VETERAN’S ADMINISTRATION
On Wednesday I went to the Veteran’s Administration Hospital just down the road from Swannanoa in the Oteen section of Asheville. It is a huge hospital which serves veterans of the United States armed forces in all of western North Caroline, many veterans have to drive hours to get here, I live right next door.
My reason for going needs some explanation. When I turned 18, shortly after growing up in India, I was registered with the selective service and given a selective service card with my number on it. I was new to the country but understood that every young man was required to serve in the United States armed service at some point and so after graduating from Wooster College in 1959 at the age of 22, and not wanting to go to graduate school and with no other plans for my life I decided to go into the Army and do my two years service and get it over with.
It was only years later when I discovered that no one my age that I knew, none of my friends, had served in the armed services that I realized that I could have avoided serving. I was clueless.
But when I volunteered for two years in the army, the minimum requirement I thought, the Korean War when so many were drafted was over and the Vietnam War had not yet begun. It never occurred to me that I might actually have to go to war.
And it turned out that in many ways I was lucky. Because all of my friends my age and anyone younger were, soon after my discharge in 1961, contacted by the selective service to fight in Vietnam. Trump has his bone spurs and almost all my friends were forced to get deferments for academic studies or teaching or other protected professions. Some went in the National Guard. All, including my much younger brother, Richard, were determined not to get killed in what they perceived as an unjust war. By this time I had served and was under no stress, having served my time.
There is much more to my military service than this. But it is enough to say that when when I read or hear, “Thank you for your service” or “honoring our heroes”, given as a badge of honor to veterans, I know that I deserve no thanks at all. I served in a medical battalion in Germany that was more Catch 22 than heroic, disliking every mind numbing moment and able to recite every day how many more days I had, 197 and a wake up, the last day not counting because I was getting out. I use to wonder how much I would have to get paid to reenlist in the army, even for one year, and settled on $1 million. I was station in Germany and loved being in Germany, it was the sixteen hours a day in the barracks that I couldn’t stand. The army is totally top down, totally bureaucratic, more totalitarian than the Soviet Union that I was supposed to be protecting the USA from. It was all male, all drab olive green, all mindless barked commands, I couldn’t stand it. Don’t thank me for my service.
The relief I felt on the day I was discharged was enormous. I was never going to come near the army again.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 