PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE DAY THE WAR BEGAN: JANUARY 16, 1991 : THE STUDENT

I thought about joining the military for a long time when I was younger. I grew up revering heroes like “Chesty” Puller, the greatest Marine who ever lived, and Joe Loughran, my father’s best friend, who died in Vietnam. My middle name, Joseph, is in his honor.

I was captivated by the efficient beauty of the Corps. My father, a former Marine officer, used to take me and my two sisters to watch the Marines’ silent drill team at the Iwo Jima memorial. We watched as Marines stepped and turned and clacked and spun their rifles in the air. And the uniforms. The uniforms were beautiful. White hats with black brims and shiny gold insignia. Deep-blue coats with gold buttons and gold trim; trousers that were impossibly white and pressed.

The recruiters who hounded me in high school showed me films and brochures with sharply dressed Marines in foreign lands, learning about computers and electronics. But I hate computers and electronics, I would tell them. I want to be a journalist. That’s OK, they would say, the military has excellent opportunities for communications.

At no point did anyone say I would have the opportunity to go to war. While I watched friends go off to West Point and the Naval Academy, we never talked about combat.

My grandmother, who is so strong a personality that she could probably invade Iraq by herself, is, however, a militant pacifist. She threatened to kill me if I joined the military. As I debated applying for a Marine Corps scholarship, she refused to discuss it. My grandfather, a man of infinite patience and intellect, asked me why. I told him about opportunities and discipline and camaraderie.

He told me people become firefighters to fight fires. People become soldiers to fight wars.

That lesson was lost on me. When I decided not to be a Marine, it was because I didn’t want to limit myself to such tight structure. I wanted to write without the influence of conservative thinking, and the Marines have never been famous for encouraging free thought and expression.

Through all my contemplation, I never thought people became soldiers to fight wars. Somehow, I grew up with the belief that my country had learned the lessons of Vietnam and we would never have a “real” war again.

I do have a friend, however, who learned the lesson my grandfather tried to teach me.

Joe Sheputis came to the University of Missouri the same time I did. When his father cut him off financially, Joe joined the Army. He told me that if he was going to be a soldier, he was going to be the best. He joined the Special Forces to become a Ranger. On his 23rd birthday, Joe parachuted into Panama with the rest of the 82nd Airborne.

When American troops were sent into Saudi Arabia last August, Joe and the rest of the 82nd went first. Again I was scared for a friend who would be in combat, but unlike Panama, I realized that a war with Iraq may eventually affect me. Somewhere in Washington, D.C., there is a card I filled out four years ago that registered me for Selective Service.

I have mixed feelings about the war. I have felt that if America’s duty is to stop “naked aggression,” we should have rolled into Tian An Men square in 1989. I believe the war in the gulf is a war for oil and ego. At the same time, I wonder what would have happened if someone had stopped Hitler after he invaded his first nation. I think that’s what keeps me from joining the dozens of protests and vigils.

I have viewed the events in the Persian Gulf with the academic detachment of a student who is glad he didn’t join the ROTC; a college student hoping for an internship with a newspaper after graduation. A college student with plans. Not until Jan. 16, not until I heard the televised sounds of anti-aircraft fire, did I realize what it means to be in a nation at war.