I was lucky enough during the last few years of Vietnam, when I was the prime age for the draft, to end up with very high lottery numbers that enabled me to dodge that bullet.

My main motivator for joining the Navy in fact was that it was a building block for my life at a time when I was really going nowhere and the fact that our country was in such an anti-war turmoil that I figured I was relatively safe from getting into a full-fledged war for quite a few years.

Of course I knew that entering into military service had risks associated with it but at 19 years of age I was pretty fearless. I joined too when the military was going through quite a transformation. They were shedding their macho image and allowing their members to be more human. The haircuts were less strict, beards and mustaches were being allowed. The uniforms were less polarizing and it truly was billed more as job than the role of warrior.

In fact, my original desire in the Navy was not to go into the Nuclear Power Program but instead to become a member of the Navy Choir. My failed attempt in college prior to that had been a major in Vocal Music Education and it was where my mind and talents lay. However, I scored these huge marks on my military entrance exams, especially in science and math and the recruiters successfully toyed with my ego and convinced me to drop my musical plans and challenge myself.

Most of my 6 year enlistment was pretty much what I had expected and our country's politicians were acting in the manner they were when I signed up. This big change came though near the end when suddenly the Cold War ramped up just prior to Reagan coming into office with his talk of taking on the Russians and winning Armagheddon. Well, the attitudes started altering quickly and I found myself at odds with the politics going on around me. I had moved off the sub onto a surface ship and was being sent to classes telling us how to survive a nuclear attack at sea, like our gas masks and anti-contamination suits were going do much good if we were anywhere in the vicinity of a hit. My own questions about the insanity of thinking that a nuclear war was somehow acceptable and my assertions that there'd be no winners were met with derision and scorn. It was obvious the rednecks were winning.

So yes, I appreciated anyone out in civilian life that was fighting against the madness I was seeing first hand. I and the small group of intellectual friends I had at the time, never felt betrayed by anyone questioning military buildups and foreign policy decisions. Instead, they were that ray of sunshine from the outside that kept us going. In hindsight, who knows if that posturing is what caused the Cold War to break or we were simply lucky enough to be pushing at a time when the Soviets were crumbling on their own no matter what we did. I tend to lean towards the latter. I also will always believe that we were an accident or incident away from all out global destruction during those days, probably as close as we were during the Cuban missile crisis.