I was in the Navy and saw, first-hand, the effects of front-line combat.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The negative effects of combat were nightmares, and I'd get jumpy around certain noises and stuff, but you'd have that after a car accident or a bad divorce. Life's filled with trauma. You don't need to go to war to find it; it's going to find you. We all deal with it, and the effects go away after awhile. At least they did for me.
I got called back into the Navy during the Korean War.
My dad served in the Air Force as ground crew for several years, and doesn't really talk about it. I know that it's there. I think my main thing about direct or indirect experiences as near to home as it were is the idea of self-sacrifice really.
I was 20 years old at Pearl Harbor. I was in the Navy about a year and four months before the war.
I was away from the front lines for a while this spring, living with other troops, and considerable fighting took place while I was gone. When I got ready to return to my old friends at the front I wondered if I would sense any change in them.
I grew up in a Navy family.
I've been as a pilot involved in the Gulf War. And then, in the No-Fly Zone.
I have no personal experience in the military. All I know about it is what I've seen in movies and read in books and watched on television. My knowledge is probably no more or no less than the average person's. 'A Brief Encounter with the Enemy' was created by taking bits and pieces from here and there, and then putting my own spin on them.
I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.
My grandpa was in the Navy, but it wasn't something that was expected or planned for me to do.