sergeant and not too long after arriving in Germany he was doing a barracks inspection. When he kicked in the door of one room he found a group of soldiers laying around whacked out on hashish which is smoked. While he actually knew nothing about illegal drugs or drug culture [Our hometown of Defiance Ohio is not known for its diversity or openness to liberal political movements and in 1967 the hippie drug culture was only starting to catch on. This movement really wouldn’t gain traction until the Tet Offensive of 68 or 69. Also since I‘ve ventured way off the thought path Mom and Dad both have very interesting stories about going to college during this time] still Dad knew something wasn’t right but he sure couldn’t put his finger on it. The soldiers were laughing strangely and moving erratically. He asked if they were okay legitimately worried that they were sick and as he said this he noticed a very strange order. They laughingly told him they were smoking tea leaves from the chow hall and handed him the pipe. He examined it and the smell was so repugnant Dad determined he didn’t want to take a draw on that stuff. So he grabbed a pack of cigarettes out of his uniform threw them on the middle of the table and said “You guys don’t have money for cigs come see me I’ll get you enough to get you through till next pay. You’re gonna kill yourself smoking those dam tea leaves !!” and got the hell out of that room while the soldiers tried to not have a stroke holding in their laughter. One of the guys in that room latter on got so stoned and incapacitated that he drowned to death in his own vomit while passed out on a bed. Twice there were race riots on post one of which Dad found himself very unwittingly and very involuntarily part of the NCO detail tasked with putting it down. My memory is fuzzy as to how he ended up on the second floor of a headquarters building surrounded by a large number of very disgruntled soldiers determined to get Dad and the five of his fellow NCO’s dragged out and pummeled or worse since they represented authority and honestly authority had very much disenfranchised African Americans and they were getting tired of it by then. Dad understood, and frankly he didn’t want to represent authority anymore than they wanted a white guy from Asshole Ohio in a position of authority. Nor did he want to be a martyr for the Civil Rights movement . He just wanted to finish his enlistment and go back to college. He was certain he was a dead man when the first two rioters charged the stairs. Luckily for Dad and his friends these two were more full of liquid courage than actual courage so Dad and crew easily and quickly whipped them good and whipped them hard and sent them ass or tea kettle back down the stairs shouting “Next soldier who comes up these stairs black or WHITE is gonna get it much worse than those two just did !!! ”. It was enough of a believable bluff for the rest of the mob to decide Dad and crew were not worth the hassle and disperse. Needless to say, my father did not view military service as a good career move especially for someone like his son who had several small academic scholarship offers and a letter of acceptance from two private colleges. Interestingly enough latter on my father would meet many of the men I served with and learn that the military had improved dramatically for the better since that time. By the 90’s the Army had improved the quality of life for its soldiers and also in large part due to the very lucrative education benefits, combined with a recruitment motto of “Be all you can be” the Army had become a place to go if you truly wanted to get ahead in life, where you went if you were serious about going to college but were unable to afford it. Dad like many veterans of his era was highly impressed with the intelligence and professionalism of the young soldiers he met while visiting me at boot camp and at various family functions my guard unit held.
Sure I knew of a few soldiers who would occasionally partake of cocaine or marijuana but even they did so rarely and kept it pretty quite when they did. After all we were subject to random drug tests and the consequences for being caught were and are very serious. You’ll almost certainly be doing some time in the brig before they throw you out on your ass with a dishonorable discharge. A dishonorable discharge is essentially viewed as the equivalent of a felony by most employers. But I’m getting off track again.

Topic Number Two: Why I joined the Ohio Army National Guard and did so with the full support of both my Father and Grandfather.

I learned of the National Guard while attending a college/job fair spring of my junior year of high school. It turned out to be a very ideal opportunity given my situation. Because of course I very much wanted to join the military and have the honor of serving my country. But by then it was clear beyond a doubt to me that so long as Grandpa and Dad had anything to say about it and they would insist on having something to say about it Simply enlisting straight out of high school was going to be way more trouble than it was worth. I might have almost been able to get past one of them but not both of them and either way the inevitable beating I would take in the process might leave me uglier than when I started and I have enough problems getting a date as it is !!!! So the Guard basically ended up being a compromise that they were willing to accept for several reasons.
Chief and foremost among those reasons was college money. As I mentioned earlier I’d been accepted to both Ohio Northern University as well as Wittenberg University and while I’d been offered some scholarship money for academic achievement and because some how I’d fooled them quite badly into believing I was a decent wrestler and would consider joining the team if I didn’t have to work a part time job to make ends meet. Even what they had to offer would not come remotely close to covering the yearly costs of tuition at either of those schools. In 1998 yearly costs of tuition at Wittenberg was the most expensive in Ohio at $32,000 a year. Ohio Northern while not the most expensive, certainly on the top 5 at an annual costs of $22,000. At the time and I believe still is, the Ohio National Guard paying 100% of your tuition so long as you go to a state college or in the case of a private college like Ohio Northern where I first started at, they would pay the equivalent of what it would cost to go to a state college which was $10,000 a year at the time. Enough that I only had to borrow $2000 a year to make up the difference. That alone was enough to change Dad’s tune in regards to military service and honestly convinced Grandpa Arnos. I don’t know how enthusiastic Grandpa actually felt about me joining up, but he fully understood Mom and Dad could not afford to help me scrape up the estimated $50,000 it was going to cost me to go to college.
I would latter find out the other thing weighing heavily on my parents’ minds was that I’d catch a case of dumb-ass, drop out of college and join up on a whim the first moment things became stressful at college. Granted there were no guarantees that that still would not happen but my parents rationed that the paperwork required to transfer your guard enlistment to an active duty enlistment would not be easy or quick to file and they’d have time to talk some sense into me before the ink dried.
So to sum everything up, I absolutely joined out of Patriotism. Patriotism is the reason I wanted to join the military in the first place. Choosing the National Guard over other options was a decision based largely on the education benefits it offered me. These allowed me to go to college at the same time I was serving. In the end I could not have made a better decision given what I learned about myself latter on. But my fingers are becoming starting to go out of joint typing this so that story is going to have to wait for tomorrow or Sunday at the latest.