P
erhaps that headline would lead you to think I was an ornery misfit with issues with our American armed forces.
Let it be said here and now that I have nothing but admiration and respect for our U.S. military. I simply didn’t want to become a member before I completed my college education.
As a freshman at Sam Houston State Teachers College (now State University), I discovered that since it was a land grant college, membership in the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) was mandatory unless you’d already served in the military or were physically unfit.
A think-you’re-a-full-fledged-man 18-year-old can be ornery. Being told you have to do something just as you have declared adulthood and independence is downright insulting.
In addition to hour-long military science classes twice a week, there was a one-hour drill wherein you learned to march and handle a rifle. Most of us hated it – it was an insult to our strutting right into full adulthood. Then there were those who wanted to take advantage of the military paying for their final two years of college with an agreement to stay in ROTC. These students would graduate as a second lieutenant and spend two years in the Army.
I had no experience with rifles (no hunters in our family) and having to handle the hefty M-1 and cleaning it lacked appeal. I did manage to escape the rifle business after one semester when I learned about a position within an ROTC platoon that didn’t require being issued a rifle and having to carry it through that hour-long marching drill.
I became the platoon “guide-on bearer.” The guide-on is a pennant style flag and is flown on a “pole” about as big around as a mop handle and perhaps seven feet long. In addition to not having to deal with a rifle, I didn’t have to participate in squad marching drill, which consumed about 75 percent of the drill time.
When squad drill was happening, us “smart-alecks” who weren’t required to march with a squad (just a platoon and/or a company) sat under the hedges and smoked cigarettes, being “way-cool.”
After a year in college, I was really into the social life and stayed out late at night. I began to oversleep and to miss some classes, including occasionally, military science and the weekly drill. All of a sudden, I was notified I was on military probation. I ho-hummed and went on about my business. I was awakened one Sunday morning with my parents glaring at my sprawled-in-bed body, demanding to know what in the heck military probation was.
I managed to explain the situation to them and to promise I’d remedy the problem, which I did.
A couple of years later, I was in my final semester at the University of Houston. I was registered for only 12 hours (four courses) and not the required 15 hours to maintain a college deferment from military service. Knowing I could be drafted before I graduated, my journalism professor-advisor and I worked out a contingency plan. He was a colonel in the Army reserve and had an opening in his unit, which I would take if I got a notice to take a draft physical.
Of course I got the notice and went figuring I’d pass, get a draft notice and go into the reserve unit wherein I’d serve six months on active duty plus five and a half years as a reserve.
I went through the draft physical under the watchful eye of a cocky diminutive sergeant. He prodded me unmercifully. Finally, when I finished all of the physical and was waiting the result, I heard Mr. Bantam Rooster Sarge say, “Webb, front and center!”
He gave me a squinty glare and said, “Well, Webb, you lucked out. You’re 4-F and I was so looking forward in having you in our Army.”
I was a bit of a smart aleck and said, “Gee, Sarge, I’m all broken up about that,” and whirled and ran out to go celebrate.
Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor-publisher of more than 50 years experience.
wwebb@att.net
