The first I noticed when I went in the service is how young everybody was. Where were all those steely-jawed thirtysomething heroes from the John Wayne flicks?

At that age, what isn't a learning experience, and often a disappointment? Your first real love affair? Your first marriage? Your first job? The business world? Half the people who start college flunk out, and not because they're dumb, those have already been weeded out. And we're not even talking about the kids that get into trouble--drugs, sex, crime, pregnancy, or just driving too fast because somehow you've convinced yourself it's the only way you can get laid.

The military can be a lonely, miserable place for a youngster, even without the heady moral issues we're discussing. I know, it was for me, and I realize now I got through it fairly intact mostly because I got lucky. But the armed forces is not an institution for the education of youth, or for vocational training, or for providing real life experience in preparation for adulthood. The purpose of the military is to impose the nation's will on those who have other ideas, and it is understood that death or maiming is part of the program. Add to that the fact that you're adrift in an indifferent bureacracy at least partially populated with pathoilogical misfits and run, to a certain extent, by dsysfunctional careerists. In an environment like this, the threat of violence is the only thing that keeps it functioning at all.

You've been through boot camp, you know what they really teach you there is that there is no "fair", and that "rules" are there for one reason only, to keep you from screwing up the mission. Nothing else matters. And I understand the militaries of other countries make ours look like a high school dance. It's always been that way, ever since Pharaoh's time. How else are you going to get teenagers to put their life and their limbs on the line to slaughter other teen-agers just like them.

As for the rest that you mentioned, it comes with the program. Don't you think Hadrian's wall was studded with brothels? Hell, the French even had one at Dien Bien Phu. I hope I haven't given the impression with my posts that I enjoyed the Navy. I didn't, I hated it, and I got out as soon as I could. I loved my work and I loved the sea, and I was so proud, not to have served, but to have been able to escape with an honorable discharge. In spite of all that, most people manage to get through it, somehow.

And I was lucky, I missed the main event.