From Farm Boy to Marine
Although it was peacetime, the draft was still on. I began to envy some of my classmates who were in various phases and branches of military service. If I hung around I might be eventually drafted myself. So, why not go in and get it over with? And, I must admit, military service was a way of avoiding decision about what I wanted to do.

I thought about volunteering for the draft, which would mean two years in the Army. But San Diego and the Marine Corps sounded more glamorous than the Army’s Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Besides, how else would I ever get to see the Pacific Ocean? So, I enlisted in the Marines for three years, which was an option in those days.

Boot camp was tough—-not so much physically, I have always maintained. It was the regimentation that I found toughest to take. I did manage to fire expert with the M-1 rifle. It was probably my proudest achievement to that point in my life.

At the end of that grueling period, we received our orders and I began to learn first-hand the value of education. We were all to go through another four weeks of infantry training at Camp Pendleton before going to a specialized field of training. The high school dropouts were to go to artillery training. The rest of us, with high school degrees and presumably more mentally alert, were assigned to either Naval Aviation Schools (Marine aviation personnel are trained at Navy schools) or in the case of six of us, to Radio Operators School in San Diego. I was pleased with this forthcoming assignment. But first, it was another month or so at Camp Pendleton for infantry training.

About midway through infantry training, I had an epiphany. It was Sunday morning and nearly everyone else in that infantry training company was on liberty. I stayed behind. As I was cleaning my M-1 and shining my boots it dawned on me that I had gone through some pretty trying times and had proven that I could take this stuff. If I could do this, maybe there were some other things I could do.

I began thinking that some of my classmates were carrying books over the UW’s Bascom Hill while I was carrying an M-1 over the hills of Camp Pendleton. My classmates were surrounded by gorgeous UW co-eds while I was surrounded by not-so-gorgeous teen-aged Marines. My classmates were listening to lectures on chemistry, English, and who knows what else while I was listening to lectures on how to stay alive in combat. I decided at that moment that if I ever got out of here, I was going to the University of Wisconsin, the only college I would ever consider going to. But first, there was the not-so-little matter of completing that three-year enlistment. To a teenager, three years is forever.

Radio Operators School in San Diego went well—-I managed to be top of the class. I figured that if I was going to get through the University of Wisconsin I had better make sure I got through the Marines’ Radio Operators School. The last two years of my enlistment were rather boring as a radio operator with Headquarters Squadron of the 2nd Marine Air Wing at Cherry Point, North Carolina. We occasionally went on maneuvers down at Camp LeJeune. And I was temporarily assigned to the radio room in the bowels of Cherry Point’s control tower. I got promoted to corporal and tried to occupy my spare time constructively. The Corps takes pride in providing educational opportunities for its Marines. Instructors from North Carolina State University offered college level courses on the base. I took a couple of courses and did well, proving to myself I could compete with officers who were taking classes.

My three year enlistment was up in November but the Corps had a deal where you could get out up to three months early if you were enrolled in college. When I was home on leave I had picked up the registration papers for UW, brought them back to base with me, and completed the arduous registration process. Sure enough, the bureaucracy on both sides, the UW and the Marine Corps, worked, and my early September release came through. I was elated as I left North Carolina, on my way to becoming “Joe College,” as enlisted Marines referred to college kids in those days. I had enlisted, met the test, and now was homeward bound.

Recall that this was peacetime, and those of my generation were spared the cauldron of combat. I came away with some thoughts that would become more fully developed during the forthcoming years. Because of the nation’s demographics, there were relatively few kids o f military age during the fifties. Therefore, the enlisted ranks, filled with draftees and enlistees such as myself, consisted of a fair cross section of society. I served with a pretty good bunch of guys and I thought that if we were to be thrown into the cauldron of combat, the cause had damn well better be worth it. I had no doubt that it would. And, I had no doubt at the time that such decisions would be carefully considered and that in case of war all classes of society would participate, as they did during WWII and (though perhaps to a lesser extent) even in Korea. I had no idea at the time that such assumptions would in the space of a few years be thrown on the trash heap.

During later years, I refined those thoughts as follows: It is honorable to serve your country in uniform. It is honorable to serve your country in combat. And it is also honorable to work for a world in which we can keep people out of combat. But I digress.

Click on a chapter title to read more...
Growing Up in Green County
From Farm Boy to Marine
Education: Fulfillment of "The Epiphany"
Influences of the 1960s
My Career: University of Minnesota
My Career: New Mexico State University & Sultan Qaboos University in Oman
Bush's War in the Middle East
Return to Green County