Memories of an 80s teenager and the first day of Boot Camp.

[TomcatPC]

Hello
If this photo of a scan can be read, this is a story I wrote last year about an experience I had whilst digging through some of my things from my youth. At first it might not sound like it belongs in the Veterans section, but give it a chance as it does fit in in the end. This might bore some people, but I thought it might be worth posting anyway.
Thanks
Mark

[TomcatPC]

Page Two.

[TomcatPC]

And finally, page three. If you read this, thank you for taking the time to read it, I really had a fun time writing it. I know it is not action packed or anything, but I felt strong enough about it to take the time to write what I felt down on paper.
Thank you
Mark

[TomcatPC]

And here is the tape, with some other items from that time. The photo of me wearing the white Hobie T-shirt is from that infamous morning of 12 June 1989.
Mark

[Niner]

I think it belongs in this forum. I'd think that for most of us when we went into the military it wasn't just another chapter in our lives. It was the start of another different book with a different set of characters and totally different locations.

I went into the Army just about exactly 20 years before you went into the Navy. I was drafted and it was the last thing I really wanted to do. I ended up six months later in Vietnam, like a millions of other guys over the course of the war. And like you, and countless other guys, I suddenly found myself responsible for the lives of other people while doing a job that I had never heard of or thought about a year before. And like you I remember the music from my youth and a radio station or two that played the hits and the new records that made a try at being hits. Armed Forces Vietnam Radio used to be the just about only entertainment an infantry company had access to and in recent times long pieces of actual recorded Vietnam era radio was available on the internet. The one site I used to visit isn't there any longer though.

I had a tape player in Vietnam for recording more than playing tapes. I got it to make tapes to send home to my girl friend and my family. My girl would send tapes back with messages that would keep a vision of home and "the world" fixed solidly in my mind. I was only doing time and trying to stay alive long enough to return home. I saved them for a long time after the war, but time pretty much destroyed them. Besides....now days I don't own a tape player.

Back in 1970 my mother had sent me a tape of Dylan's Nashville Skyline. I had been listening to it and a lieutenant in my company asked to borrow it. He was from California and said his dad liked "country music" but he only got to liking it recently. I didn't tell him that as far as I knew Dylan hadn't sung any country music before and that wasn't why I had an interest in him.....of course Johnny Cash was on the same album. Later that night, after the NCO club had long closed, I could hear my tape at the officers club on the other side of the battalion street broadcasting on the night air to the entire small battalion firebase.

Thinking about how the experience of going into the service changed me.....I remember a friend who had just come back from Vietnam, just before I was schedualed to board the bus for Benning and basic, being asked by another friend if the service had taught him any philosophy. He responded....."Yep, no matter where you go, no matter what you do, there you are". I thought he was nuts but I remembered what he said and it turned out to be so true.

[TomcatPC]

Thanks for sharing some of your experiences, and thanks for saying I posted this in the right place. I guess this "story" would be at home on a Veteran's website and I have also posted it on a 1980s Pop Culture Forum I visit. But I think that Veterans can relate to it more, even if they are of a different age group. I'm certain that my Dad probably had a sense of foreboding when he went to Great Lakes for US Navy Boot Camp in June of 1943, just like I did when I went to the same place for the same reason in June of 1989. I think, maybe to an extent, that the feeling of going away into the Service transcends generations and nationalities, if that makes sense? Anyway, I hope people enjoy reading this, I really enjoyed writing it...and I'm Dyslexic LOL.
Thanks
Mark