Finishing Up on Military Service

My military service was cut short by my having  no depth perception and by being partially color blind.  I’ve gotten over the trauma of my rejection, but the absence of service does leave me a trifle shorthanded right now, since my last few postings have all been about strange military experiences. Fortunately, I have permission to borrow those of a friend.

Seamus O’Riley (not his real name), was a fraternity brother of mine. He was as charming a man  as was ever born in Dublin, but not the greatest scholar to  ever set foot on a university campus. As the tenth semester of his college career was drawing to a close, his local draft board told him that he was going to be without a student deferment at the end of the semester, so it would be wise to graduate. It was 1969, after all.

Seamus went to the local military recruiter’s office and signed up for a package that would get him into Officer Candidate School, if he actually managed to graduate by pulling his cumulative grade point average up  just high enough to graduate.  Thanks to the grace of God and a lot of hard work by Seamus and four of his fraternity brothers, he graduated. (For years afterwards,  I was a walking expert on U.S. Diplomatic History from 1861-present, thanks to helping Seamus get ready for the course.) 

After graduation, Seamus went to basic training and then was given leave to await an opening for OCS. So, he moved back in with his parents. When his leave was up, he reported to the nearest military base–Ft. Sheridan–for further orders.  None were ready for him, except to check back next month. So Seamus went back to mom and dad’s place. He got a part time job to keep himself in beer and cigarette money, hung around the fraternity house and started dating a senior co-ed named Jill.

The monthly reporting to Ft. Sheridan and the returning back to his parents to wait for another moment went on from September through May of the next year. When Seamus went for his May visit, he had orders to report to see a full colonel. The colonel asked Seamus to sit down and asked him if he’d help the Army with a problem. The colonel explained that thanks to President Nixon’s Vietnamization plan, the number of servicemen needed was declining, particularly the number of Army second lieutenants. Looking over Seamus’s file, the colonel pointed out that it would probably be a few months more before there would be room for him in OCS. Now, since he had signed a three year enlistment agreement, the Army would be able to recover at least some of its investment in him. But, if Seamus was willing to waive OCS, the colonel was willing to offer him the following deal, in writing:

1. reduce his time commitment from three years to two years (since he’d already used up almost a year, what this meant was civilian in thirteen months);
2. choice of where to serve out the remainder of his time;
3. choice of MOS (military occupational specialty).

When the colonel handed Seamus the papers and told him to take two weeks, if he needed to have a lawyer look at them, Seamus knew that he was on to something big. He had a lawyer look at the papers and found out that it was a straight deal with no weasel words or loopholes.

So Seamus took the deal, electing to be stationed in Heidelberg and serving as the driver to a three star general.  He and Jill got married and had a wonderful first year of marriage touring castles and other beautiful things around Europe. Tom and general that he drove both left the military at the same time and went into business together, where they both prospered.

I’m not sure what moral one can deduce from this tale of bureaucracy run amok, except that in every war, there are occasionally people that the system treats better than others for no apparent reason. Seamus was one of them, as were my grandfather and father.