I joined because of my heritage. My dad was career and was in Saigon for Tet. I graduated from high school two years after he got back and then the lottery machine spit my number out at 17. Knowing I was going, I went to the enlistment office joining for crypto repair, although my first choice was for turbines but the schools were closed. Went to Monmouth for a year and then off to Tehran (STRATCOM). We had several run-ins with the MKE and a Colonel down the street was assassinated coming out of his house. The sad thing is that we were there under a no display of force but we all carried private. After 18 months there went to Ft. Huachuca with the Electronic Proving Ground.
I decided to quit once I realized all the work and travel of testing new stuff was for naught when we gave failing marks to a thing called the Parkhill but learned they had bought it anyway. Piece of crap never got beyond a 60% intelligibility in the best environment. Imagine being a forward observer with a 60% reliability that target call-ins.
My best time was as an enlisted although I didn’t know it at the time. The military is the last institution the liberals are trying to crack but they’re making in rows. I’ve had more than one Colonel tell me they’re a die-hard liberal. They see themselves more as a peacekeeping force than a deterrent (which means they harbor no regrets of spying on US citizens all in the interest of peace).