U.S.N – ’68 – ’72.
DD-449,
DD-826,
ARL-38.

He said “There are two kinds of people that jump out of airplanes: idiots, and people in the armed services.”

I saw that when Jeffrey posted that, and I immediately thought of my grandpa, who fought in the Pacific War as a paratrooper. (His unit, the 503rd PRCT, dropped on Corregidor in 1945.) I will never forget his explanation for why he volunteered for such a risky service. “It paid a lot better.” It might not have been his only reason, and he may have been engaged in a little self-deprecation, but I always sensed there was some basic sincerity in it. He’d grown up an orphan, dirt poor in the Depression, and the money mattered. The idea of doing that kind of thing for *fun* was a strange one to him.

But signing up in the first place was about more than just the money. He was one of the kids who showed up at the recruiting office after Pearl Harbor. You did it because it had to be done, and you were young enough and healthy enough to do it. Fortunately we had enough such young men to put paid to the Japanese empire of nightmares.