Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

In outlining the new book, I create histories. As a result, and today being Veterans’ Day, I was reminded of something I discovered back in 1990.

You see, some American families have a long and celebrated history of military service. My family does not. Some families can measure their generations from war to war. My family cannot.

My father served in the Air Force and was stationed in Japan, but he served in the brief period after WWII and before the Korean conflict. My grandfather was too young to serve in WWI and was too old in WWII, so he built ships in a Sausalito shipyard. My great-grandfather, born in 1866, an immigrant in 1889, was a resident alien all his life (and was nearly interred by the government during WWII); he never served in the military. In 1975, when I was seventeen, my number for the draft lottery was 1. Literally. If I had been one year older, I would have been called up tout suite, but I wasn’t, and in 1976, the draft was abolished in favor of an all-volunteer army.

Yet my cousin, a few years my elder, served with distinction as a rear-gunner on a Huey in Vietnam. His father served in WWII, and his grandfather in WWI. Why did his family have such a history, while mine did not?

This question came to me back in January of 1990. A quick bit of research showed that our American wars tend to follow a cycle that matches up pretty well with generational advancement. When I laid out the dates for the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, there was a strong periodicity. Excepting the Korean war, we enter into a conflict every 28 years or so. In 1990, I looked at that, looked at the dates for the Vietnam War, are realized we were overdue. Later that year, President Bush sent us into Iraq and the Gulf War.

In 1990, if I’d had children, they would have been too young to serve. Both patterns held.

Patterns exist in our lives, in our histories. They color our upbringing and inform our view of life.

I came from a non-military family, but I appreciate the sacrifice of my relations who served in wars, from one generation to the next. I know that if my father were older in 1941, he would have enlisted–his brother, a few years older, lied about his age to join the Navy–so it’s not a lack of national pride or a sense of duty that has kept my family, and others like mine, relatively free from military service. It’s simply and primarily a matter of timing.

To those who serve now and those who served in any capacity in the past, my thanks and my greatest respect.