Category: veterans

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We were raisins

On August 25, 1972, we picked up our new seabags, which were full of the uniforms we had received after the first two days of recruit training and walked in company file from Camp Barry to Camp Moffit, the main area of Recruit Training Command at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center.

Most of us arrived two days earlier, on August 23, 1972. I’ll never forget setting on a little square in this wooden building, where I arrived via a bus from O’Hare Airport. I had that hollow feeling mixed with dread at what the future held for me. I saw this as a death sentence even though I had volunteered for the United States Naval Reserve just two months earlier. Late in the day, near dusk, we had our first Navy chow, and it was terrible. I think it was shit on a shingle or some other unpalatable meal selection. Then we were marched back to the processing center, and eventually, we got put to bed in an open bay barracks.

On the morning of the twenty-fourth of August, we got up early, probably 0700 or earlier. We stripped down to birthday suits and received our new Navy-issue underwear, blue denim trousers, and, later, long-sleeved blue shirts. We received our vaccinations, had medical and dental exams, and shipped our civilian clothes home in boxes provided by the Navy. I often think of the people who refuse vaccinations now. On that August in 1972, no one said, “Would you like a vaccination?” They said, “Next!” The guy ahead of me in the vaccine line got his arm lacerated by the vaccine gun because he flinched. By the end of the day on the twenty-fourth, we had dinner and then returned to our temporary barracks, but by this time, we were in uniform and meeting the other young men who made up Company 72-351. MMC William W. Boyd commanded our company. We were fortunate to have Chief Boyd. He took no crap, but he was very fair, and we came to love him over the next seven weeks of our journey from civilians to members of the United States Navy.

On Friday, August 25, we rose early and had breakfast. After packing our seabags, we marched as a company from the processing area of Camp Barry to Camp Moffet, home of the Recruit Training Command Great Lakes, Illinois. We had received our white hats, but we couldn’t wear them until they and all our gear were appropriately stenciled. We marched to our new barracks wearing our wool watch caps. We were called ‘raisins.’ There’s a pecking order in recruit training, and we were on the low end. It would be seven more weeks and after rigorous training in marching learning the uniform code of military justice (UCMJ). Nuclear biological and chemical warfare training, firefighting, and learning every aspect of life in the United States Navy would prepare us to serve the fleet’s needs.

We came to our new home in the new barracks, which seemed like Holiday Inn after our first two days of processing. We were assigned our bunks. My bunkmate was from Texas. His name was Chris Meador. One of our neighboring bunkmates was Jerry Horton, who was also from Texas. There was Tom Carlin from Philadelphia, who had graduated from Villanova University only a few months earlier. Our company comprised all United States Naval Reserve members, and we were at Great Lakes on ACDUTRA, which is “active duty for training.” Some of us were 2×6 reservists, which meant after our recruit training and ‘A’ schools, we would serve two years of active duty wherever the Navy assigned us, and then we would serve the balance of our six-year commitment as part of the active reserve attending monthly drills and then two weeks ACDUTRA in the summer. A few were 4×10 reservists who went to recruit training, ‘A’ school, and then returned to their home unit where they would serve the balance of their enlistment in the active reserve.

I remember that journey and the young men who became my shipmates every year. I remember Chief Boyd and his role in preparing us for naval service. The last time I saw us all together was the morning of October 13, 1972, when we were ready to march in review for our graduation from recruit training. I had been chosen to lead the battalion onto the drill field carrying the United States flag. I was the tallest and had an excellent military bearing, which was the criterion for the assignment. When I returned to the barracks after graduation to pick up my seabag and make my way across the street to the United States Navy Hospital Corps School at Great Lakes it was empty. There was a sense of loss amid the exhilaration of completing seven weeks of training.

A couple of the guys from our recruit company joined me at Hospital Corps school. I never saw the rest again. We planned to get together one day at a bar in Manhattan called McSorley’s Old Ale House. That never happened, but talk like that united us and gave us hope for a future after recruit training. Tom Carlin and I stayed in touch by occasional mail after Great Lakes, and many years later, we reconnected via phone call thanks to LinkedIn. Many of us are grandfathers and great-uncles now. I made it back to Great Lakes and Recruit Training Command sixteen years ago as I watched my nephew graduate in mid-August of 2008. That day, I bought a Navy baseball cap at the gift shop and napped under a tree near the drill field where we marched. I remembered the young men of Company 351, and sometimes, even now, I can hear their voices and remember our time together.

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The Women

The WomenThe Women by Kristin Hannah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is a powerful historical novel about the courageous nurses and other women who served in Vietnam. This book was recommended by my daughter and another person I volunteer with. There were many things I could identify with. I was a US Navy Hospital Corpsman who served with US Navy Nurses, and though I never went to Vietnam, I served with many Corpsmen and some nurses who did. Reading the book reminded me of the acrimony we faced while serving our country in a very unpopular war. I have been to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, and found the names of three young men I went to high school with who were killed in action. The wall is very meaningful, and it has brought healing to veterans and a generation that needed therapy. The book revealed many nuances of the conflict and my feelings about the war and our fellow veterans. Thank you to Kristin Hannah for a job well done.

View all my reviews

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Thank you for your service

It’s become customary to thank veterans nationwide with this terse response. Whenever I see active-duty folks in airports or supermarkets, I make it a point to walk up, extend a hand, and thank them for their service. Just this week while attending a St. Bonaventure University men’s basketball contest I walked up to a couple of ROTC cadets who were recruiting and thanked them. It’s a nice gesture, especially for veterans my age who served during the Vietnam conflict when we were routinely mocked and, in some cases, spit on.

 

Now in many villages, veteran banners are displayed on light poles and elsewhere thanking us for serving. In our community, I walk by them daily, and I like to read them and note their particular service dates and assignments. Many served in combat areas while others like myself did not, but what is common to us all is that we answered a call to serve our country. I enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve in June 1972. I volunteered after receiving a notice of pre-induction physical. My draft number was 65. I knew I was going to be called up but managed to finish a year of college prior to that event.

 

I was frightened. Who wouldn’t be? Folks were still coming home in body bags and torn up by the rigors of war. I was opposed to the Vietnam War and had recently marched in an antiwar demonstration near the campus of Oswego State. Some in our generation fled to Canada, and who could blame them? Vietnam was a war of choice that benefited the military-industrial complex far more than the citizens of either Vietnam or the United States. Was I going to move to Canada and never see my family again? That didn’t seem realistic.

 

I set out on a discovery process. I took the AFQT (Armed Forces Qualification Test). A test to join the military? I thought all they wanted was warm bodies. I looked at the Coast Guard and the US Navy. I qualified to be an Ocean Systems Technician with the USCG, but they wanted a six-year commitment. That seemed like a long time to a nineteen-year-old. The US Navy had four years of active service. I flinched at that but the Navy recruiter told me about the naval reserve. He gave me an address, and with my grandmother at my side, we drove to nearby Jamestown, New York. I met Petty Officer Leonard Tullar on that day which changed the direction of my life. He explained the “2×6” program, two years of active duty, and the rest in the active reserve. The yeoman administered a battery of qualification tests which led them to suggest that since I scored high on clerical abilities, I was uniquely qualified to be a personnel man or a hospital corpsman. I can’t remember the exact timing of everything, but I made the decision to join as a hospital corpsman and took the oath of enlistment on June 21, 1972. I was guaranteed Hospital Corpsman “A” School at Great Lakes, IL.

 

That day changed the direction of my life for the better. I grew up in a home where I was routinely told by my father that I would never amount to much, and that I didn’t have what it took to be successful. I had faced an endless stream of verbal and physical abuse, and being called to war and an uncertain future didn’t seem promising, but it was.

 

I left for recruit training on August 23, 1972, and arrived at Great Lakes with hundreds of other guys. All the guys in Company 350 and our sister Company 351 were reservists. I met guys from across the United States who like me faced peril and uncertainty with courage. In the process, we transitioned from civilians to members of the United States Navy. Our company commander, MMC Boyd, named me “Education Petty Officer.” My job was to help the slow learners learn the Uniform Code of Military Justice, first aid, nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare. We were tear-gassed, learned how to fight shipboard fires, and graduated seven weeks later on October 13.

 

We reservists didn’t get the customary two weeks’ leave after recruit training. We went right on to our “A” schools. That was a trip across the road to Hospital Corps School. We were housed for eight of our fourteen weeks in wooden barracks built for World War II. We slept in bunks in open bay barracks just like we had been in boot camp. Our “head” or bathroom was a row of sinks and six commodes that faced each other with no stalls to separate. I never got used to that. After fourteen weeks, I graduated eighth in a class of sixty-eight. The guys ahead of me had been in pre-med programs and had four years of college. We learned anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, patient care, and then some.

 

I excelled in the Navy. Everything my father had said about me wasn’t true. I wasn’t lazy, I was an overachiever. After “A” school, I served in several duty stations. First, in Albany, GA, at a dispensary, I worked labor and delivery in the newborn nursery. Then I was transferred to Groton, CT, where I served at the naval hospital as the lead corpsman for four general surgeons. I was awarded Command Sailor of the Quarter in July 1974. I left active duty in January 1975 as a Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class. I surpassed my Dad’s rank. I served two more years in the active reserve, drilling once a month on weekends and two weeks in the summer each year. I was given the option of the standby reserve for my final year. On June 21, 1978, I became a permanent civilian with an honorable discharge still hanging on a wall in our home.

 

In 2008, I returned to Great Lakes to watch my nephew graduate from recruit training. The memories were flooding back. On the wall in the gift shop that day, I spotted a quote from John F. Kennedy that sums up how I felt then and now:

 

“I can imagine no more rewarding a career. And any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile, I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction: ‘I served in the United States Navy.”
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NYSCATE Ten Years Later

I’ve been following the NYSCATE Conference on Twitter using their conference hashtag #NYSCATE22. This has become an annual event for me to attend via the Twitterverse. I last attended NYSCATE as a presenter in 2012 when I talked about how we had published a book in our digital citizenship class using Moodle and Lulu. The idea for that activity came from a presentation I had seen the year before by Adam Bellow at NYSCATE 2011. I reported on that conference for Opensource.com

Sometimes it doesn’t seem like ten years and at others it seems like an eon ago. I didn’t realize it then but that 2012 conference would be my last. I retired from public education the following year.

Attending via Twitter is an incomplete experience but from it I’ve learned that some of the buzz this year is around augmented reality and virtual reality. I’ve seen many examples of interactive whiteboards. This morning there was a talk about cyber-security by FBIjohn. I’m sure that would have been very interesting and certainly timely too. One of the presentations that got my attention was connecting classrooms globally with digital pen pals. That resonated because we did that once in the 1990’s when Franklinville Elementary connected with the Dalkey School in Dublin, Ireland. Another session that got my eye was “Promoting an inclusive and accessible learning environment.” Accessibility has become more important for me as a person with whose hearing and sight aren’t what they used to be. Here is a presentation that I would like to have seen in person but learned about on Twitter and it involved some of my favorite topics: STEM, veterans and computer science.

I recognize the names of some of this year’s presenters too. Some were colleagues at one time. Last year our family attended MakerFaire Rochester which is part of the conference too. An active life precluded attendance this year but I got an update from a new follower on Mastodon in addition to following the event on Twitter.

Thank you for the learning NYSCATE!

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Colin Powell

This week’s passing of Colin Powell invited me to reflect on the impact of him as an American icon. I strongly disagreed with the decision of the Bush administration to go to war in Iraq and I was sorry that General Powell gave testimony in the United Nations that provided the cover for that war. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein did not pose a credible threat to the integrity of the United States. I wrote letters to the Bush Administration at the time and at one point received a nice reply from the oval office.

Colin Powell became the first black Secretary of State on the United States on January 20, 2001. He became the first black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on October 1, 1989. Prior to that he was Deputy National Security advisor in the Reagan Administration. General Powell’s life was full of firsts. That’s wonderful to be sure. The larger question for me is why did it take so long for America to put a black person in those positions? Africans came to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. It took three-hundred and seventy years for one to ascend to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Surely General Powell was not the first African American to serve in our military. Why did it take so long for Black Americans to rise to general officer ranks? Who were the Buffalo Soldiers? Who were the Tuskegee Airmen?

Jackie Robinson broke the ‘color line’ in 1947. Why were there ‘Negro Leagues’? Why are there no women’s faces on our currency? Why were the original owners of the America’s denied citizenship until 1925? Why did we need a Fourteenth Amendment? Why no people of color on currency, stamps and national emblems. Slaves built the White House. Is that fact taught in our schools?

Lately there’s been lots of discussion of ‘Critical Race Theory‘ and the ‘1619 Project‘. There are folks in this country that still have a problem acknowledging our history as en-slavers and murderers of Africans and Native Americans. Those are not pleasant memories nor should they be. Acknowledging and accepting our past is the pathway to a hopeful future.

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War is not the answer

“War is not the answer,” is a bumper sticker I’ve frequently posted on my car. It’s from the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Never was that slogan nor the bumper sticker more appropriate than now. In the middle of our frantic withdrawal from Afghanistan we were horrified to learn that another terrorist attack had claimed the lives of twelve United States Marines and one United States Navy Hospital Corpsman. These thirteen lives are a postscript to the war on terror which of course has not ended terrorism. War can never end terrorism. War only enriches war profiteers and there are many of those folks in our own United States who are using the tragic deaths of the Marines and Corpsman to call for another invasion of Afghanistan.

Not surprisingly the call for more war is being led by Republican members of the US Congress. These are the same folks who got us in this mess in the first place. It was a Republican president and his administration who initiated this twenty year bloodbath of travail which has only exacerbated the world’s problems. I wish we had invested the trillions of dollars we’ve blown in Afghanistan and Iraq on peaceful purposes. Imagine the goodwill we could have created for the United States and the people of those war torn countries.

Blessed are the peacemakers,for they will be called sons of God. – Matthew 5:9

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Holding Afghanistan in the Light

More broadly, it is far past time for the United States to acknowledge that peace and real security can never be achieved through military force, and to therefore abandon the failed endless war paradigm completely.
— Read on www.fcnl.org/updates/2021-08/holding-afghanistan-light

The horrific attacks at Kabul Airport must not be used as a pretext for more war. The military industrial complex and its supporters have kept the United States in a wartime footing since 1939. The present war in Afghanistan has depleted our National treasure long enough and has done nothing to end terrorism nor advance the cause of world peace.

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Biden is being pilloried by the neocons

Afghanistan was an unwinnable war as was Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and more. It was a misadventure that was supposedly our answer the terrorist attacks of 9/11 which happened twenty years ago next month. As horrific as those attacks were invading Afghanistan and later Iraq did nothing to end international terrorism. Unfortunately it’s made it worse. Killing your enemies inevitably produces more enemies. In the past twenty years we’ve killed over two-hundred thousand Afghans. We disagree with how those folks run their country. We disagree with how they treat their citizens. The Taliban are a tragic anachronism but bombing and killing them was never a solution.

In the 1980’s when the Russians were foolish enough to try to take over that same country we provided arms and logistics to the same folks who eventually attacked us on September 11, 2001. Afghanistan was blow-back from our misguided efforts to defeat the Russians. The only Americans who have won in Afghanistan were the arms manufacturers who sold the weapons we expended their in our pursuit of the Taliban. We made some friends with some of the people and propped up regimes that were friendly to us but in the end our efforts were for naught. Thousands of American soldiers, sailors, marines and civilian contractors were killed. The emotional toll on those survivors on both sides is incalculable. Trillions of dollars were wasted and no lasting peace was achieved.

In the short run, the Republicans who got us mired in these conflicts in the first place are going to make political hay with Joe Biden. They’re going to insist he’s not acting responsibly and that this is a major strategic error. The truth is that Joe Biden is saving trillions more of our national resources and saving thousands of American military personnel from dying in a war that was never winnable. My hat is off to President Biden because he’s got the balls to say “Enough is enough.”

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Goodbye Afghanistan – Thank you Joe!

Afghanistan is one more instance of failed United States foreign policies which highlight the use and abuse of military force to achieve or fail to achieve political objectives. We invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Over 3000 Americans died that day. Since that day we invaded the country and until now 2,448 American soldiers have lost their lives, 3,846 civilian contractors, Afghan national and military police 66,000. Over 20,000 Americans have been wounded in action. The toll of PTSD is much higher and will continue to scar our veterans for years to come. The cost of the war is approximately $6.5 trillion dollars and the healthcare costs of Afghan and Iraq US veterans is projected to cost $2 trillion dollars. Ever since the Bush administration which began this mistaken adventure we’ve been told that all this happened to keep us safe from another attack on American soil.

According to one source over 240,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001. I wish we had all the money that has been wasted in this boondoggle which benefited war profiteers but did next to nothing to keep us safer or to promote peace in the region and throughout the world. As George Carlin once said, “fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.” The Republicans are criticizing Joe Biden for ending the debacle but it was they who started this and no one until now had the courage to end it. Bravo President Biden for ending the twenty-year war in Afghanistan which did little or nothing for the lasting peace and stability of the region.

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Happy Birthday Dad

Today is my Dad’s birthday. He’d be 94 today. Born December 3,1926 at his childhood home. He was the last of five children my grandmother had. She lost two of those children to still birth. Dad was nine year’s younger than his brother Wendell and six year’s younger than his sister Virginia. He was by all accounts spoiled as many “babies” of families are.

I’ve got pictures of him as a child living with my grandparents. Most of my recollections of Dad’s childhood as he saw it came from stories he shared with me as a young man growing up. We share the same first and last name and many of the same looks especially in adulthood. His stories nearly always painted a comic and tragic childhood that was marred at times by my grandparents squabbles.

Dad graduated high school in 1944 and enlisted in the US Navy. He went to recruit training at Great Lakes IL and later radio school in Chicago at a junior college that the government had taken over during World War II. Eventually he shipped out to naval base San Diego where he contracted rheumatic fever. That illness saved him from deployment to the Pacific fleet and perhaps harm from the war. He convalesced at a naval hospital in Corona CA and was eventually honorably discharged hone in 1946.

Like many returning GI’s he got a chance to enroll in college. He was admitted to the University of Buffalo Dental School eventually graduating in 1952. It was while he was a student there that he met my Mom who ate dinner at the same boardinghouse he lived at. They fell in love and were married in 1951. I came along fifteen months later followed by three siblings one of which died soon after birth.

We had a good life together marred at times by Dad’s bouts with depression. Back then very few people understood depression as they do today. Though undiagnosed I believe Dad was bipolar. When he was up he was great but when down he was miserable and violent at times. We all suffered but I think he suffered the worst as he was truly remorseful for his bouts. I know that he loved us very deeply though at times his behavior belied it.

Being most like him we frequently clashed especially as I grew older. At one point I moved away from the house for a week or more after one of the more violent outbursts. Relief came when I graduated high school and enrolled at college. Dad frequently demeaned me growing up. He told me that I would never rise to the professional ranks like he did. That’s quite damaging to the psyche of a younger person but now as a much older adult I can see that this was borne of his own severe insecurities. His frequent attacks on my integrity left me more determined than ever to excel.

Like him I got drafted and decided to join the US Navy where I served as a hospital corpsman eventually rising to the rank of third class petty officer in less than two years. I was named Command Sailor of the Quarter at one point thanks to the relentless drive for excellence and perfection. I got some leave after graduating from Hospital Corps school and had made no plans to visit my parents who were living on the west coast. I got a phone call from Dad begging me to visit and I’m glad I pocketed my pride and took the trip. I spent a week with Dad and Mom in northern California where they lived. It was the best week Dad and I had as adults. Then it was over and I was returning to the east coast and a new duty station. I can still remember that morning standing in the departure area of the Eureka airport. We embraced and he told me how much he loved me and how proud of me he was. I told him I loved him too and then turned and walked to the aircraft. I had a huge lump in my throat and tears welled in my eyes as I looked out the window of the plane toward Mom and Dad in the terminal.

Little did I realize then that would be the last time I saw him. He died after a short illness five months later. His life was cut short at forty-six. Time and therapy has healed the wounds and I forgave Dad long ago. I think of him often. I see him in our children. I walk by his childhood home often. Our children attended the same school he did and graduated from there too. Happy Birthday Dad!