Happy birthday, US Army!

On Saturday, the US Army will celebrate its 250th anniversary. It is a year older than the country it defends. In all honesty, I didn't enjoy my two years and a day of active duty in what was formally known as the Army of the United States -- the draftee army, as opposed to the Regular Army. But shockingly -- to me, anyhow -- it was one of the most important things I ever did, because most of my writing life has been about the military, or anyhow about war.

I entered as a Private E-1 on January 6, 1956, and exited as a Specialist E-4 on January 6, 1958. (1956 was a Leap Year, so my two-year hitch lasted 731 days. I spent about two months in Infantry Basic at Fort Dix, NJ, followed by seven months at the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, NC, followed by fifteen months at Headquarters, US Army Communications Zone, in Orleans, France.

Orleans was good duty. The US was in recession in 1958, and I was enthralled by Europe, so I took my discharge at Orleans and went to work a couple days later at the Overseas Weekly in Frankfurt, Germany, a newspaper selling to American GIs in Germany, France, and Italy. So in many ways that was a continuation of my Army career. I came home that October, and never held another full-time job.

I was with the US military in Vietnam for a few months in 1964, at which time I predicted we'd still be there in ten years, which was more or less correct. (We pulled out US ground forces in 1973 and Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975.) By the time we invaded Iraq, I was feeling rather out of the loop, so I signed up for a master's "programme" in War in the Modern World at King's College London. One of our assignments was to start a blog -- this blog. I'm still at it. Never really a soldier but still fascinated by soldiering.