Here’s a guest post from Specialist Neil Gussman – he has quite an interesting story to tell about his military service. (When he’s not training with the Army National Guard, he writes about the history of chemistry at Chemical Heritage Foundation, a museum and library of the history of chemistry and early science located in
When I first enlisted in the Air Force in January of 1972, General David Petraeus was a sophomore at
I got out of the Air Force that year, joined the Army the following year and served as a tank commander in
World War Three didn't happen on my watch, so I got out and went to college, and served in a reserve tank unit in
Last August, I re-enlisted after 23 years as a civilian. Writing this post I am 55 years old and have 196 days and a wake-up until my unit deploys to
In the past year, a lot of people asked me why I joined. But the more fun question to answer is what is different about serving then and now. I can feel myself smile every time I answer that question.
What's different? I grew up in
In the mid-1970s, the sergeants who really had their shit together were in their late 20s. They were young, tough, motivated and were not combat veterans. The worst senior NCOs (not all, but a way more than there should have been) had combat patches on their right sleeves and had picked up a serious dope smoking or drinking habit in
I am currently in an Army National Guard aviation brigade. In the 1970s the National Guard was notorious for being badly trained. Today's National Guard is part of the total fighting force. On soldier skills, attitude, and combat readiness, my current Guard unit is better than the tank unit I served in on the East-West German border. The men and women with the combat patches on their sleeves in this army are leaders.
The difference certainly continues outside the gate. In the 70s no one wore their uniform home on leave--at least not those of us who were going home on leave to the
But today if I stop at Starbucks on the way home from a drill, someone might offer to buy my coffee or the clerk might just give it to me. People walk up to me in restaurants and thank me for my service. I really wish some of the other guys I served with in the 1970s could join up for just a month or two now and get the gratitude they missed out on back when long hair was in style and we were not.
Of course some things are exactly the same:
-- O-Dark-30 is wake up time for everything – even if all we do is stand around.
-- My weapon in 1972, the M-16 rifle. My weapon today, M16A4.
-- All through the 1970s if we went to the field for training, it was crammed in the back of a "Deuce-and a-half" 2 1/2 ton truck. My "ride" at pre-deployment training this year--the M35A2 Deuce-and-a-half truck.
-- The Army has all records on computer. So when I went to
But even if I have to make 20 copies of my orders and hand them to a guy who has a PDF of my orders on a computer right in front of him, I am happy to be
back.
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