Getting out of the US Army

[Michael Dorosh]

All this was happening to me because there is this war, somewhere in the Far East, and the world gives you a limited number of alternatives for dealing with it.  You can hit the trail for Canada and never look back.  You can go to jail for your moral reservations and let buggerers and car thieves beat up on you for being less decent than they.  Of you can do what a fellow I know did: actively protest it all by lying down in front of a troop ship.  And if you don't drown, you can go to jail for "interfering with the workings of the Defense Department" - which is an overstatement if I ever heard one.  Or you can go the pink-panties route, or scribble on your induction notice "deceased."  Or you can try for a deferment as a conscientious objector, if at age three you started keeping carbons of letters you've written to random clergymen about how terrible war is, and can communicate the problems of "existentially coming to grips with transcendental values" in terms your draft board can understand and appreciate.  Or you can be lucky enough to be born with an incapacitating handicap.  I tried putting in for a medical deferment on the basis of a jaundiced abdomen, weak vertebrae, wobbly knees and a markedly poor history of relations with authority.  I submitted my junior high school detention record as corroboration - to no avail.  And so my decision became: in or out.  And there was no way out that I could live with and no way in but compromiise.

There is a middle road, said Gautama Buddha, between pleasure and pain, so I sought the middle road of the six months' Reserves.  To qualify for the other kind of weekend war-making, the National Guard, it helps to have a) political connections, b) minority group status - but only in the three months immediately following a ghetto massacre, or c) a great desire to smack your fellow citizens around and clean up after sewer strikes.

The Marines have Reserves, but you have to be able to swallow the Marines to join.  The Navy and Air Force have Reserves, but their initial active-duty hitch is unconscionably long.  The Coast Guard has Reserves, but God only knows how to get in.  I think you have to be born into it.  But the Army.  Ah, the Army Reserve.

Like the hottest places in Dante's hell, it specializes in accommodating those who in times of moral crisis preserved their neutrality.  They offer you a better shot at staying alive than anyone else, for a pretty cheap price.  All you pledge is six months of active duty in a dull but safe U.S. Army base and two weeks of annual summer training for six years, both of which are tolerable, given the alternatives....There, men who get their charge by ordering other men around will order you, threaten you and make sure you have a haircut -- all of which keeps us free from the atheistic Communists.  Not much more goes on.

--Peter Tauber, The Sunshine Soldiers."

 

[oyaguy]

Is this a book excerpt, or an interview, or article? I'm wondering what the context is, other than during the Vietnam war.

 

[DogOfWar]

Yeah a little context would be nice. Or are you trying to disrespect the U.S. Army?  :

 

[sigpig]

" Sunshine Soldiers, The

Peter Tauber

â Å“The spirit of The Sunshine Soldiersâ ”a daybook accounting of two months of basic training at one the West's most unpleasant bald spots, Fort Blissâ ”is a blend of Lucky Jim and Catch-22.â ? â ”The New York Times Book Review

â Å“The first book to define what became the social chasm of the 60's, between pre- and post- Vietnam, between a civilian army and professional soldiers, between innocence and bitter experience.â ? â ”Martin Walker, United Press International

â Å“Sort of like Kilroy with a New York accent, like Hawkeye busted to ranks. What can we do but laugh? There it is.â ? â ”Molly Ivins

Shedding new light on postâ “Vietnam War American society, this revised edition of a personal journal first published in 1971 chronicles a soldier's seven weeks of basic training during the 1960s. Wry humor, deadpan delivery, and ironic insight reflect both the shattered innocence and conflicted patriotism of a generation and the definitive tone that has come to represent the 1960s in contemporary culture. Journalistic detail and narrative development of each week's events challenge traditional patriotic images and speak to the current debates of political and military authoritarianism.

Peter Tauber is a journalist, novelist, speech writer, political analyst, and university lecturer. He is the author of The Last Best Hope and has contributed to The New York Times Magazine and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. He lives in New York City. "



Well, that took all of about 10 seconds using google.

 

[DogOfWar]

" Sunshine Soldiers, The

Peter Tauber

â Å“The spirit of The Sunshine Soldiersâ ”a daybook accounting of two months of basic training at one the West's most unpleasant bald spots, Fort Blissâ ”is a blend of Lucky Jim and Catch-22.â ? â ”The New York Times Book Review

â Å“The first book to define what became the social chasm of the 60's, between pre- and post- Vietnam, between a civilian army and professional soldiers, between innocence and bitter experience.â ? â ”Martin Walker, United Press International

â Å“Sort of like Kilroy with a New York accent, like Hawkeye busted to ranks. What can we do but laugh? There it is.â ? â ”Molly Ivins

Shedding new light on postâ “Vietnam War American society, this revised edition of a personal journal first published in 1971 chronicles a soldier's seven weeks of basic training during the 1960s. Wry humor, deadpan delivery, and ironic insight reflect both the shattered innocence and conflicted patriotism of a generation and the definitive tone that has come to represent the 1960s in contemporary culture. Journalistic detail and narrative development of each week's events challenge traditional patriotic images and speak to the current debates of political and military authoritarianism.

Peter Tauber is a journalist, novelist, speech writer, political analyst, and university lecturer. He is the author of The Last Best Hope and has contributed to The New York Times Magazine and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. He lives in New York City. "



Well, that took all of about 10 seconds using google.

Thanks for that sigpig. Obviously it was an article or an exerpt. We were wondering why he posted it.

 

[TCBF]

I bought the book when it came out.  $1.95 down the drain.

Tom

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Heh, I thought it was one of the funniest books I've ever read - still do.  I just liked the part in this excerpt about keeping carbon copies of letters when you're three years old.  And the description of the US reserve system.  Wondering if anything has changed since then.  Tauber passed away last year.  Just rereading the book, it is brilliant, though I suspect it wouldn't appeal (like anything) to everyone here.

 

[TCBF]

It was a malpurchase on my part.  "Caveat Emptor" (sp?).  I prob traded it in at the Bookie Nookie for "The Pirates Of Rosinante" or some such. 

Tom

 

[DogOfWar]

Heh, I thought it was one of the funniest books I've ever read - still do.   I just liked the part in this excerpt about keeping carbon copies of letters when you're three years old.   And the description of the US reserve system.   Wondering if anything has changed since then.   Tauber passed away last year.   Just rereading the book, it is brilliant, though I suspect it wouldn't appeal (like anything) to everyone here.

Its an interesting point of view to be sure.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Oh, I think Tauber was a real scamp, but I can see his point of view fully.  Sort of like the Zombies in Canada in WW II.  They stayed in Canada (Pierre Trudeau was one of them) while men their age fought and died in Italy and France.  I know who I respect more.  But they sort of had a point.  Some of them.  They said they would go overseas, but the government had to make them.  If the government wasn't brave enough to order them into combat, they thought, why should they volunteer?

I don't agree with their point of view, but I can have a certain respect for it.  The Canadian government made some very bad "political" choices then, and still do.  I suspect many Americans feel the same way about their government.

Tauber talks a lot about institutional stupidity, which any army is going to have.  Personally - as part of the mechanism for that instititional stupidity - I have more sympathy for staff officers and directives and even politicians.  But I can see where a line troop would not.

Basically, Tauber thought along the same lines, I think - if they're going to give him a way out, well, why not.  And if they're going to give out answers on exams, beast the fat, slow, sick, lame and lazy kids, and all the other stuff we've seen or heard about up here - well, why not write about it?

It's funny, if you're not getting angry by it.  I can definitely see where some people would simply find it boring or not worth their time, though. 

I hated Catch 22, incidentally.

 

[Cloud Cover]

I hated Catch 22, incidentally.

That does it Dorosh, you are officially out of the syndicate [and now we all get a bigger share]. "Take this man outside and shoot him."

 

[Michael Dorosh]

That does it Dorosh, you are officially out of the syndicate [and now we all get a bigger share]. "Take this man outside and shoot him."

Bad enough they tried to beat me up for hating Starship Troopers, now I'm out of the syndicate....oh woe is me! ;D