Looking Back 50 Years

50 years ago, at 17, I held up my right hand and swore an oath to protect the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Served five years as an armor crewman with three deployments to West Germany, and came home to start my civilian life. I served with a number of men who fought in Vietnam and who earned my utmost respect for what they had done, and gone through.

Until recently I never felt my service accounted for much. Never fired my weapon in anger, and while I had been shot at a couple of times it had been during training.

To celebrate this milestone I posted the following on Facebook.

50 years ago on July 30, 1976, I boarded a bus for Pittsburgh, PA. The first leg on an adventure that would find me traveling to Germany three times to stand with my brothers against the threat of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact.

Fifty years later the wall that separated East Germany from the west is gone. I’ve grown heavier, my hair has turned white, and my steps are not as assured as those of the bright eyed 17 year old I once was. But I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.

I learned things about myself, the world around me, and those who stood with me that no amount of formal education could ever replicate. I’m honored and thankful to have served my country.

The response was overwhelming. But one really stood out and it reassured me I had done the right thing and made a difference no matter how small it might have been.

I’ve been thanked for my service in the past, but nothing brought it home to me like a comment from a man who had been born in Berlin in 1961. Who managed to leave in 1979 to come to the United States. A sincere thank you from someone who everyday of their childhood lived under the threat of a Soviet takeover had it not been for those of us who stood firm in the defense of a people we didn’t even know.

It reminded me of the family I met in Germany who took us into their home when our equipment broke down during field exercises. They fed us, helped keep us warm, and sincerely thanked us for just being there and doing what we were doing.

I’ve always been a private person, rarely sharing my feelings with anyone but those closest to me. An attitude in sharp contrast to my desire to build an audience for my writing, but it is something I’m going to try to remedy in the future. I’m going to start sharing stories from my past, some are funny, some are not. But they’ll offer a snapshot into the events that shaped who I have become.