This is a copy of my DD-214, the document that signifies your discharge from the Armed Forces. It shows that, between 1967 and 1971, I served three years and nine months, two and one-half of which were at sea. It also shows that I made Shipfitter, Second Class – an E-5 government rating.
What it doesn’t show is how I got there.
I’d just graduated from college. Grad school would have gotten me a deferment from military service but I had no desire to pursue an academic career. So, like most 22-year old smarties, I did nothing. Then the letter came from my draft board. Vietnam was humming along and they ordered me to start serving my country. The Army, with its two-year term of service, was not an attractive option. I knew that college boys turned into platoon leaders, and that platoon leaders often turned into corpses. So, to outwit the Army, I enlisted in the Navy, which had a four-year term of service. I wanted to be a writer, and I was a Melville freak, and Melville had said a whale ship was his Yale College and his Harvard.
Plus, the Navy was offering what seemed to be irresistible enlistment terms. I could pick three jobs from the vast number that the Navy offered, and they guaranteed that I’d get one of my three choices. I chose Journalist and Photographer’s Mate – two jobs for which I was superbly qualified. Nothing else on the list fit my talents, so I chose the most unlikely job I could imagine – Shipfitter, which was the equivalent of an ocean-going plumber. The results came right back, and sure enough I’d gotten one of the three jobs they’d promised. I was going to be a Shipfitter.
That was my first lesson about the world, courtesy of Uncle Sam, and it was far from the last. Though being a sailor often felt like being in jail, I learned more about the world and more about the variety of people who inhabit it than I would have in the sheltered hothouse atmosphere of academia. Melville had been right in his assessment. The Navy was my Grad School. I hated it at the time, but who ever said learning life’s lessons was supposed to be a pleasurable experience?
It disgusts me that our President sleazed out of military duty, and that fewer than 100 of our Senators and Congressmen have served. Most of the people doing the saber rattling have never been on active duty, and yet they seem ready and willing to put other people’s lives on the line.
I wish we still had the draft. I wish every young man and woman would be required to serve their country for two years. They wouldn’t need to be soldiers, but they would be required to get out of their own particular hothouse environments and be thrown in with people vastly different than themselves. I often wish the members of our ruling class would have been forced to spend a couple of years in some stink hole or other, having to depend on people they never would have associated with in their normal, privileged lives, coming to rely on these people, bonding with them, understanding who they were and how they came to be who they were. With more of that kind of experience, wiser decisions might issue from Congress and the Oval Office.
So, this Memorial Day, don’t “thank me for my service.” I think that sounds smarmy and lame. Instead, start thinking about how we can institute two years of service for every young man and young woman in America.
Sim Comfort says
We’ll I didn’t wait for college but joined the USN on my 18th birthday. Just as Greg describes, the navy was better than academia by a long way! Tought me discipline and introduced me to a much wider world.
bill gemmill says
Hello Greg,
I had similar experiences in the Navy as you, and I agree completely, especially about your opinion of our temporary occupant of the White House. The Israelis have a similar concept and refer to it as National Service. That would be an obligation that even bone spurs couldn’t get you out of.
John D. Brown says
Dear Gibson:
Thanks for your excellent piece for Memorial Day!
As always,
Brown
Peter M. Leenhouts says
Greg, Ten Pound Island is at the top of my list. I admire your fortitude and perseverance in maintaining such an excellent book list. And your blog is excellent as well. That said, I hope my comments below are accepted in only the most friendly fashion, as that is how I offer them.
I served from 1973 through 1976 as a NROTC midshipman, and from 1976 through 2003 on active duty, retiring as a Captain, U.S. Navy. You served at a particularly difficult time for the Navy, and I honor you for your service. The ships on which I served were well-supported by the shipfitters and many other skilled trades who maintained them under often arduous and challenging conditions.
On occasion, when thanked for my service, usually around Veterans Day, I respond that it was my privilege to have served. And I mean that. I don’t view my response as lame, but, instead, honest. There were many days when I doubted my choice of career, but in the end my belief in our nation impelled me to continue to serve until washed ashore one last time.
Memorial Day is for us to honor those who died in service. We honor those killed and who died not all as heroes, in my opinion, but as those who stepped forward, voluntarily or not, and who served.
You’re right about national service – I do think everyone, without fear or favor, should serve in some capacity – armed forces, peace corps, conservation corps – something above and beyond themselves. We Americans have many flaws, but there remains no doubt in my mind that we are and will continue to be the shining city on the hill. When less than two percent of Americans have served, we can hardly expect our politicians to value military service. We have to exemplify the behavior we expect, and hold them accountable. I am going to skip over political commentary, merely observing that our previous president had no military service either.
Thanks again for your post. I wish I lived closer but will have to content myself with attempting to shake your hand in person the next time you are in Seattle.
With respect,
Pete Leenhouts
Port Ludlow WA
Thomas Leonhardt says
I wish we still had the draft, too, any form of national service. I wasn’t drafted but enlisted as a college drop out. I went through basic training and intermediate speed radio school at Ft. Dix where I was living in close quarters with mainly northeastern soldiers from Baltimore to Maine, a real eye opener for me. I remember, too, talking about books with National Guard soldiers doing their six months. Some were from Wall Street and Madison Avenue and bought new books as hardbacks, something I could ill afford. One colleague loaned me a hardback copy of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. He probably saw the play , too.
We all wore the same uniforms, ate the same food, pulled KP and guard duty together and lived by the same rules, written and unwritten. Once upon a time, men of a certain age, no matter what their standing in life, could compare experiences in the service. Bring back the draft as national service to our country, men and women, and dare to suggest that we owe something to our country and our fellow citizens.
Tina Bruno says
I think you have said so much so perfectly, but them, you usually do.