I am a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. Navy during the Viet Nam war. Like most veterans, I occasionally hear "Thank you for your service." from people who know or learn that I served. It makes me a little uncomfortable. Follow me into the tall grass if you want to know why.
I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1971. I volunteered, but it was hardly voluntary. Selective Service had bestowed a lottery number below 50 upon me in a year when men with lottery numbers in the 200's were being called. I had just graduated from college and was married, but deferments for married men and graduate students were no longer available. Facing the draft, I enlisted and soon arrived at boot camp, just another pawn on Richard Nixon's chessboard.
From that moment, until the day I mustered out, I spent every waking moment plotting and scheming to stay out of Asia. I deplored and abhorred what my country was doing in Viet Nam. Although a number of units were withdrawn from Viet Nam that year and U.S. troop levels fell to about 156,000, 1971 was also the year we invaded Laos, and a year in which the Navy maintained enormous forces on the war zone's rivers and off shore supporting air operations and providing Naval Gunfire Support. But for my efforts, the Navy could have sent me to Viet Nam directly after my initial training.
My first plan, implemented in boot camp, was to gain assignment to special service units, successfully auditioning to play in military bands and sing in military chorales. Simultaneously, I applied for officer candidate school, which would change my status from regular Navy to Navy Reserve, on active duty. Once I was commissioned as a reserve officer, the chances of my assignment in the war zone plummeted. War zone assignments were coveted by regular Navy officers wanting to build their careers. Phase III of my plan was to train for a warfare specialty that was irrelevant to the Viet Nam military commitment. I became an anti-submarine warfare specialist. Our opponents in Viet Nam had virtually no navy and no submarines.
So it came to pass that I whiled away the last years of the Viet Nam war patrolling the seas on the opposite side of the world looking for Russian submarines in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. While in the Navy, I never even saw the Pacific Ocean.
While I certainly preferred not to have my ass shot off by an Asian with whom I had no personal quarrel and on behalf of a nation fighting the wrong people for the wrong reasons, it was not cowardice that motivated my machinations during military service. Military service, particularly service at sea on a warship, is inherently dangerous and there were a few times at sea when I wasn't sure I would survive the danger de jour.
My real concern was my principled commitment to the proposition that my country was waging a immoral war of ruthless aggression upon people who had not in the least offended our true national interests. Had I been able to avoid military service altogether, I would have. I seriously considered fleeing to Canada and other equally difficult choices. In the end, I volunteered, tried for and got the assignments I wanted, served honorably but more or less peacefully, and took a discharge at the first opportunity.
When someone thanks me for my service I understand they would do the same for any veteran, but not all veterans are created equal. Many Viet Nam veterans were true volunteers who endured heroic ordeals during their service. My service was no more patriotic than George W. Bush's, except that I showed up when and where I was supposed to. But I was just as willing and eager to avoid military service in general and Viet Nam combat in particular, as any of the chicken hawks in the Bush Administration. This inspires in me no sense of pride whatsoever.
I would never mention any of this to any stranger or acquaintance who might say "Thank you for your service." But these have been my thoughts, particularly brought to mind on this most sacred day of national patriotic observance.