My dad grew up in the Depression and World War II. He joined the army when he turned 18, just after the war ended, and served as a photographer. He never talked much about his years in the service; I don’t think it meant much to him.
He once told me about a time he was part of a group taken to drive back a convoy of vehicles, and how he ran to get one of the big trucks, only to have the sergeant pull him in favor of someone with more truck-driving experience. Dad had to drive a smaller vehicle instead. That’s the only story I remember him telling about his military service activities. He never talked about what life as an army photographer involved.
One story I did hear several times (and have in writing) is of Dad going AWOL one weekend, hitch-hiking home and having life-changing conversations with his sister and with a kind driver who gave him a ride. Those conversations and a Gideon Bible led to him committing his life to Christ and becoming a missionary.
The GI Bill paid his way through college, where he studied for the ministry and also met my mom. For that, he was grateful.
At Dad’s funeral in 2010, someone from the Army was there to present his widow with a flag. It turned out that he could have been buried in a military cemetery. I don’t think he would have been interested. He had purchased a plot in Wheaton, IL in 2000 when Mom died, and he wanted to be buried beside her.
Dad rarely identified himself as a veteran, and he didn’t have the manner and attitudes of many of my friends who are ex-military. He never used the VA medical system. He had no old Army buddies. His attitude toward authority (which I inherited) was not at all military. He was patriotic, but not blindly so; he disagreed with many US government policies and decisions. As a missionary, he considered himself an emissary of God, not of the USA.
When I was in high school, I toyed briefly with the idea of joining the navy. Dad said he didn’t think I would enjoy it. Upon reflection, I realized that he was right. I wasn’t the type to be under a rigid, authoritarian system, and I didn’t identify enough with my passport country to be willing to serve it blindly.
I have a lot of friends who are veterans. Sometimes I think they gained things from the experience that I lacked for much of my life. Maybe I would have had a clearer sense of what it means to be an adult, a man, if I had served. I wasn’t comfortable with authority (neither being under it nor exercising it) until I was in my mid-40s. I might have felt less marginal to American culture if I had spent my first four years of adulthood in the armed forces instead of a state university. And it would have been nice to enter adulthood trained in something practical like electronics.
But I’m pretty sure I would have been miserable a good part of the time.
Comments (4)
The military isn’t for everyone. I think you gained lots of practical skills without enlisting! Would they have taught you to lay tile and do carpentry or repair small appliances? Maybe and maybe not. Interesting that your father didn’t take advantage of the veteran’s benefits…
Yeah, after the GI Bill, he never had any more involvement with the military. I wish he were around so I could ask him more about that.
My husband would not have made a good soldier or sailor either. He likes to be his own boss. That’s why he went into business for himself. By the way, Steve Moore’s mother, Joyce, just died. Bruce died about a year ago. You said they were your neighbors in TX at one point. (Or maybe your parents’ neighbors.) Good people. They had 4 kids. The oldest, Becky, married an Ecuadorian and they live in Quito. Steve lives in IN. Paul became an Episcopalian priest and lives in New Mexico. That was a shock to his parents, but they adjusted well. The youngest girl still lives in TX. She divorced, remarried, and now is a widow.
Sorry to hear about Joyce’s death. They lived across the street when I was with my first wife, right across from the Wycliffe Center. At one point most of the properties at that corner had juniper hedges by the sidewalk. I tore ours out. The Moores’ son, who worked at a nursery, trimmed the two by their drive into fancy bonsai shapes, which wasn’t what Bruce expected, apparently. I don’t know which son it was.