SOLDIER ADVICE: WHEN TO STAY, WHEN TO GO

Soldier advice usually comes from one place in the beginning. Can you guess where?

If you said “recruiter,” you are correct.

First they make an alluring argument for signing up. College money, healthcare, clothing, living expenses, food allowance. It’s all right here for a military career.

If that hook isn’t sunk deep enough, Drill Sergeants give it a good yank. After that, and the stops along the way, young soldier sees what’s in store for them.

Then they get married.

Soldier Advice: My dad had a plan with his brother. They’d join the Marine Corps and go the distance together. Career men.

After a Silver Star and Two Purple Hearts in the Korean War, he had a step up.

He waited until he got decent rank before he got married so he wouldn’t be scraping along with a wife and kid living in sub-standard base housing.

Once he started pulling the sort of money that elevated home elegance to a shared Quonset hut, he popped the question.

First, momma said yes

But she didn’t say yes to life in the Marine Corps as a Marine wife, though that’s what she’d signed up for.

She had plans for her man. Did he know about her plans? Or did he find out after he returned from a sea deployment aboard an aircraft carries a month after his second son was born.

I know the question being asked: “How can a father leave his favorite son so early?”

The answer is, they either volunteer, or get orders. The old man volunteered for sea duty and left a wife and two kids in the experienced hands of veteran Marine wives.

How did that go?

Fifteen years later the same mom came to one of her sons first wrestling meets. She sat with other moms and wondered out loud how the referees could allow such brutal behavior.

The other moms told her to be quiet so they could watch their sons kick ass, or go back home. She quieted down and stayed.

I think that’s how it went with the Marine wives, except the part about staying.

Soldier Advice: Talk to the wife.

Then momma said no

SSgt. Gillaspie lasted five years in the Marines. He was a rifleman. Later he said he probably would have died in Vietnam with the same job, so it was good to get out when he did.

That’s what he said. His brother stayed in until he retired.

The old man went from being a leader of men to the ranks of college student at Central Oregon CC, COCC on the Rock. Couldn’t have been an easy transition from war birds to shit birds.

Two years later he transferred to Southern Oregon College for his bachelor’s degree, setting the standard for kids and grandkids graduating from the same school.

With a wife he met to high school, one kid born in a Navy Hospital, one born in an Army hospital, and the expensive one born in Ashland, the old man packed everything and his college degree up for North Bend, Oregon and a long career as an insurance adjuster.

From an apartment, to a house, to building a house, the family stayed put with three kids all graduating from the same high school. It was solid, right up until it wasn’t.

The last of us endured a relocation, a divorce, and a new life with a made to order step-dad who opened up better times for his new wife’s young daughter and smoothed the road with her adult children.

Soldier advice for off base family life

I met a Navy guy in the Greyhound Bus terminal in New York City. He was married for the fifth time and going home to San Diego for a divorce; I was leaving the big city for Oregon’s big city, Portland, and a new ally.

We were both about twenty-six.

The Navy guy said he was normal in the service, getting married and divorced over and over. It only sounded weird off base, but in his community no one blinked an eye.

I asked where he’d want to be stationed during a war.

“Right on the base everyone is deployed from. There’s lots of lonely wives and lots of lonely nights.”

With guys like that hanging around for the right opportunity, base life could be challenging.

That wasn’t the case on Ohio Street, or Tower Street in North Bend, where the biggest problems there were hotrodders blasting up and down the road with local girls and my DMV mom tracking them down.

“I know it was your car.”

“But I wasn’t driving.”

“It’s your car and your responsibility.”

“Unless I’m not driving. Thank you, Mrs. Gillaspie.”

Hey, Rob.

A Mormon elder lived in the neighborhood. A couple of kids toked a joint in the woods and dropped a Coke can near his yard. The elder charged out demanding, “Who did it?”

Did it? Did what? The first stoner kid idea was to run for it, but they knew him and he knew them.

“Did what, sir?”

“Drank a can of Pepsi.”

“It’s Coke sir, and it’s mine.”

“Those are not allowed in my church.”

“Yes, sir.”

Soldier Advice Final Edition

“If the Army wanted you to have a wife, we would have issued you one,” was the common refrain in Reception.

Interpreted, it means don’t get married if you plan on making the service a career.

One night at the PX in Ft. Sam Houston, San Antonio, two regulars got a little rowdy. A man and a woman started talking the talk, and a short time later got up and left.

The soldier came back the next night, like we did every night. He reported in. The young woman from the night before was a great girl ready start the next phase of her life and she wanted a partner to share it with.

The guy wanted to do right, but not right then. The woman came back in a few days with a quiet guy from the barracks. And a diamond engagement ring.

Everyone turned down the noise. We all offered congratulations. The first came from the last soldier she’d walked out with. He stood for a toast.

“May the years ahead rest gently on your lives full of happiness.”

My dad joined the Marines with a career plan, and left with a wife plan.

Which had the stronger pull? Good men know the answer.

For those who know what this means, no words are necessary, for those that don’t, no words would suffice.

Saddle Up And Move Out