Alaric,if you dont mind me asking...what armed force were you in?And were you in when Vietnam was going on?
Im a few years older then you.I went for my army physical in 1970 and passed with flying colors.Back then Nixon put a lottery in with birthdays and mine fell right in the middle and i never got called.Whew!I was just outta high school and we were all smoking weed then and not sure i would have gone to Nam.
I volunteered for the US Army in the summer of 1971. I did my basic and infantry AIT at Ft. Lewis WA. I then went on to other AITs at Ft. Monmouth NJ for fixed cryptographic equipment repair and maintenance, tactical cryptographic equipment repair and maintenance and communication center operations and management. I was assigned to the HQ of the Berlin Brigade in 1973 and served there for 2 more years. When my 4 years of service was done, they offered me $10,000 as a reenlistment bonus, that might be close to $100,000 in today's dollars. Like an idiot, I refused and got out of the Army and got a job in a factory in Berlin. I would guess that was probably the biggest mistake of my life, if I had stayed in the field of cryptography, I would probably be making over $100,000 a year right now. As a result of this, I missed service in Vietnam, it was over by the time my service in Berlin was finished.
Anyway, working in a factory in Berlin, or probably anywhere else, was extremely boring and repetitive work. It got a little more exciting for me when I had the opportunity to help set up a factory in Baghdad, Iraq for almost twice my usual pay. I spent a few months on that job and then the Herlitz company had two more projects in Nigeria and Indonesia, I volunteered for both, but no contract on either of them was agreed upon. I realized I was wasting my years and went back to the US and rejoined the Army in 1978. With my experience as an electronic technician, I was expecting that they would be kissing my butt with moist lips to get me back. I was considering my next training in satellite communications, my test scores certainly qualified me for a technical job like that. No such luck, I was surprised to learn they weren't very excited about getting back "prior service" individuals. They offered me some very unappealing jobs, cook, truck driver and, of course infantryman is also always available. I was already trained as an infantryman, so I would only have needed refresher training on the new weapons systems. One job offering was also generator repair technician, and I accepted that because it was the closest thing to my previous experience with electronic work, but I was never happy with the job because it was mainly mechanical and only secondarily electronic. My First Sergeant in Karlsruhe, Germany, came by my shop one day and saw how fast I was typing maintenance reports. He bodysnatched me for work in his orderly room and had me set up for OJT (on the job training) as his legal specialist, somewhat equivalent to a paralegal in the civilian world. I did that job for over 7 years and was able to sit in and observe very many interesting court-martial cases. After that work, everywhere I was assigned subsequently, they put me in an administrative position, PSNCO (personnel and staff non-commissioned officer), chief administrative NCO, and finally with the ostentatious title of "subject matter expert." I was working on training material and technical manuals for new systems that the Army was testing and had not yet type-classified. Since we were the only ones dealing with these systems, then we were, of course, the "subject matter experts." I retired after 4 foreign service tours and 21 years and 3 months of service at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD.
So, yeah, I missed service in Vietnam. I also missed service in the first Gulf War. I will say, in my defense, that I was the second person in the Army to call my branch manager at the Hoffman building in Alexandria, VA, in my MOS (military occupational specialty) and volunteer for service in the Gulf. I was refused and told the only possibility I had of going was to get myself transferred to a combat arms unit that was scheduled to be reassigned there for combat duty. I had 2 small children and a wife here in MD where I was assigned at the time and she absolutely refused to let me go, I would have had to get myself assigned to some place like Ft. Gordon, GA and hope my unit got assigned to the Gulf, while my family was in MD wondering where I was It's a big disappointment to me, after all those years of service, that I was never able to experience any actual combat.
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Topic: What is your biggest Pet Peeve? (Read 11754 times)
July 29, 2009, 08:30:44 am
