Veterans' Day
As we were riding in the car today, and as someone on NPR was saying something about remembering to thank our veterans for their service, Karen gently put her hand on my thigh and quietly said "thank you!"
It's weird. I certainly don't think of myself as a veteran. And when I do think of the time I was in the Air Force during the Viet Nam war, I know Karen's sacrifice was at least as great as mine.
I always feel awkward about it, and I don't know why. I guess, for one thing, I can't truly say I am a Viet Nam vet, because I was never sent to Viet Nam. Thank God! I went straight from basic training to duty at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona (you may not realize it, but you know this place ... it's that other-worldly-looking desert base where they store all the old airplanes ... it's shown in movies all the time). Karen, God love her, was in tow; we spent the next four years (less a couple of months for good behavior) right there.
Too bad "they" never indicated that that would be the case, though; in the service, one doesn't (or didn't, at any rate, who knows what it's like these days) know what the next day will bring: new assignments, new duties, new humiliations. Rumors ran wild, and I often figured I was due to "rotate" to S.E. Asia, or later, to the Middle East. But, it was not to be, and I was okay with being snug there in Tucson, working off my obligation under the roar of the F-4's and the scorching heat of the sun. Because a) it was a dry heat, and b) nobody was shooting at me. Yay!
Because I had already completed my architectural education, I was directly assigned to a task which made good use of my college education ... lettering charts and graphs. Later, though, I was able to finagle a re-assignment to work as an apprentice architect for one of the civil-service architects on the base. This was good experience for me, fresh out of school, and counted as part of my required three years of practical experience necessary for professional registration, so no complaints there.
Well, except for this:
From time to time, we would be called out to the base in the middle of the night. There, we would stand alongside a C-130 (the big, ugly propellor-driven cargo planes still in wide use), our packed duffle bags and survey instruments on the pavement beside us, ready to climb on board and ship out to God-knows-where if ordered. After an hour or so of hurrying up to wait, we would be sent home again. This must have happened twenty or thirty times during my hitch, and just to keep things interesting for everybody, occasionally one of the squadrons of airmen like myself would, in fact, get on board their plane and be whisked off to some exotic vacation spot like Lebanon, Israel, Laos, or Iran (this was the former, strong-ally, westernized Iran from that sci-fi time before Islam was a dirty word).
But never me. Yay!
So, eventually we left Tucson. I had been offered the same job I had been doing, but as a civilian, and one can only imagine the vigor with which I declined. We enjoyed Arizona and came to love the Sonora desert in which it is situated. I learned to sweat without worrying about it. And we came away with a beautiful new daughter, Morgan, so it wasn't a total loss.
Military service is not an experience I would recommend to anyone, much less a friend, even service as benign as my own. Frankly, my service in the Air Force was only a sneaky way of avoiding the draft. But I think our country would be a better place if everyone were required to do a year or two of national service. I learned a LOT about my country and my fellow citizens during that four years.
I wouldn't trade that for anything.
I wouldn't do it again on a bet.
posted by Mique @ 8:36 PM
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