Quadsville

Personally, I'm a little bitter, too, about some of it, but I am grateful to those who have served. There have been wars we got involved in all my life. Some seem more justified than others in hindsight, but that is not to downplay those who put their lives on the line and not only for wars now.

I tagged along after my ex during the Viet Nam war, didn't understand at the time the politics behind it, and don't want to get into the controversies about it now. As a military wife, it was difficult but made lots of friends, but it was only years later that it hit me how most of our friends at home got college deferments and/or started families and got out of it. It would have been unthinkable to try to dodge the draft, we didn't even consider that as an option. Plus our returning veterans who survived and did not dodge the draft got really shabby treatment, and many had a terrible time finding jobs. My ex's employer had to take him back because of some law. Others didn't even have that protection.

In addition, if you did have a college degree, you were almost certain to be put into officers' training. Generally, some of those were safer, had a much better deal, more prestige, they all high or low had responsibility, but officers do have to make the tougher decisions and just follow orders themselves.

I worked and had 2 babies during that time so was a little better off, but those were still hard years. It was awful the basic pay we all got at the low grades and how some had to live, how people weren't very kind, some locals called them (and us) military trash.

It tore at my heartstrings when one wife brought me her child's outgrown shoes hoping to sell them to me for enough to buy something for supper. Shortly before that, I had taken her to a base hospital 20 miles away when she suffered a miscarriage; we couldn't use the local hospitals or doctors unless we paid ourselves which was impossible except one time I did to get another opinion. I didn't need the shoes but bought them anyway. I also tried to share whatever extra we had, and some of the others did, too. It was worse than welfare people have it now.

It was mainly the poor and underprivileged who got drafted unless they felt a strong sense of duty and patriotism. Some seem to like the challenge and opportunities. My grade school classmate whom I never really got to know has his name on the wall. Now it is still the poor and underprivileged who see military service as an eventual way to a better life if they survive it. Many of the reservists who signed up to pay for educations never imagined they'd have to serve in Desert Storm, in addition to what it is like now, several tours of duty.

I've got lots of letters from those who served in WWII. They were very decent boys, totally unprepared for the horrors they would face. My father was an officer, but was gone for almost the whole first 5 years of my life. After so many more years of it and what happens now once you sign the dotted line, forced inoculations that made them sick, following questionable orders, Agent Orange, all of it, I'm not real keen on any of my grandchildren serving unless it has to be and is more fair across the board which it is not now even though the pay and family benefits are a little better now.