Here are more military stories. I have a decent backlog of stories, but I’m always accpeting more. If you’d like to give your own explanation of why you joined the military or have a military story, please e-mail me with the subject “Military”. Thanks.

AndyJ writes about his Vietnam experience (he served in Vietnam? Maybe he should run for president):

I did the usual drinking and partying type of college education thing and did the usual flunking out. But I kept getting my 2S deferment. After a year of working in the steel mill, I called the draft board to ask why I was still getting my deferment. All I heard on the phone was “Get his name” Well, that afternoon, I went to the Navy recruiter to ask if I signed up right then, and got my draft notice tomorrow, who would have possession over my body. The Navy guy said that the Navy would. So I signed up hoping to stay out of Vietnam (this was 1966). The next day my draft notice arrived in the mail. Well, after boot camp and gunnery school, I received my orders to a certain ship. I inquired where the ship was home ported, and yes, it was Vietnam, river patrol work. Spent 2 years there because my brother was in the Army at that time and they had a rule that 2 brothers wouldn’t be sent into a combat zone at the same time, so I stayed in Nam until he only had a couple of months left on his enlistment and couldn’t be sent there.

Samuel writes about starting a career in the Navy:

I was enjoying a full ride to community college, which you can get if you score high enough on the ACT. I changed majors more often than I changed T shirts, and realized that when my ride was up, I was probably going to join the military. A Navy recruiter called me, and I decided to hear what he had to say.
I kicked some butt on the ASVAB, and was able to get into the nuclear engineering program (reactors, not bombs). After about 2 years of schooling, I went to my first submarine, a Trident SSBN, where I spent 5 years and did nine 70 day patrols.
I’m still in the Navy, and am working for a recruiting command’s advanced programs department, ensuring a supply of bright minds to keep our Navy manned into the future. I plan to make a career of the Navy.

John writes about the Air Force (I wish I had a guidance counselor like his):

Hi Frank, I’ve been lurking on your website for a while, keep up the good work! Here is my ‘how I joined the military’ story plus a funny story from my first assignment (well, funny to me, but it’s definitely a different kind of humor in the part of the military I’m in right now).
In high school it was pretty much assumed I was going to a college of some flavor. I had straight As, good SATs, played lots of sports, had my Eagle Scout badge, blah, blah, blah. Granted, I went to a public high school in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, so my competition was a little weak in the book-learnin’ department, if you get my drift (think ‘Welcome Back Kotter’ meets ‘Deliverance’). But I did pretty well, all things considered. So at the end of my junior year, I thinking about trying for Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, Georgia Tech, those kind of places. One day, though, the new assistant guidance counselor asked me to drop by his office.
As it turned out, Ron was an old high-school buddy of my mom’s. It also turned out that he had volunteered for Vietnam as an enlisted door gunner on Air Force rescue helicopters. After a couple of tours in Vietnam, he got a bachelor’s degree while still in the Air Force, got his officer’s commission, then became a Combt Controller (Air Force version of Special Forces) and retired as a captain in the mid-80s after almost breaking his back parachuting into some trees in Oregon on an exercise. Pretty much a bad-ass any way you cut it. So here’s this muscled, retired military officer calmly checking me out from behind his desk. On the wall are pictures of him jumping out of military aircraft and posing with other John Wayne-looking military guys carrying tons of guns. Here’s how my conversation with him went:
Ron: “So, I see you have good grades and you play football, wrestle and run track. You hunt much?”
Me: “Yes sir, Usually just small game and birds, deer huntin’ eats up too much time.”
Ron: “What are your plans after high school”
Me: “Uhh, I figured on going to Duke or Georgia Tech and getting an engineering degr. . . (my voice trailed off as Ron started shaking his head slowly).
Ron: “You interested in the military?”
Me: “Of course!” (back then in the rural mountain towns, if you were a teenage guy and didn’t at least claim to be interested in joining the military, you might as well wear a dress and carry a sign saying “I’M A BIG HOMO”)
Ron: “A guy like you would be bored stupid at some civilian school. You want to do men’s work (tosses me an admissions program from the Air Force Academy). Go to the Academy, then go to pilot training and fly something that shoots bullets or drops bombs. Don’t be a pussy and waste your time listening to some hippie with a PhD.”
Me, pondering a future flying cool aircraft versus sitting in a lab or an office cubicle: “Sounds good to me. Is the Academy hard?”
Ron: “Of course, wouldn’t be worth doing if it was easy. Tell Anita (my mom) I said hi.”
And that was that. I went to the Air Force Academy (the airliner that flew me to Colorado was the first time I’d ever been in an airplane), graduated in 1992, went to flight school and have spent the last 12 years flying special operations helicopters (I fly MH-53M Pave Lows, if you’re into the whole category thing). I’ve worked with some of the smartest, toughest, and funniest people on the planet and had a blast doing it. So listen to your guidance counselor (but only if he’s a combat vet with forearms the size of small hams).
Oh yeah, the funny story. When I first started flying special operations helicopters, my first assignment as a co-pilot was to Osan Air Base in South Korea. I was warned that the enlisted guys like to try and rattle the new pilots to see if they have the right stuff, so I should act calm and collected now matter what. So I’m in Korea my first weekend, standing in the hootch bar behind the squadron drinking a cold one. All of the sudden, the sergeant behind the bar looks up and starts grinning at something behind me. Before I could turn around, a big, hairy door gunner named Diekman (he was so hairy, his nickname was “Kee-rok”, as in the old SNL skit about the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer) walked up next to me buck naked and started humping my leg. “What’s up, sir?”, Kee-rok asked while giving me my Naked Gunner Hug (a tradition that gunner’s had been doing to new pilots since! Vietnam, I later learned). Showing as much outward calm as I could muster (inside, I was gibbering like a screech monkey and fighting the urge to flee out the door), I took a sip from my beer and replied “Not much, just trying to keep my hands away from your hairy nuts, I guess”. He laughed (along with all the other pilots, flight engineers and gunners in the bar) and walked off to put his pants back on, apparently satisfied that I wasn’t easy to rattle. Later, I took a long shower and burned my clothes a la Ace Ventura. Yep, those were the days.