I sit here thinking back on my time in the service of the United States of America. I spent nearly nine years with the Army, and was MOS qualified in both Infantry and Artillery. When I left, I was glad to be leaving as I had lost that intense sense of devotion to the US as practiced in foreign policy, although I remained committed to the ideals espoused in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. I was personally in a time of great philosophical transition and upheaval. When I had first enlisted, I was a devout conservative Christian Republican; when my service ended, all of that was in doubt. I was unable to continue in service under some mercenary-like idea that it was a job with a paycheck and good benefits. I had come to the point where I did not relish the idea of being an instrument of policies in which I no longer had faith.
Still, I do not look back on this period of my life with any shame, either for having held naïve beliefs about the ways in which America operates in the world at large, nor for having lost those beliefs and abandoned a job, nearly halfway to retirement, which no longer suited me. My experiences in the Army greatly altered who I was and led me to start down the path to whom I would become. I saw much of the world, and every travel exposed me to differing perspectives on every aspect of life. Both within the camaraderie of the barracks and among the civilian and military populations of foreign lands, I came to appreciate differing opinions and perspectives. And I realized that many things formerly viewed as black and white were frequently shades of grey. I realized that most disagreements and violence were caused by failure or refusal to understand the other side or were the result of posturing over primitive issues of feral concepts of dominance.
The military service of my country gave me an unprecedented opportunity to grow as a human being and as a citizen. For these reasons, I can never not recommend military service to anyone and believe that many, who have not, should serve. There is nothing like the necessity of laying aside petty personal disputes for a higher professional cause; not necessarily higher morally, but higher in the participation in global events acted out at an immediate point in time and space.
Those serving in uniform represent dramatically most of the differing cultures, ethnicities, levels of education, and various life experiences that can be found in the US. In Germany, I met an Iraqi national who had served in desert Storm with distinction, fighting against those from the country of his birth with those from the country of his choice. At Ft. Bragg, I met a man whose blackness was obvious but who always included Italian when discussing his ethnicity. In the military service of the US, one’s color tends to take rear seat to one’s character. And, yet, there were all of the modern American stereotypes represented in the ranks; Rasta from Jamaica, Ex-, sometimes, just temporarily, ex-thugs from Compton, barefoot redneck hillbillies from the Ozarks, cowboys from Wyoming, bluebloods from old New England families , even a card-carrying communist Jew from Brooklyn. But only rarely did those identities matter in the prosecution of the mission, whatever that may have been. Friendships crossed boundaries rarely even encountered in civilian society, and, I believe, most of us were made better, more tolerant people as a consequence.
So, today, I reflect, and I write this, remembering those fallen and not who have gone before.
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