Thank You

[ScottK]

To the guys my age that enlisted; Y'all were either crazy, absolutely hated your life, or you are just total badasses.

I'll assume the latter cause I love ya

I just couldn't afford college and I was killing brain cells waaaay too fast after high school. One of the best decisions I ever made, albeit with some stress at times.

[Old plug]

I would have been a lifer in the Navy. I was put out however for loss of hearing. After that I worked for the Army. A job that put me dead center in the personal and historical records of everyone from a Private to 5 star generals serving in the period from WW1 thru late Vietnam. A lot of my time there was spent verifying entitlments to veterans awards and decoration. I really cared about these veterans and it gave me the opertunity see things as they were.

[Wayne SW/MO]

I didn't get a real choice. It was easy to find where you stood in the draft during my time and if you weren't going to college or had something physical to disqualify you, you were Army bound if you waited. One of my calls revealed I was lucky number 5 and they had been getting a 6-8 quota a month so I became a volunteer.

I got out before Vietnam ramped up and didn't have much to do with that. The biggest excitment in my time was the Berlin Wall and the call up for it and the Cuban crisis, both pretty mild in the scheme of things before and since.