I first started recounting my experiences in the military for the benefit of Auspice and others, who enjoyed my tales of weirdness and hijinkery in various ASA and MI companies, but as time passed and I got closer to the last decade of my career, the story stopped being nearly as amusing and became more depressing than not. A big part of that, of course, is because after about twenty years of looking back on that sad, depressed young soldier, I understand him - and the people who were desperately trying to get him out of their unit - better.

In retrospect, it seems obvious that joining the Army was a mistake fueled by depression and aggravated by stubbornness, a mistake repeated towards the end when I dragged out my outprocessing until pretty much the entire chain of command was frothing at the mouth. Which, of course, is what I wanted, and I won't deny I got quite a bit of satisfaction out of old-soldiering the whole deal - following orders with excruciating literalness, refusing to go along with the program in anyway that would make their lives easier...anything to drag it out for another month, collect another weekend's worth of drill pay, and see their blood pressure visibly increasing. Knowing that a lot of my subordinates thought I was getting screwed contributed to the stubbornness.

The truth, however, is that any rational cadre would have wanted me gone: I was fat, always on the edge of the appearance standard, and largely uninterested in what the official line on being an NCO was all about. I had my own line: master the technical aspect of your job, take care of your troops, and everything else was bullshit. Somehow I wonder how I made it through BNCOC, much less past the E-6 promotion board - actually, no, I don't wonder. That promotion board was purely administrative, and on paper I was a perfectly adequate buck sergeant by MI standards - highly educated, very experienced, and with a bumper crop of tactical experience. Not the kind of NCO you saw a lot of in the Reserves. Still, it wasn't enough to save me in the wake of the First Gulf War, especially after an NCO efficiency report that made it look as if I killed and ate second lieutenants in the few moments I could spare from being insubordinate and plotting mutiny. I refused to sign it, for all the good that it did me, and a few months later I was turfed out into the Individual Ready Reserve, and a few months later I fell off their lists and onto Civvy Street for good.

Now I'm too old for the Army Reserve, possibly too old (and sick) for the Guard, though I'd still give it a shot if I had the chance. Hard to believe they couldn't find something for a Russian/German/Spanish linguist sporting a K3 trailer to do, even if he's in his mid-50s.

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