I was born in 1962. I've been interested in the military as long as I can
remember.
My 'baby book' contains a picture of me playing 'soldier' with my great-grandfather
when I was 3. I can remember Walter Cronkite on the evening news giving the daily
body count, watching combat footage that had been shot only hours before, when I
was 5. I remember asking my mother to tell me a bedtime story about someone who had
earned a Medal of Honor in Vietnam. I remember how excited I was to get a peddle jeep
with hood-mounted machinegun for Christmas. I remember my great-uncle Ora's tales
of World War I glory¹. I remember studying the West Point Atlas of
Military History and wondering why it didn't have any maps of the battles then
going on in Vietnam. I remember struggling to understand the rules of my Dad's
Battle of the Bulge war game, but enjoying the command of forces nonetheless.
As I grew, I graduated to more advanced games like Panzer Leader and Anzio.
In 1978, after China invaded Vietnam, my worried classmates asked me if I thought we
would go to war.
Eventually I decided that I wanted to be an officer in the Marine Corps. As a high
school senior I applied to Naval ROTC. I wanted to study electrical engineering, so
I also applied to Northwestern, UCLA and Tulane. I had a good SAT, but mediocre
grades, so I was not accepted by the schools. That put an end to my dream of being
a Marine, so I decided to join the Army instead.
I wanted to enlist in March of my senior year, 1980. I would have used delayed
entry to finish school first, but my parents refused to sign for me. I
graduated in June. Though I wouldn't turn 18 for another month, my parents
finally relented. On June 15th, I enlisted.
A word of advice to all the kids out there: Make sure you know what you want
before you visit the recruiter. If he doesn't give it to you ... leave!
There's three other services that want you just as bad and one of them will
give you what you want.
Though I had already graduated, I still had a delayed entry. I didn't choose an
MOS until I reported to the
MEPS in downtown Los Angeles. I'd seen a really cool ad with a Ranger in full
gear and the caption "Rangers never surrender", so that's what I wanted to do. It
was the middle of the Iran hostage crisis, so I was stoked to wax some Iranians.
I know it's hard to believe, but I swear it is the truth: The recruiter told me
there weren't any openings in the Rangers until the year 2000. Worse yet, I believed
him. Having seen John Wayne in The Green Berets several times, I thought
I'd try that instead. The recruiter gave me the same line of B.S. Yes, I believed
that too. Anyone who is familiar with special operations realizes how hard it is
to find qualified people, and that it is even harder to make it through the training.
("100 men will test today, but only three will win the Green Beret ...") It was
without a doubt the biggest lie told in the history of military recruiting.
Figuring I might be able to slide into an infantry unit, I settled for being a radio
operator. I also managed to at least get Jump School and an assignment to the XVIII
Airborne Corps. But the recruiter had screwed me one last time: A four year radio
operator enlistment required soldiers to also attend morse code school -- a fact
he conveniently forgot to make me aware of.
The MEPS was chaotic. If you've ever heard "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie, you
know what it was like. If you haven't, give it a listen. It's usually all over the
radio around Thanksgiving. Fifteen years and one war down the road hadn't changed
the MEPS any.
Me and a couple of other recruits spent the night partying in the Holiday Inn. One
of them was an 'old' guy we called "Scum", but whose real name I've long since
forgotten. (He was all of 32 at the time; I'm almost 34 as I write this.) I was
impressed by his claim that he had once partied with Jim Morrison in Hawaii. He
found some whores, but I was the only one not to get laid. I was drunk, but really
I was too nervous because I was not only unwordly, but still a virgin. That was
quite an accomplishment, having gone to high school in a Los Angeles beach suburb,
but it wasn't for lack of desire. I just wasn't socially skilled: I never had date;
the only dance I attended was to hear the band; and I didn't get my driver's
license until a few months before graduated from high school.
The next day we flew to Columbia, S.C., then took a bus to nearby Ft. Jackson. I was
the first McMurry to enter the military in 30 years.
At some point I'll catch up with 1981-2001 ...
McMurry's Notes
The McMurry boys two generations before mine were hell-raisers, probably because
their old man abandoned them at a young age. Ora went off to be an ambulance
driver in France before the U.S. entered the war. He was awarded the Croix de
Guerre for bravery. (It is the French equivalent of the Medal of Honor.) After
the U.S. entered the war, he transferred. He lied his way into the Army Air
Corps because he was too heavy for the era's flimsy wood and cloth planes, then
shot down 13 German planes before the Armistice.
Between the wars he got his medical degree. For entertainment he'd fly down to
Chicago to get in bar fights. Once, when he was driving, he stopped to help
a guy with his broken down car. When the guy reneged on a deal to pay him $5,
Ora cold-cocked him with one punch. The cheapskate turned out to be the #1
heavyweight boxing contender.
The military deemed Ora too old for service in World War II, but the demand
for surgeons was so great that he was recalled for duty in Korea while in his
50's.
He closed out his military career as the commander of Wisconsin's Civil Air
Patrol. In his 70's he decked a young punk who tried to steal his hat -- and
awed me with his boxes of medals and tales of adventure.
