Posting #22: The Story of What It Means to Serve…in my own experience

The Story:  The tale of what it means to be in the armed forces emphasizes noble and selfless sacrifice.  This sacrifice includes frequent moving, job changes, inconsistent healthcare, and deployment to war.  Being at war, the story goes, means always being in combat, so the “ultimate sacrifice” looms large.

My take on the story

My Cold War experience as an Army “BRAT,” as an ROTC cadet, and as an active-duty Military Intelligence officer stationed in what was then West Germany verifies a lot of the story.  But I don’t think being in the armed forces is entirely about sacrifice, nor is sacrifice unique to that profession.  In my experience, any job entails sacrifice: of time, money, and/or physical and mental health.  I have outlined in many of my previous posts the costs and benefits of the military job and they do not always imply sacrifice.

The key giveaway about the story Americans are told is that being in the military means being at war which means constant sacrifice: always being in combat, always killing the enemy, and always suffering mental injury as a consequence.  Those components of the story are disseminated in films, fiction, and non-fiction.  I have learned otherwise as a researcher, not as a soldier or an American citizen, which can explain the story’s persistent “always.” 

What the research tells us

For instance, according to researchers, the vast majority of servicepeople during war do not see combat, do not kill, and do not suffer mental injury. As for combat,  Kara Dixon Vuic has said that the vast majority of men who were drafted in World War II did not see combat action; Vietnam veteran and advocate Michael Kelley writes that less than 30% of men in the Vietnam War “ever saw combat of any sort during their war.” Now that more and more of American wars are being fought by private civilian defense contractors, it is likely that even fewer servicepeople will engage in combat. (See Posting #10)

In terms of killing, military historian and veteran SLA Marshall asserted after World War II in Men Against Fire about the “Greatest Generation” that “In any given body of American infantry in combat, no more than one-fifth, and generally as few as 15 percent, had ever fired their weapons at an enemy, indeed ever fired their weapons at all.”  Consequently, men had to be trained to kill using Dave Grossman’s theory of “killology,” which trains servicepeople “to embrace their responsibility to kill.” Grossman says that training meant 90% of men in combat during the Vietnam War fired their weapons, although he cannot say whether they actually killed or wounded their human targets.

Finally, according to the National Center for PTSD, veterans experience mental injury at only a slightly higher rate than civilians:

PTSD is slightly more common among Veterans than civilians. At some point in their life, 7 out of every 100 Veterans (or 7%) will have PTSD. In the general population, 6 out of every 100 adults (or 6%) will have PTSD in their lifetime. PTSD is also more common among female Veterans (13 out of 100, or 13%) versus male Veterans (6 out of 100, or 6%). 

My point is this.  The story of sacrifice—via combat, killing, and mental injury—is promoted to accomplish two things: first, to validate the wars (and their financial costs) the United States engages in by, second, making individual servicepeople into long-suffering and sacrificial heroes.  Surely there are many who have sacrificed.  Yet sacrifice—if that’s what we call it—is not unique to what I know of the military.

My Childhood.  As a child in a large Army family, I didn’t comprehend much sacrifice.  We moved often—ten times by the time I left for college and more afterwards—but that was our normal, so I knew nothing different. (What was abnormal was to vacation or go out to eat.)  To me, moving meant settling into a new house and, like a puzzle, figuring out how all eleven of us (eventually) and the old furniture would fit there.  It meant my performing as the new kid in school and in the neighborhood, a performance I relished.  To me, moving was adventure, something I craved from all the fiction-reading I did, books like the Nancy Drew series, Harriet the Spy, and The Jungle Book. 

Now, as an adult who has moved nearly 20 times (at my own expense) as an academic nomad and many of those with children, I know that the dozen moves my original family made in my childhood were much, much harder on my parents than on me.  Dare I call moving “sacrifice”?  Although the Army paid for a moving company to pack our belongings and load and ship them, my parents—usually my mother—had to wrangle us kids.  One time it meant my (pregnant) mother weathering a 9-day ship crossing of the northern Atlantic with seven children under the age of 13 as my father went to the Vietnam War the first time, or, on his return, us eight kids being divided up so that I and two of my sisters were sent to our fraternal grandparents’ in Florida for a couple of weeks during the move.  My sacrifice was limited to bed-ridden motion sickness on the ship and sun poisoning in Florida, but I expect my parents were troubled by the many moving parts of the moves, not least of which was the chance that my father would be wounded or killed during his two war stints. To me, as I got older it was much more what the move signaled—my father’s job-changing, especially the two times he went to war—that was distressing and not the move itself.

ROTC. As children of a career Army officer, I and my siblings were, it turns out, privileged—and not experiencing sacrifice—when it came to taxpayers paying for our college educations.  We all were good students, but our father serving, I have learned, advantaged us so that seven of us went to college at taxpayer expense. (See Posting #6.)  When my two older sisters and I went to college, the service academies were not open to females, so we found alternative ways to have our college educations paid for.  My sisters both were part of the (very expensive) Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing, a four-year program that sent them to the college of their choice for the first two years and then for two years to Walter Reed.  They also were paid a salary while in college.  I won a 4-year Army ROTC scholarship that paid for my tuition, fees, books, and a $100 monthly stipend at the college of my choice, which turned out to be a (very expensive) small liberal arts college in North Carolina.  The next four siblings—three brothers and a sister—won appointments to (very expensive) West Point, though the fourth left after two years without incurring any obligation.

My being involved in ROTC meant, in addition to the three (exceedingly challenging) academic courses I took every term, attending a credit-earning, one hour Military Science class weekly and participating in drill/physical education for two hours weekly.  As I recall, in the class we studied US military history, tactics, and strategy, even when probably half of my classmates would become physicians, not tacticians, in the Army.  Drill included exercise like running on trails and running in formation, strength building like sit-ups and push-ups, marksmanship, obstacle courses, rappelling, and slide for life.  I had not studied military history before, even as someone who’d been raised in the Army, so that made my brain hurt.  Frankly, the course grades might have boosted my suffering GPA, but they were not included.  I was already committed to physical fitness, however, so the Drill component was more fun than challenging.  Because I was only in the third class that included women at my college and one of fewer than a handful of women in ROTC, I often find myself featured, in uniform, in photos of the era.  Is this feeling like a token sacrifice?  

My ROTC scholarship covered everything but room and board, so I worked as a paid cashier for several hours most days of the week in the dining hall and always had summer jobs to pay those expenses.  It was clear that I was on my own financially because my parents, who “pinched pennies” on my father’s small salary with six other children at home, could not contribute.  For the first college summer I continued what I had done during two high school summers, to work for the federally-funded Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. When my plans in my second college summer to work for YCC in New Mexico fell through at the last minute and I was on my way to spending my junior year in Ireland where I would need a healthy bank account, I was desperate enough to think selling bibles door-to-door was similar to the door-to-door greeting-card-selling I’d done as a twelve-year-old.  Fortunately, before that sacrifice of selling bibles happened, I was offered an au pair position in the DC area.  Is having to pay for my room and board sacrifice?

ROTC also included a 6-week, summer Advanced Camp at Fort Bragg (AKA Fort Liberty now), North Carolina. This was supposed to happen after the junior year of college but, because I wasn’t returning from Ireland in time, I attended the camp following my graduation in 1979. It was beastly hot and humid in the pine barrens of eastern North Carolina during the summer, with ticks and chiggers abounding, so sleeping in bunkbeds and sharing a bathroom with thirty-nine other female cadets from all over the South in a World War II era, un-air-conditioned barracks was pretty miserable.  So was rising from the bunkbed at 4:30 in the morning.  I suppose the barracks and the early-rising might be called sacrifice.

Equally miserable, as one of a very few female cadets and someone who would go out for long runs after the day’s exercises, was being sexually harassed by the huge numbers of men in the 82d Airborne Division.  I suppose the harassment could be called sacrifice. 

Because we were on an immense, active Army post—reportedly the largest in the world—that had the facilities to prepare vast numbers of young men for war, camp involved even more drill than on campus, including firing live ammunition from M-16s on a target range and also pretend-war.  I was highly successful on the firing range, achieving the highest possible ranking as I recall. 

But the pretend-war made the greatest impression on me, making me fully aware of the potentially sacrificial, mortal game I was playing.  Each cadet took a turn leading our unit in pretend-war.  Just as I had been successful at drill on campus, my fitness and self-discipline had translated into success at camp.  So in my young-person hubris, I assumed I would excel at the pretend-war leading, too.  But as I led my unit, running, in an attack through the pine barrens, a cartridge from a fired blank hit me.  The relatively slight impact from another cadet’s weapon sent adrenaline through my body—an uncontrollable physical sensation I know well now when I hike at exposed heights—and, continuing to yell out orders, I sobbed.  Nearly fifty years later, the visceral impact on me is indelible: despite my throat being paralyzed by my sobbing and my body weakened by the flush of adrenaline, I still was able to run and to issue commands. Even though I was not in danger of losing my life, this experience was trauma-inducing.  But was this sacrifice?

Active duty. Assigned to Military Intelligence (MI), after summer camp I was sent to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, an old Army post on the border with Mexico.  As hot and humid as Fort Bragg/Liberty was, Fort Huachuca was hot, arid, and windy.  I was sent there for my Basic MI training and expected afterward to be sent to my specialty training at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. Because my ultimate assignment to Panama was cancelled, however, and I was on my way instead to West Germany, I ended up spending the duration of my 6-month training—Basic plus Specialty—at Fort Huachuca.  

Because it was in the remote desert of southern Arizona, one might have imagined the post as a hardship duty station, a sacrifice, say.  My partner and I certainly considered our separation a sacrifice, with he, in graduate school in Rochester, NY and I, doing military training in one of the southern-most points of the United States.  Neither of us had the money to spend on frequent long-distance phone calls or flights; my first-year salary was less than $14,000 and he made almost nothing as a student.  And so, after a few months of separation, he decided to leave graduate school and we decided to marry so he could accompany me (at taxpayer expense) to my duty station.  We went to a Justice of the Peace for the ceremony at the last minute, so I skipped classes and our two witnesses—pictured in our single Polaroid photo—were complete strangers who worked at the court. (I was reprimanded by my commanding officer for going AWOL.)  I suppose not having much money or a formal wedding that would produce gifts could be called a sacrifice.

Once we arrived in the Frankfurt area of West Germany, where I was stationed, I began to feel more intensely the pressures of my first full-time job.  Although I had always prioritized physical fitness, the early hour of my unit’s daily physical training—starting at 6 am—was startling since I had to rise at 5 am.  That early start was compounded by the late ending—usually 7 pm—all of which made me especially exhausted, reading as I did for most of the workday.  Moreover, I frequently was sent to courses with other NATO allies and to weeks-long courses on new technologies at places like Grafenwoehr, a livefire US Army training area located near the border with what was then Czechoslovakia, a Warsaw Pact nation and Soviet ally.  My sudden immersion into what I had been studying mostly in theory during ROTC and MI training in Fort Huachuca was shocking and, dare I say it, sacrifice? 

What was most shocking, though, was being in a location where war had and was happening, albeit a “Cold” one, since I was there well before the Soviet Union’s end and the deconstruction of the Berlin wall.  I had lived in southern Germany as a child in the mid-sixties and had observed the country’s still trying to recover from its past war, but I was obviously more conscious of living IN the Cold War as an active-duty adult. My job as an Intelligence officer was to study how the Soviets and East Germans—then at most a few hundred miles away—prepared for war, since we Americans didn’t have handbooks outlining their combat tactics.  Such study made me acutely aware of the hazards of my position in West Germany.  

But application of my study mattered even more, so that “pretend-war”—the activity that impacted me so deeply at summer camp—was no longer “pretend.”  The possibility for war was everywhere, not only in reading in my windowless vault the daily classified evidence of the Soviet and East German forces training near the Inner German border, and my study of international relations in a graduate degree I pursued while in Germany, but also monthly war practice “in the field.”  This monthly, unpredictable deployment would begin with a “Lariat Advance” alert phone call after midnight, so we could not know whether or not the East Germans and Soviets had actually crossed the border into the Fulda Gap.  Those of us who lived off-post were to get to the kaserne immediately, where enlisted people were preparing the vehicles and we officers were to prepare materials to go into the vehicles.  As I recall, because we did not know whether or not we were at war, we all felt great urgency and anxiety about getting to our location and set up—usually deep in the German forest—within a few hours of the dreaded alert phone call.  Working in a cold, collapsible office hauled out to the forest by a truck, sleeping in a cold, ill-lit tent for weeks without running water or bathroom facilities, and often hand-writing a paper for my graduate studies were hard…but was it sacrificial?

Civilian work. By the time I decided to do PhD work after the age of 40, I had: completed my obligation to the US Army, during which time I earned a graduate degree in International Relations; worked full-time for a company in England that analyzed the market performance of consumer goods; taught writing part-time at 4 different universities and colleges; moved house a dozen times; and given birth to and raised three children. At the time, I didn’t think of these activities as sacrifice.  Instead, I thought then that I was learning and adventuring and doing fulfilling work.  Eventually, I realized I had been earning too little, we had children to send to college, and my future retirement income would suffer, a sacrifice not uncommon to people who can’t or choose not to work full-time.  Among other reasons—like craving to do research and to continue working with young adults through teaching—I realized I needed to work full-time and so opted to acquire a doctorate, the terminal degree for college professors.          

From my long point of view now, this latest period of my work-life—the last nearly thirty years—has been the most sacrificial.  This is not to say I didn’t gain anything from the experience or that I wasn’t privileged in being free to take the time to acquire a degree.  It’s to say instead that I—and my family members—had to pay a price for those gains.  

·      First, I had to be accepted into a graduate program, which is challenging now that Humanities programs across the country are being reduced and consequently, fewer professors are needed.  

·      Second, I had to earn the degree, which took a lot of time over many years: a commute five times a week; a 20-hours-per-week job on campus to contribute to the family budget, which also meant teaching (e.g. preparing and assessing outside of the 20 hours); and five years of nonstop taking courses, researching, and writing a dissertation/book. 

·      Third, I had to find employment after graduating, which is exceptionally precarious as higher education changes dramatically, especially as it deemphasizes the Humanities. 

·      Fourth, I had to find secure employment, which in higher education means a tenure-track position. When I was in college, 75% of college professors were tenure-track.  Now, secure employment is rare, so that about 25% of professors are tenure-track. 

·      Fifth, once I won a tenure-track position, I had to earn tenure within six years, which meant teaching according to my tenured colleagues’ and students’ preferences, carving out time to do required research and publishing (which incurs a lot of rejection and resubmission), and contributing my time to the running of the college.  Meeting the expectations required tiptoeing around the preferences of colleagues and students, because they would be the ones judging whether or not I had earned tenure.  If they judged I had not, I would have been required to leave my college and would have been unable to find another job as a college professor.  That would have signaled the futility of my 13-year pursuit.  So I tiptoed.

Up to and beyond earning tenure, my days were long, I worked at night and on weekends for about 60 hours a week, I was paid very little (starting at about $50K and ending at $90K) but had solid benefits…and I felt fortunate to have the job I did.  I was juggling a lot of responsibilities, so in my stress I sometimes would forget to pick up a child from the babysitter, neglect to write an important family event into my planner, have my doctor recommend I take an anti-depressant, experience a heart condition, and drink way too much caffeine.    

So what?

The story Americans are told says that sacrifice is the key trait of serving in the military, the willingness to offer the “ultimate sacrifice”—one’s life—being central.  As my life’s experience suggests—as an Army dependent, as an Army ROTC cadet, as an active-duty officer, and as a scholar of American war culture—working in or for the United States involves sacrifice of some sort.  Being a military serviceperson is not unique in that regard.    

(Putting on my war culture scholar’s hat here, though, I’m going to draw a couple of big conclusions from my own experience.)

The tenet that servicepeople sacrifice nobly and always, focused as it is on the individual, “saintly” serviceperson, is a smokescreen for the reverential and unquestioning attitude toward the massive American defense machine.  Clearing these smokescreens is a big part of why I write these SoldierGirl posts. Certainly, American servicepeople are killed in the course of their duties, whether in combat or not.  I would argue, though, that, especially given the distance from battle gained by technology (e.g. drones), the declining mortality rate in combat, and that American wars more and more are being fought by civilian defense contractors, that central tenet of sacrifice no longer holds. 

If that is the case, on what can Americans base their reverence?