wet dog

This thread has been alive for some time, but not touched since 5/09.

I was born in 64, just a kid to some of the older fellas here. In the spring of 1972, at the tender age of 8, my father greeted a young soldier at our door. Dressed in class A's, jump boots, wearing a Green Beret. My father immediately welcomed and embraced him with a warm and tender hug. I've never seen my father show such intimacy with someone outside our family, and never again to this day. This young man had just returned home from Vietnam, when he learned that his own father had recently died, someone whom my father had served with in Korea.

My father was his 'second' dad, and while I have learned only later in life what it meant to be part of a team, to know the fellowship, love and brotherhood what this community stands for, I will never forget that day.

I enlisted in SF because of a visual image of what commitment stood for, and what TEAM really meant. At 18, I entered college, ROTC was on the list of classes available. There I met another SF soldier, a MSG, my second in 10 years. I thought, these guys are rare indeed. After a semester and 1/2, I was not moving along with what I thought post adolescence should be, most professors were static, no lecture moved me, I longed for thought, not canned expressions of fellow students. I was, for the first time, lost and homesick.

Walking back to my dorm room one afternoon, the MSG pulled over his car and asked if I wanted to join him and a few of his buddies for a BBQ and home time with kids, and few girls and a couple of "moms".

Before the evening was over, I had a chance to view some old photos albums of younger vets now in the living room drinking beer, heard a couple cool stories about a curtain medic who delivered a baby in a small obscure village somewhere, and once in the middle of said story, the room got quiet, a tear fell and a toast was raised to said medic who was no longer with the TEAM. It was not difficult to see that this was a tight group that loved each other as much if not more than thier own families, who understood the ties between them as well as themselves.

I simply wanted that, more than anything else.

When I finally made it to the recruiter, and was given REP63 orders, the Recruiting SGT at MEPS asked me, "Why SF?" I could'nt answer him, how could I, the journey was already to long for a simple answer. Drill Sergeants in Basic asked, my answer was always given in push-ups. It was only when I arrived at Ft. Bragg, NC, a curtain MSG, now SGM found me and said, welcome.

WD