Still thinking about my brothers in the service

Friday is Veterans Day.

I’ve been a military vet for nearly half a century.

Any veteran you ever query will remember two anniversaries better even than his or her own birthday — his/her induction and discharge dates.

Having just turned 19, I was inducted into the United States Army on Feb. 14, 1964 at the Armed Forces Induction Center in Los Angeles. I was discharged three years later — older and wiser! — on Feb. 13, 1967 at Fort Lewis, Wash.

After passing a battery of tests and a physical exam at the induction center, I raised my right hand and repeated the oath of enlistment: “I … do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the president of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

With those words still ringing in my ears I boarded a Greyhound Bus and was transported to Union Station. We took an overnight train from L.A. to Salinas.

Buses awaited our arrival at the Salinas station before first light to transport a hundred or so of us to Fort Ord on California’s Central Coast.

To this day, nearly 53 years later, I still remember many of the guys I served with in my basic training company. You never forget military buddies, no matter how long you live.

Then, our lives opened before us like intricately woven tapestries. Now, I wonder how my brothers’ lives turned out. I’ve stayed in touch with several. Actuarial tables tell me that many others are no longer with us.

After eight weeks of basic training, I was transferred to the Army Information School at Fort Slocum, N.Y. for eight weeks of advanced training. My military occupational specialty was 71Q20, information specialist. My tasks were to teach military training classes, write press releases about soldiers and military news, and to write and co-edit an Army newspaper.

I spent 11 months — July 1964 though June 1965 — working in a training office attached to an Army hospital at Fort Benning, Ga. I mostly taught training classes and studied and researched Third Army (the Army to which I was assigned) history. I gave lectures on Gen. George S. Patton’s march across Europe in 1944-45.

In June of ‘65, I was sent to Incheon, South Korea. I spent 23 days aboard a troop ship out of Oakland with 4,000 other GIs. I was attached to Eighth Army Support Command in Seoul for a year and was sports editor of the command’s weekly newspaper, The Frontiersman.

As sports editor, I met lots of soldiers who later became professional athletes or coaches. They included: Cid Edwards, running back for the San Diego Chargers; Willie Brown, star guard for the Harlem Globetrotters; Bill Blair, head basketball coach at Virginia Military Institute and with the NBA’s New Jersey Nets; Mel Sims, three-time CIF basketball coach of the year; and Orville Moody, PGA champion golfer.

After a year in Seoul, I spent six months running an Army news bureau in Incheon.

I was flown to Fort Lewis, Wash. to receive my honorable discharge. Four years later I became the first member of my family to graduate from college.

The Army paid my way through graduate school, and assisted my wife and I in purchasing our first house. I owe a lot to Uncle Sam!

I consider myself privileged to have served. I get misty-eyed each time I watch a military parade. Funny, I participated in parades myself while on active duty but never once shed a tear.

In the interim, I’ve paid my respects at Arlington National Cemetery, the American Cemetery at Normandy, the Ardennes American Cemetery at Bastogne and the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

And I’ve wept every time.

To all veterans of the U.S. military: thank you for your service!

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.