There are roughly twelve million teenagers in the 18 to 20 year old age bracket in this country. In my last column I mentioned an advocacy for universal service.
Everyone at 18 years of age should be required to serve their country for two years. They could be given the option of serving in the military or joining community services or projects of some kind. All should be required to go through a military style boot camp, learning discipline, direction, and organization, and confidence in accomplishment, and subject to that discipline for their two years. They would be provided with a small income, basic clothing, food, and medical care, a great many having some of these things for the first time in their lives.
Retired Colonel Dale Friend is a good example of the possibilities of such a program. At the age of fifteen, with the court not being aware of his age, he was given the choice of the Maryland State House of Corrections or a military service. He opted for the latter. His father signed a statement saying he was seventeen and he joined the institution that would be his home for thirty years. He found order. He found direction. He found he had a lot to give and he found pride. He found family.
He was enlisted for seven years, serving in Korea with the 605 Air Control and Warning Squadron. He went to night school to get his GED. Accomplishing that, he began night school for a college degree and applied for Officer Candidate School, was accepted for officer training, and completed his college degree. He went on to get a Master’s Degree while still in the military.
As a captain in the 173rd Airborne Brigade, on February 22nd, 1967, leading a company, Colonel Friend made the last combat assault jump in U.S. Army history, and the only one in Vietnam, when they parachuted in near the Cambodian border. This jump is memorialized on the March 3rd, 1967 cover of Life Magazine.
Colonel Friend, among many other medals from his service, was awarded the Bronze Star with oak leaf clusters for bravery in ground combat. Colonel Friend continues to be a spokesman for those who fought and served in that war, attempting to dispel the aura of failure that is so often attributed to the veterans of the conflict. He has compiled a very interesting listing of facts from the war, facts that contradict many of the myths that were created out of it by a peace and sensation seeking media. It was a war won by our men, and lost through politics and press.
Submitted by Dean O. Muehlberg, Author of ‘REMF “War Stories”’
Member of Black Hills Veterans Writing Group (www.battlestory.org
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