I didn't. Vietnam and the draft ended shortly before I would have been eligible for it and a lot of people my age was happy to let the military go its own way after all of that.
Looking back,...I think I would have benefitted from doing a stint in the military during the peacetime that followed Vietnam.
If nothing else, it would have given me a period of time to decide what I wanted to do and the discipline necessary to act on it.
As it was, I jumped into the world at age 19 with no plan,...just loading trucks to make a day to day living.
It was a good time,..but it was time that could have been spent better.
I wouldn't have wanted to be a trigger puller, however. My Dad was a trigger puller in the Pacific during WW2 and he dealt with it his whole life.
That had more than a little bit to do with the fact that I never considered the military.
