Wednesday, May 7, 1975. End of the Vietnam War Era.

The US government declared the Vietnam War era at an end for purposes of veterans benefits.

9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the official Vietnam Era, but of course not all of them went to Vietnam.   3.4 million U.S. servicemen were deployed to Southeast Asia.  Approximately 2.7 million served in the Republic of Vietnam.  Most US servicemen in Vietnam were not combat troops, although because of the nature of the war, any of them could be exposed to combat.

There has never been a U.S. President who served in Vietnam, although one Vice President, Al Gore, did.  George W. Bush was in the Texas Air National Guard as a fighter pilot during the war.  Bill Clinton had a student deferment.  Joe Biden had a deferment for asthma.  Trump had one for shin splints.

None of my immediate family (parents, aunts, uncles, cousins) served in Vietnam or would qualify as a Vietnam Era veteran, even though a lot of them had been in the service.  The husband of one of my cousins had served in Vietnam as an officer in the Navy, and a Canadian cousin of my mother's who was living in Florida was drafted and served in Vietnam, so there is some family connection.  In the neighborhood, the son of the man who lived across the street was a paratrooper in the war.

In junior high, one of the more colorful social studies teachers had been in the Marine Recon, a unit much like the Rangers, during the war, and occasionally wore a green beret, which was never officially adopted by the Marines, to school.   In high school, a legendary swimming teacher from the South Pacific had been a Navy SEAL and bore the scars of having been shot in the war and also from having been straffed as a child by a Japanese airplane. The ROTC teacher also had been, but I didn't take ROTC.

In university, a geology professor who also held a job with the State of Wyoming had served in Vietnam, and according to those who knew him well, suffered pretty markedly from PTSD.  I never noticed that myself, and he was a good professor.

When I joined the National Guard right after high school I found it packed with Vietnam Veterans.  One of my good friends in the Guard was the mechanics section chief but had the Combat Infantryman's Badge awarded for two tours in the country.  Another friend of mine also had the CIB from the 1st Cavalry Division, with his uniquely being stitched in dark blue for the subdued  patch.  A fellow I was friendly with had been a Ranger in Vietnam and when he first joined and was still relying on service period uniforms he'd wear a black beret, another unofficial item. A good friend of mine who was his brother in law was in the Wyoming Air National Guard and had flown medical missions to the country, a deployment you rarely hear about.  One of our members had been a Navy pilot.  What with the CIBs, combat patches, pilot's wings, etc., we must have been an odd looking bunch to the young soldiers in the Regular Army.

There were a lot of them.

Cartoonist George Baker, the creator of the World War Two era Sad Sack cartoon, died at age 59.

Last edition:

Tuesday, May 6, 1975. Authoritarian victims.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Cambodia, Catholic, Communism, Domino Theory, Fascism, Gerald Ford, Hungary, Malaysia, Operation Babylift, South Vietnam, Thailand, Vietnam, Vietnam War

Reserve Retirement & Regrets.

It dawned on me the other day that if I'd stayed in the National Guard, I'd have been able to start drawing Reserve retirement pay starting in late May.

Even though I was in the Guard for six years, I've never really been able to grasp how Guard retirement pay works.  I tried to look it up this morning, and learned that it's on a point system, one of those nifty military devices that has been around since at least World War Two in some ways.  The system by which soldiers who fought in the ETO were eligible to go home, for example, when the war ended was based on points.

Anyhow, there are some really useful net articles on this topic, of which this is one:

A Quick Overview of How Active Duty and Reserve Retirement is Calculated

What I ended up with, in the end, was this useful rough example, from the above:

The Final Pay Pension

Whatever max pay you find for that rank, multiply it by the service percent multiplier and round it down to the nearest dollar.

That’s your monthly pension.

For an E-7 with 2134 points starting their pension in 2016 it’d be $5061.30 * .1482 = $750/month.

Of course, you wonder how this applies to yourself.  I was an E5 when I got out, and would have had to have gone (and should have already gone) to the NCO Academy if I was to carry on.  Indeed, for the last half of my time in the Guard, I was in an E7 slot for much of that time.  

Had I stayed in, I would have gone to Officers Candidate School.  It would not have made sense not to, and I was eligible to do so.  One of my good friends from the Guard did do so, and he retired from the Guard as a Colonel after reaching age 60.

Without trying to really figure the math, I think I likely would have drawn, had I taken that course, and assuming that I didn't take a grenade in a street in Iraq or Afghanistan, would have been around $1,000 to $1,500 per month.

Not bad, but not enough to live on, which, of course for reserve service, makes sense.

Some reservists, I should note, draw considerably more and even approach Regular retirement pay as they have so many active duty points.  That would have made a difference, as our Guard units did serve in Afghanistan and Iraq, although not every soldier in the local units served in both. Some did.  Some did more than one tour in one of those countries, for that matter.

Here's a big thing, however.

All retired National Guard and Reserve members and their eligible family members may participate in a TRICARE health plan. You have access to certain services and health care benefits based on your age, retiree status, and location. 

• You may get care at military hospitals and clinics if space is available. 

• You remain eligible for the TRICARE Pharmacy Program. 

• You may choose to purchase dental and vision coverage through the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program (FEDVIP).

That alone makes me wish I'd stayed in the Guard and gone to OCS.  I wouldn't be retired in the real sense now, but in real terms, I'd be a lot better off insurance wise.

Or so I say. At age 24, when I ETSed, I don't know that insurance was on my mind.  

Well, I know it wasn't.

I also know that our full time NCS who was our Retention NCO wasn't doing a good job.

Thanks for having been in the service

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:

A Veterans' Day Essay on Worshiping the Military

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.