Why I Admire Military Service

Flashback. Early 60s.

I’m in a pickup truck with my dad and Leniso Montoya. I’m maybe seven years old.

Leniso was one of those guys that was one day younger than God, but looked older. He smoked roll you own cigarettes made from Prince Albert Tobacco. We’re driving up to the mountains where my Uncle has the sheep camp and they’re on a supply run.

They stopped in Antonito and purchased a bottle of Old Quaker whiskey. The bottle is being passed back and forth as we drove (not recommended and I didn’t get any). The two men are talking about their days in the Army.

Leniso is talking about being in the mud of the trenches in WW I. Dad is telling about waiting for Russians that never came.

Later, I’d hear my uncle talk about how he lost his leg. He glossed over the details. But he groused that while in the army hospital, he and the rest of the American wounded got sherbet. The wounded German POWs got ice cream.

And a cousin who came back from ‘Nam and wouldn’t talk about it. Years later, after I joined the fraternity of combat soldiers, he’d spend hours telling me all about that green hell.

Something was happening at that young age I didn’t catch. I yardstick was being put into my life. A yardstick that measured me against them.

I’m talking here about military service. To become my idea of what I felt constituted a man, I had to put on my counties uniform. I had to raise my hand and take the oath. And only then did I feel like I measured up.

I had to learn to do what they did. To stick my hide out over the line and to push myself to achieve the impossible.

So, to this day, I admire anyone who put on the uniform. It doesn’t matter which branch they went into or what they did. For that matter, it’s doesn’t even matter if you’re a man or a woman. Putting on the uniform, taking the oath, puts you in a whole separate category in my book.