The last draftee
Susan sends us a link about Chief Warrant Officer Clyde Greene who may be the last draftee who went to Vietnam to leave the service almost forty years later;
“I didn’t want to join the Army,” Clyde Green said last week. “The Army came and got me.”
When he retires as a chief warrant officer in a ceremony Thursday morning at Ft. McPherson — after 39 years, 9 months and 15 days of continuous active duty – he will be, by the best accounting, the last U.S. Army draftee who fought in Vietnam.
Chief Greene, from Orangeburg, SC, is probably the best living proofthat the Army is an acquired taste;
“It was cold and really tough at first,” he said. “But then I kind of got where I enjoyed it, once I figured out who was in charge.”
The discipline of military life he had feared became a comfort.
“I liked the order,” he said.
Category: Military issues
Congratulations to the Chief. In AIT, I remember we used to make up cadences as we marched. Similar to one we all know…and I daresay, many of us found a home, there.
You’re in
you’re out
Not me,
no thanks
The Army is my home! (Hoo-Ah!!)
Damn! If I had known about this before it happened I would have attended his retirement ceremony. What an honor it would have been to shake his hand.
Our Guard unit just retired our last Vietnam vet last summer. He had been a transportation CPT when he got out in the early 80s, and then enlisted in the early 90s as a SIGINT analyst, retiring as a SFC. Great resource, amazing sense of humor and (perhaps more importantly) perspective.
Vets, active military, law enforcement folks, concerned civilians, may want to consider joining Oath Keepers.
It is one of the most patriotic acts I believe the above groups can perform.
Plenty of bad publicity about the group but consider the sources…. such as groups that consider the multi-millions of invaders sneaking across our borders as desirable future citizens despite ample evidence to the contrary!!!!!!!!
Fuck off, Oathkeeper dork. Go campaign for Adam Kokesh or sumpthin’. Stop spamming my bandwidth with your Stuart Rhodes/Ron Paul horse shit. Read this blog before you stomp on your dick again.
obbop,
What Jonn said…. Oath Keepers is to veterans and liberty what Scientology is to religion.
No thanks.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1877943,00.html
CSM Mellinger is the last enlisted draftee from the Vietnam Era…
CSM Mellinger is “Vietnam Era,” but did not actually serve in Vietnam. CWO Greene is believed to be the last draftee to retire who actually served in Vietnam.
I’m not sure if this news makes me feel very old or still young. When I went in, there were many Vietnam vets. They were, in many cases, the ones who trained me and had the most influence on me, shaping, to a large degree, my whole military experience.
Debra,
I went in in ’88 and we had a Vietnam Vet that reenlisted in my company during basic. He never asked for or wanted special treatment but the Drill Sergeants just couldn’t bring themselves to treat him the way they did the rest of us…
I remember one in particular – I didn’t know him or work under him, but I saw him; he was in my company (or battalion, one of the two). Even though he was still pretty young, his hair was completely white. He had a look in his eyes that I couldn’t comprehend and whenever he walked through, everyone fell completely silent.
’88? Dang, Old Tanker, I didn’t realize you were such a baby. You probably weren’t even in kindergarten yet at the time I went in.
I’m still trying to figure the math on a Vietnam vet going back in and doing basic in ’88 (if I understood you correctly regarding the Vietnam vet in your basic training company), considering the war was definitely well over by ’75, and really, more like ’73 (though the official “Vietnam Era” was extended well past that, much to my advantage as a veteran…), and usually there was an age limit of 35 going in…but maybe it was different for prior service or something.
I went to boot camp (Parris Island) in ’79. Two of my drill instructors were Vietnam vets (judging by the Vietnam Campaign Ribbons they wore) and our battalion commander was a Medal of Honor recipient for his actions in Vietnam (Harvey C. Barnum). Perhaps that’s why I served 30 years and the Marines had to push me out the door at the end….