Why the Army

On my Friday Feast this week I was asked to write a sentence with something true about myself. I metioned that if not for my health (I was diagnosed with diabetes at 18) I would have likely enlisted in the United States Army, at least the National Guard or Reserves.

As to why....

Honor. Discipline. Duty. Family.

My father served in the U.S. Army from 1967 to 1992. He enlisted and went to officer's candidate school at Fort Sill, OK. He attended artillery school in Germany and was deployed with the 173rd Airborne Infantry to Vietnam where he worked as a forward observer (meaning he was with the soldiers as the one with a radio calling in where to fire artillery and have planes drop bobmbs and shoot missles. He stayed active in the national guard and the army reserves through the Gulf War in 1991. By that time he had reached the rank of Major.

His father, Henry S. Christopher, Jr. was also in the army. He dropped out of high school at age 16 and enlisted before World War II. Grandaddy was a Pearl Harbor survivor and became a sergeant in the Air Force when the Army Air Corps separated from the Army as it's own military branch. He also served during the Korean War.

I feel that I would have a great deal more discipline physically and emotionally had I gone through military training.

There is honor in serving your country in the defense of the ideals that make it the great place that it is. My life would be sustantially different had I been able to serve. I can not say if I would still be active now. I likely would have been in Iraq in 1991 when I was watching the war on TV after college classes one night in January.