The Ghosts of Prior Careers
On a Saturday, while working on my now very long term one of nearly thirty years.
I just ran this item:
It'd be very easy to take it the wrong way.
As noted in that thread, it's common now for people to tell you "thank you for your service!" Indeed, some years ago I saw a National Guardsman coming out of the barber shop and, out on the street, a woman being arrested for something yelled it out, to his surprise.
I'm a contraran anyhow, and I always feel awkward about such thanks, but this thread is on thanks.
But in another direction. I'm thankful that I served in the National Guard.
Technically, I served in the Army and the National Guard. Basic training and AIT were so long for cannoneers that I received an Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Army after AIT. And FWIW I was activated for summer employment and other active service at the armory that I have more time in active service than some guys who did the short two-year Cold War enlistments do.
I've often regretted getting out. The end of my Guard career was due to a misconception about how busy I'd be in law school. I listed to people about law school and how hard it was. I shouldn't have.
Anyhow, I'm glad I served in the Guard.
The National Guard/Army put me together with a lot of men, and we're talking about the basically nearly all military of that era, who came from very different backgrounds than me and who worked in lots of different occupations, many of them in manual occupations. I learned from that a lot of them had very common interests with me. I also learned that a lot of them were every bit as smart as I was.
This is something I've found that a lot of people who haven't ever been in the service don't appreciate. Blue collar workers aren't there due to intellectual deficit. And the knowledge they possess in their fields is both vast, and interesting. Knowing that has served me all my life.
Getting through basic training taught me that I was pretty tough. I don't know what basic is like now, but the Army basic training at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, of the 1980s was very close to what was depicted in Full Metal Jacket. We were told by one of our drill sergeants early on that his job was to make basic training as rough as possible, as combat would be worse, and he wanted those who were going to fail, to fail then. Quite a few did fail.
That's served me ever since as well. Indeed, not so much now, but for years decades after Ft. Sill, in times of high stress, things I learned there by memory would come flooding bad to mind. We'd been so well-trained that it was automatic.
It also made every one "man up", although by that age I was pretty much an adult already. Since getting out of school, I've been amazed by the degree to which a lot of modern adults never actually become adults. There's a song out there somewhere called High School Never Ends, and for an amazing number of people, it really doesn't. Being part of an organization in which you are flatly informed that in the event of certain circumstances you are expected to perform until dead, and that death would come soon and violently, really takes the game playing out of a person in serious settings.
Related to that, I've noted it before, and will again, but the Guard also taught me a system of organization and its stayed with me ever since. Everything I've learned about office management I learned in the Guard, including that there's different roles and classes in offices, just like in the Army, for a reason. I've watched over the years as people who don't have that background run around talking about "teams" and "we're all in this together" only to see things fail. I've seen people make friends in offices they shouldn't have, surrender their efficiency to inattention or whatever, and go into power pouts when things didn't go the way they personally felt they should, or just because they turned out to be serious. I've avoided all of that, in no small part due to the Guard/Army.
And the Guard gave me a job when I was young, and really needed one. It helped pay for my schooling and gave me a way to try to do that, for which I remain grateful.
The Guard also blessed me with at least one instance of nearly being killed and not be. That may sound odd, but only people whom have been exposed to sudden violent death, and then escaped it, knows what that means. People's plans are always subject to the fickle hand of fate. One moment you are doing your job, and the next an entire battery of 8in artillery shells are coming right down on you.
And finally, it gave me an appreciation of history in a way which only somebody who has been in a military unit can.
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