ropeyarn
5/23/2009 10:56:00 AM
stuthalblum@comcast.net wrote:
> As someone who came of age between the end of the draft and the
> beginning of draft registration, I've always had mixed feelings about
> never having served.
>
> But I can't imagine anything I'd LESS rather do than run toward the
> people shooting at me. I'd be terrified.
Vietnam ended and the all-volunteer armed forces began while I was in
high school. I enlisted 6 months after the official end of the "Vietnam
Era", if measured it by when non-contributory GI Bill benefits of that
generation ended (Dec 31, 1976).
Doing things that put you at risk are naturally terrifying, and the
antidote is training and commitment to the people you serve with (if you
happen to be politically aligned with the policies you are have become
an instrument of, that's icing on the cake...but the amount of
reflection on this in the heat of the moment is little...there's too
much other stuff to do).
I was never asked to run towards a bullet (or away from a mortar or
artillery shell) fired in anger. Some of my service was inherently
risky. Spent some time getting launched and recovered from aircraft
carriers, a plenty dangerous vocation even without a combat environment
at your destination. Spent many hours in in unarmed, slow-moving
aircraft sharing international airspace with the armed, high-performance
aircraft of other nations who often were unhappy with our perfectly
legal presence there. Add bad weather or engines that stop working, and
the inclination is indeed to wish you were someplace else. Instead, you
focus on your training, do what your supposed to do, and hope like hell
that no matter scared they might be, that the people next to you will do
the same thing (especially the ones at the controls!). It's so much
better a response than breaking into flop sweats or soiling yourself...
Everybody wants to come home intact and alive. It doesn't always work
out that way. The week I arrived in the Philippines for the first time,
I rode past what was left of the same airframe I was supposed to fly in
that had crashed into Subic Bay a week earlier (and later I would fly
with a survivor from that plane). I arrived in Hawaii shortly after
another one crashed into a Kauai mountainside. I talked with some guys
who had been on the recovery team, and the scene was grisly. Most
military flyers can recount flights that were more eventful than we
would have liked, flights which were nearly permanently life-changing.
Sadly, some never got to enjoy the luxury of looking back on their
service with fondness (or contempt). Especially in late May, those of us
given the gift of growing old will remember those shipmates as they
were...and forever young.
God Bless all those young lives, and the families and friends deprived
of the rest of their time together.