As
a child I remember playing war with my battalions
of
toy soldiers. There were some baby-boomers my age
who
did the same. Most of our fathers had served in the
military
during World War II and Korea. And what red
blooded
American boy child didn’t want to grow up to
be
just like dad?
Had
I been native to Germany or Japan, I’m petty sure I
would
have chosen a more passive profession to admire.
No
child wants to be on the loosing side. And lets face it,
kids
my age had not yet developed a more mature and
realistic
outlook on the terrifying realities of war.
Anyway,
with all my romanticized fantasies of life in the
military,
I enlisted in the Army at the naive and tender age
of
seventeen. I managed to make it through the intense rigors
of
basic training at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. And after
advanced
training in personnel management, I was shipped
overseas
to Germany and my first permanent duty station.
It
was early 1965, and as it turned out I was one lucky guy
having
been assigned to a unit in Europe rather than to one in
Southeast
Asia. As history now shows, by 1973 more than
50,000
American lives were to be lost in the Vietnam War.
Granted,
my unit, the 14th Armored Cavalry, was in a Cold
War
stand-off with the Soviet Bloc. And while militarily
posted
as a deterrent to Communist aggression, our duty
to
God and Country, for most of us, turned out to be a far
less
fatal game.
For
me, and many other GIs stationed in the European theater
at
that time, saluting passing officers, typing unit orders, sub-
mitting
daily Morning Reports, drinking beer and dancing with
frauleins
on the economy, and keeping one’s hands out of your
pockets
while on duty, turned out to be a lot less perilous and
stressful
than Vietnam or our father’s wars before us, more like
child’s
play of my youthful days, only in uniform, I’d say.
Chris
Hanch 11-25-17
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