NOTE: This interview was originally featured on an older blog I was on, and part of an event called BLOG TOUR DE TROOPS. I wanted to preserve the interview and moved it to this blog.
SHANNON MUIR: This Veteran’s Day weekend, we’re paying tribute to veterans and giving away ebooks to soldiers. Growing up, I thought for quite a while that being a veteran meant that you had to actively serve in war, not just serve your country. What makes this an interesting misconception for me is that my own father, John C. Muir, served in the Navy for 24 years (of which I was a “Navy Brat” with him for most of the latter 12, during which time I lived in California, Japan, and the Hawaiian Islands). I decided for this “Blog Tour de Troops” to talk to my Dad about what being a veteran means to him, as someone who has served, and the impact it had on his life and about the views he gets of today’s veterans while now working on staff at Spokane Falls Community College in Washington State. Dad, I’m going to start of by asking, what made you decide to get into the service, was there any reason you chose the Navy specifically, and how did you end up staying almost a quarter of a century?
JOHN MUIR: That is a complex tale, though plenty of current service people have similar reasons. I wanted to go to college to better myself and get a good job but I didn’t have job skills that could get me hired at a wage that would pay for college and I didn’t have large scholarship offers. My folks were temporarily unable to help with college tuition. And, not a problem now, I was facing the draft if I wasn’t going to school. That would have been two years service with no choice as to what I would do. Military service was still a civic duty and expected, though we were not then in a shooting war with anyone. This was post-Korea, in 1960. There was no GI Bill at that point.
My choice was to volunteer for four years in the Navy with promised technical training as an incentive. The Navy definitely had the best technical schools at that time. I figured that technical skills would let me earn enough at a Radio Shack or TV repair store to get me through college. I wanted to be a nuclear power plant operator (I grew up next to the nuclear complex at Hanford,Washington) but the Navy had enough of those and I settled for an Electronics field enlistment. After Recruit Training, I received orders to Basic Electronics School and was told that I would be a Communications Technician. After I graduated from that school I received orders to Motion Picture Operator School (16MM and 35MM) for further transfer to a shadowy, secretive base that you would later know as KamiSeya, Japan. That was totally unexpected and a great disappointment, but I consoled myself with the thought that colleges had to need movie operators, so it would probably work out. And Japan would be good duty.
Arriving in Japan, I found that the theater had burned down while I was in transit and I had almost no purpose or useful skills. I was given some general electrical and mechanical work but quickly figured that this would not grow into useful job prospects after discharge. Still wanting to go to college as soon as possible, I gamed the system, re-enlisted for six years (which cancelled the remainder of my first enlistment) for Advanced Electronics School and would let me out after seven-and-a-half years with skills and some money saved up.
That sort of worked and did get me a good equipment maintenance school and experience on high-end electronics. At about the six year point, I was assigned to the Communication Training Center in Pensacola, Florida on the support staff.Vietnamwas heating up. I began preparing to enroll in a college or university in my home State. I also tried getting the feel of college by taking night classes at Pensacola Junior College. I also met your future mother and married her just as my seven-year point was coming up.
When we got back from the short honeymoon, there was a note taped to the trailer door that said the Captain wanted to see me right away. He had just gotten the local Junior College added to an experimental education reenlistment incentive program and was able to nominate one sailor to be enrolled until a degree was obtained, with fully paid tuition and books, and all Navy pay and allowances, Would I be the one? It was yes or no right then because he had to provide a name to Headquarters the next day. It was yes, though it obligated me to about four more years. And a year later, I was handed, and directed to sign, an application for the Warrant Officer program. I complied because I was way too young to be a Warrant Officer and it wasn’t worth making a fuss. They picked me.
After that, it was rather late to turn back and I was beginning to enjoy Navy life now that I was committed to it. For a technical geek, Warrant Officer was the best possible job. After my twenty-fourth year, though, it seemed to be time to take the family back to the States and use my now existing GI Bill to get that degree.
SHANNON: When you got out of the service, you used the G.I. Bill (used to fund post military training) to go back to school. What was it like returning to school after all those years in the service?
JOHN: It was a little strange but not as different as current vets find it. I hadn’t been shot at any time during my twenty-four years and did not have to go in-country during the Vietnam War. No PTSD issues to deal with. It was just different, not way-different. And I had prepared a bit by taking night classes at the Honolulu campus of Roosevelt University of Chicago during my last year of service. Those were Computer Science courses with a large number of military students attending and mostly active duty or retired military instructors working part time.
My degree program at Eastern Washington University was a modified Management Information Systems degree with a Library Research emphasis and I mixed with both geeks and business majors. That field of study didn’t even exist when I would have been first ready for college. The GI Bill did help a lot and I had my retirement pay but I still had to have a part-time job in a local bank doing data entry and word processing automation to make ends meet for a family of four. That was in line with my original goal, just deferred a bit. It was educational and pleasant but I was definitely of a different generation from the majority of the students. The first day of class, I showed up early and was first into the classroom. The second student in asked if I was the instructor.
SHANNON: Moving ahead, you’ve been working for a Community College in the Information Technology department for about as long as you spent in the service. Over the years, have you met a lot of veterans returning to school?
JOHN: There were fewer early on. I started in 1991 and we saw more active duty military from Fairchild Air Force Base than veterans. There were, and are, quite a number of faculty and staff who were vets. However, nobody said much about their prior service and there was no vets club or additional services. There was a Vets Office for VA paperwork in the Financial Aid area of Student Services with a staff of one and a couple of workstudies.
There are many more vets attending now, and they have greater adjustment problems, but are getting more recognition now than earlier and more assistance.
SHANNON: From what you’ve gathered, what has it been like for them, generally speaking?
JOHN: Their lives have generally been far more stressful and very different than mine was, but I seem to have more empathy with them than many of their never-served peers. Many of them have had experiences that their sheltered peers can’t imagine and it is hard for them to connect. Many have been wounded or traumatized and it doesn’t always show. One of the guys in the Computer Science program two years ago had been a Navy Brat on both sides and had a goal of becoming a Master Chief Petty Officer at a younger age than either of his parents. Wounds received while doing convoy protection on shore in Iraq got him a disability discharge before he made Chief Petty Officer. He was looking for a new goal and had a positive attitude but still wore his Navy uniform ballcap almost every day.
SHANNON: What kinds of services are available on your campus for veteran students?
JOHN: One vet, after getting a Masters Degree in Social Work, got part-time work at our sister-community-college across town about five years ago and created a Veterans Center there to provide a place where vets could relax among people that they felt safe with. Our campus acquired him full time about two years ago to do the same for us and to organize a vets student organization. They now have a very small vets center in what was designed as a seminar room in one of our newer buildings and an active presence in the Student Union building common area. They are much more visible and sponsor veteran-related ceremonies for Veterans Day, Memorial Day, 9-11 and Armistice Day
Our Vets Center counselor is actively seeking a larger center for our students because their room is always full. We are trying to find them a couple more computers for the center because he reports that they find most of the labs too crowded for some of the vets to feel comfortable. Some have trouble sleeping and it catches up with them. The counselor reported that one vet recently went to sit in his car to find a quiet, safe space and woke up eight hours later, having missed three classes.
To help understand vets and their possible problems, faculty and staff are offered training on identifying and dealing with victims of PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury.
SHANNON: Did you have similar services available to you when you were going to school on the G.I. Bill? If not, do you wish you had?
JOHN: All that we had was a VA desk in the Financial Aid area for processing paperwork. The Vietnam-era vets were not always keen on having their prior service known. The idea of a veterans organization on campus was unthinkable – some academics were still working to keep recruiters off campus. Fortunately, there were off-campus programs for Vets that needed help. My service was so non-traumatic that I didn’t have any particular problems re-adapting. There was only one panicked moment in the late ‘80’s when I realized I was outside without a hat and afraid that the Master At Arms would see me and put me on report for being out of uniform.
SHANNON: Are there things you are observing in the younger generation of veterans that are very different than the way you remember things when you retired in the 1980s?
JOHN: They are definitely more stressed than we were and the type of service many have experienced has left them with different habits. They have more in common with Vietnam in-country vets. In extreme cases, they don’t like people they don’t know behind them and sit at the very back of rooms. Loud noises cause reflex sheltering responses. Most are less obvious than that but they have experiences that are not easily understood nor freely communicated.
For as good an insight as I can think of to explain something of what they may be feeling I suspect The Hurt Locker may be the best available source. I don’t try to keep up with the latest movies but it got a lot of kudos. In books, David Drake’s Hammers Slammers stories, based on his Vietnam experiences, give some of the same feel.
On a very positive side, we are, I believe, the only two-year school in the country with an Orthotics and Prosthetics program to learn to make artificial limbs. Many of the students in the program are vets and may have chosen that program because they know buddies with artificial limbs and how much those can mean to the wearers.
SHANNON: Are there things that you can still easily relate to between today’s generation of veterans and yourself?
JOHN: We have a lot of negative experiences in common: the boredom, isolation, grinding workloads and unfathomable orders, for examples. We can compare C Rations to MREs for food value (or as weapons). I haven’t had the combat experiences but I fully expected to go in-country during Vietnam and had psyched myself for the prospect.
Despite the difference in generational outlooks, I seem to make more of an effort to understand what they think and feel than their peers do. There is some feeling of shared experience among us.
SHANNON: Any last thoughts?
JOHN: You might want to check out a 6 minute interview that was on NPR Morning Edition Sunday with author Karen Fischer-Alaniz from Walla Walla. Her book is titled Breaking The Code. It is particularly interesting because it has to do with veterans affairs and a particular form of PTSD that might be called the Vow of Silence.
Karen’s father was in the Navy during WWII,was discharged after, and never said a word about what he had done or where he was. On his 81st birthday, he gave Karen two notebooks that she spent a great deal of time deciphering but they contained letters about his war experience.She thought they were important enough to put them in book form and it will be out soon. Her father is still alive and was also part of the interview.
He was in my old line of work and, when he was discharged, the emphasis on the absolute necessity for security was so impressed upon him that he was unable to talk about it at all. In many ways, he still is. His job, she finally figured out was breaking Japanese codes. Me, I was just a Teletype mechanic, but I understand what pressures he was under. We were getting more relaxed by my time, though. There is obviously more than one kind of PTSD, and the psychological may be worse than the traumatic.
There are two main things that I learned from my service. The first was the apparent randomness of life. The Navy certainly changed me when I was at a pliable age, but it didn’t do it predictably. What would I be now if the theater hadn’t burned down? Why did the Captain ask me to be his nominee for a degree program that you couldn’t even apply for? Other apparently random happenings really weren’t. I was steered into my specialty by a “special offer” at Recruit Training for a fourth choice of what I wanted my specialty to be, when there were only three blocks on the form for choices. There was a series of duty assignments that were not usual, and one very irritated officer who made assignments indicated that he had been overruled by someone with clout who got us pulled out of the Aleutians in time for you to be born in California.
The second is that attitudes change over time toward the military. This is a relatively benign time for veterans and they get respect and aid. In a different time they would have been called “baby killers” and spat upon. In another time, they would have been ignored and told that they were unneeded and should find real work. The service people are much the same in each case but the culture’s view of them does change. Our honored vets could be demonized at any time, or ignored. This isn’t a new thing. Call it military relativism. Rudyard Kipling captured it in “The Ballad of Tommy Atkins”. I paraphrase:
Oh its Tommy this and Tommy that
And Tommy, step aside.
But its “Special Train for Atkins”
When the trooper’s on the tide.
Whatever they do or say about us, stand tall, people, and soldier on.
SHANNON: Thanks, Dad. I appreciate you taking the time to share your insights. I hope we’ve helped bring some insight and understanding about veterans that people may not otherwise have thought about and raise awareness.
JOHN C. MUIR, in addition to working with electronics in and out of the Navy for his entire career, remains an avid reader and spent years writing Play by Mail game review articles for all the major magazines in the 1980s and 1990s (PAPER MAYHEM, FLAGSHIP [U.S.], GAMING UNIVERSAL); at one point, we both appeared with separate articles in issues of PAPER MAYHEM on a couple occasions as I got my start there writing Play by Mail opinion and fiction pieces. Also, he thought material like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis made good bedtime stories for young girls such as my little sister and myself. My admiration of hobbits is all thanks to him.