"Thank you for your service"

Thanks, but you don't need to, nor should you either.

 

Me, as a Sergeant in the Wyoming Army National Guard (HHB, 3d Bn, 49th FA), on maneuvers in South Korea.

At some point in the last twenty years, it became common to thank veterans for their military service.  It started off with thanking World War Two veterans, and then it spread to almost every veteran.  I've found that in the past few years I've been thanked for my service in the Army National Guard.  It always catches me off guard, and it makes me a little uncomfortable.  I didn't do anything that compared with those who served in World War Two, quite a few of whom I knew, nor did I do anything that compared with that which was done by veterans of the Korean War or Vietnam War, nor any other U.S. war, or even guys who served in the active duty service of any era..  Even at that, while I hesitate to even mention it, there's quite a difference between those who had the sort of service my (Canadian) Uncle Terry, my Uncle Bill (Navy submarine officer), or my wife's Grandfather had (Marine Corps in the Pacific) and those who served in the armed forces in bases here in the US during the war, of which there were a large number.  I'm not dissing any of this service, just noting that perhaps the "thanks" deserves at least some level of discernment.

 Me at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, during basic training.  I was quite thin at the time, but would get even thinner as I came down with pneumonia at Ft. Sill.  When this photo was taken in the platoon area, we were cleaning our M16A1 rifles.  The names of our drill instructors, SSG Stringfellow and SSG Adams, appear on the campaign hat silhouettes.

I joined the Wyoming Army National Guard the summer after I graduated from high school.  I did this for a variety of reasons.

 

Armored vehicles and artillery pieces getting set to deploy, South Korea.

One of the reasons was sort of career related.  When I was in junior high and high school, I seriously contemplated a career in the Army.  As a very outdoorsy kid, with a love of history, and growing up in an age when every adult male I knew had served in the military, there was a long period of time in which I planned on becoming an Army officer, or maybe a Marine Corps officer.  I held this desire pretty strongly when I was a young teen, and strongly, but mixed with other things, as I approached high school graduation. By the time I graduated from high school I'd determined to join the Army after university, after taking ROTC.  However, by the time I graduated my desire was seriously waning as I love my state, and being outdoors in it, making me one of those odd personalities who'd rather wonder around outdoors in their native place than spend long periods of time away from it.  Anyhow, I went to check out the University of Wyoming but determined to go to the local community college for two years first, a sign of that "not knowing what to do" problem I recently posted on.   That meant no ROTC.

 

155 mm SP M109 howitzers in field, South Korea.

I felt a bit guilty about that so that was part of my motivation, and indeed the motivation foremost in my mind, when I went out to the Armory that summer and joined the National Guard.  As I'd been planning on entering the University of Wyoming, and not Casper College, this was a big shift in plans, and I was uncomfortable with the notion that part of my change in plans might be based on a bigger change in plans, and that if I didn't go to UW I'd never enter ROTC and by extension I'd never enter military service at all.  As it turned out, that feeling was somewhat correct, as when I went to UW two years later my desire to enter the Regular Army had passed completely, for reasons that I couldn't tell you now, as I didn't know what they were then, but which were probably formed by being increasingly outdoors in my native state in my early adulthood.   But this desire at the time of my entry into Casper College wasn't the only one.  Part of it was that it was just something I wanted to do.  And part was that the Guard at that time would help pay for college directly.  It wasn't that I had to join the Guard to go to college, that would be untrue, but I thought it a good deal that the Guard would help, and that way I wouldn't have to rely completely on my father, who by that  time had my very ill mother to worry about.  It was sort of a feeling that this was something I could do to help pay my parents back for what they'd done for me, although I never, at any point, told them that, either at the time, or later.  And part of it was a vague feeling that at some point later in life I'd want to be a writer, and that any writer ought to know the topic he was writing on, which to my mind meant that I ought to have some military service.

 

Near accident, cabbage field, South Korea.  Some troops who really do deserve our thanks are the peacetime solders, including Guardsmen, who die in accidents.  One of my friends from basic training, who was in the Nebraska National Guard, died a year or so later in an accident in which a trucked he was driving rolled.

I was an artilleryman in the Army National Guard, which had a course of initial training sufficently long that, technically with basic and advanced training combined, I actually am a veteran of the U.S. Army due to that.  That is, when a National Guardsman goes to basic and advanced training, he's active in the service, actually in the regulars.  When I graduated from the artillery school at Ft. Sill I received a discharge from the active duty Army, and I received an Army Service Ribbon.  In my case, that service was sufficently long for that purpose that I actually qualify as a veteran of the U.S. Army.  Bizarrely, as my basic and advanced training period overlapped with a crisis in Lebanon, to some groups, such as the American Legion, I qualify for membership, which frankly strikes me as really odd.  My Guard service further laps over various crises in the 1980s also has that impact, but in my mind, and in reality, no Guardsmen can or should regard themselves as any sort of "combat" veteran due to those things. There was no chance whatsoever that we were going to be called up for any of them.

 

Artillery battery of the 3d Bn,49th FA in the field, South Korea.  There were three firing batteries in the Wyoming Army National Guard's 3d Bn at that time, all of them equipped with M110 8in. howitzers, and an additional three 1st Bn that were equipped with trailed 155 howitzers.  This was a Cold War structure that no longer exists, and the Guard in the state today is much smaller, and in terms of artillery is equipped with rockets.

I served in the National Guard for six years, which overlapped my entire undergraduate course of study plus one year.  That is, like a lot of geology students, I took five years to receive my undergraduate degree rather than four, and I graduated right into unemployment, the norm at the time for new geologists. During the entire time I lived in Laramie, I remained in the Headquarters Battery of the 3d Bn, 49th FA in Casper, my native town, where for most of that time I was in the Liaison section.  I toyed with the idea of transferring into an air cavalry scout unit in Cheyenne, as did one of my basic training friends, but never did.  I liked being in the National Guard, but after six years I took my second discharge (my first was the Honorable Discharge following basic and advanced training from the Army) and ceased being a member.  My reasons were two fold.  A primary one was that I was getting ready to go to law school and I erroneously believed that law school must meet the common beliefs held about it, and involve constant unrelenting study.  It actually does not, and law school was considerably easier than my undergraduate course of study in geology.  The second was that Guard units, at least ones in the West like ours, are isolated pockets of military training in some ways, so after six years, a lot of it was becoming very repetitious.  Things that I found interesting early on were getting intolerably dull after six years, such as the annal class on Preventative Checks, Maintenance  & Service.

 

Me again, South Korea.  M88 tank retriever in background.  M110 and M109 batteries had tank retrievers (not doubt M109 units still do) as self propelled artillery pieces are heavy tracked vehicles and have to be extracted with one if they break down.

I've never regretted my time in the National Guard, and there are occasions when I've regretted not staying in.  I was a Sergeant at the time I got out, and I clearly could have continued on for a higher grade of NCO, and could have chosen to take the steps to become an officer.  I just didn't.  So doors were open to me, and I knew that.  The Guard had been very good to me, and I'd worked full time at the Armories in Casper in Cheyenne during various summer breaks, and during my period of post bachelor degree unemployment, so not only had I benefited from being a regular Guardsman, but individually I'd been treated very well.  I've felt a bit guilty, from time to time, about not carrying in the  Guard for that reason.  It's a classic example of people looking out for us when we're young, in a way that we didn't fully appreciate at the time.  I nearly always had a job of some sort when I needed it, in that period, when a local economic depression was going on, thanks to the National Guard.

 

South Korean M48 tanks.

And I made some lifelong friends in the Guard I still see from time to time, who stayed in. Those friends saw service in Iraq later on, and its hard not to feel that you let them down, although they've never said that, and at least one of them has told me more than once that I got out at the right time.  During the first Gulf War, when I was just out of law school, I made arrangements with a couple of Guard friends who were well placed to give me the heads up if they were about to be activated, so I could get back in, as thinking I'd let them go and had done nothing myself would have been too much.  But the unit had just gone through a structural change and was not called up. With the wars of 2011, however, with small children at home and the knowledge that the prior war had seen no timely deployment, I didn't do the same, and I still feel bad about that.  My old unit, reflagged under a different designation, saw service in Iraq, although not as artillery.  One of my old friends from my NCO days, who had also been an NCO, saw service in Iraq twice as a high ranking officer.

 

Black Hawk helicopter, South Korea.

To a certain extent I sometimes wish I'd stayed in just because I wish I had.  I have to acknowledge, however, that post Cold War Guardsmen bear a much different burden than we Cold War Guardsmen did.  We trained for "The Big One", i.e., a really large war such as one with the Soviet Union.  We took that very seriously, but we also knew that if we were called up, it was a really big disaster and our civilian lives and careers would have mattered little in the context of the times.  Now, with the active duty service being relatively small, Guard units are called up all the time for "small wars".  That means a Guardsman today can truly contemplate almost certain, and perhaps multiple, call ups.  We faced unlikley call ups, but ones which if they had occured would have more likely than not resulted in our demise.  But we didn't face the specter of constant call up, which is harder on a Guardsman in some ways than it can be on an active duty soldier.  Guardsmen leave their civilian occupations and lives every time they're called, which active duty soldiers do not.  One lawyer I know who is Air Guardsman admitted to me, in response to a question I posed to him, that if he was called up, it'd destroy his practice, a pretty big sacrifice, for which he indeed would be owed thanks.  This must be the case for a lot of Guardsmen, and it imposes a pretty heavy burden on them that we really didn't have.

 

Headquarters personnel of the 3d Bn, 49th FA, in South Korea.

At any rate, it's nice of people to thank former soldiers for their service, but I don't deserve it.  In some ways, I sort of feel the same about people who are called up but faced no real risk of death or injury, as we owe the country service simply by living in it, and perhaps aren't entitled to thanks for merely doing what we are obligated to do.  And I didn't run down and join because there'd been a Pearl Harbor.  Some of it was likely patriotism I suppose, and certainly I think I would have regarded myself as patriotic.  But a lot of it was personal as well.  And it served me rather well.  At age 18, when I joined, I was exceedingly shy and being in the Guard did impact my personality in a good way, with basic training probably being particularly helpful. That's probably a reason I should have stayed in, as military service does counteract the natural tendency of introverts to be just that, and U.S. service is a rather vigorous one, which encourages activity.  I've never regretted doing it, and I have occasionally regretted getting out.  Over the past year all the old timers, I think, who were in with me have retired, and I suppose I would have done the same from the Guard as well by now.  But "thanks" for my service aren't really mandated.  I"ve found that most former servicemen, at least the peace time ones like me, feel the same way.

 

Liaison section tent, Korean pig farm, South Korea.