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Life Arts    H4'ed 3/20/23

The Walk I Didn't Have To Take

Message Fred Gransville

I finally found something worth reading, "My Walk Home: 21 Years in the United States Air Force by Allen Chandler.


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Allen writes about his 21-year career in the United States Air Force. Veterans will relate to his stories, but I claim anyone will be interested in reading about the 21 years of American history and what our servicemen were subjected to before, during, and after the Viet Nam war.

The stories told in first person, many with plenty of humor, are set in a military career, but they mirror what all of us experience in our relationships at work, with family, and life in general.

Allen and I are the same age and I live in the past. I spend my time thinking about my life and what might have been different if my father hadn't made sure I graduated from college. I went away to college at San Diego State and in my junior year I ran off with my 18-year-old girlfriend. Talk about mothers that ruin their daughter's lives, she gets pregnant in high school and the boy's parents want them to get married and her mother doesn't let her. Abortion wasn't an option in those days and she has the baby but is forced to give it up for adoption. A few years later she found her calling when she was allowed to enlist in the Air Force.

Three months went by and I realized there was no future for me without a college degree. I asked my father if he would let me go back to school and he wisely agreed to keep paying for my tuition, housing, and food at San Diego State.

Right after I get enrolled for the next semester, I get the draft notice to show up for my physical. The letter said to be sure and bring anything I would need in case they sent me off to duty if I passed my physical.

To be honest I was clueless about being drafted and the Viet Nam war. I have "flat feet" and assumed I would not pass the physical but I was wrong. Fortunately, they didn't send me off to duty. A few weeks later I received another notice that I needed to be ready for service and so I wrote a letter to the draft board asking for one more semester so I could graduate from college.

They let me off the hook and I did graduate with a Mathematics degree but not a real math degree. It was Math for secondary school teachers. I hadn't heard anything from the draft board and forgot about the possibility of being inducted into military service and then God or the Universe decided I was unfit to be in the military.

A fraternity brother told me the Naval Electronics Lab (NEL) was hiring anyone with a technical degree to be trained as a software programmer. Almost right after I was hired, I got the letter from the draft board that I was now going in the Army. NEL wrote them a letter that said the war depended on me working there and that is how my life turned out so different from Allen's.

Reading his book, I am convinced that I could not have achieved or survived what he went through all those years and especially remain positive going through some very difficult times.

"My Walk Home: 21 Years in the United States Air Force provides valuable insight into the Viet Nam war experience and is a really enjoyable read.

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I have been honing my craft as a writer since I graduated from Princeton University. I have been a newspaper reporter, a book editor and a Hollywood scriptwriter. My humor has been published in a number of publications. I have written two (more...)
 

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