I remember being terrified as I climbed warily into my recruiter’s car early that frigidly cold January morning in 1979.  I was just a week post-early high school graduation.

My motivation for leaving my working class town was to better myself, get an education, travel, and somehow find a place for myself outside of what was most assuredly going to be my future if I stayed.

By the next day, I was sitting at the “Welcome” station at Fort Leonard Wood, MO, where women had just a few cycles before me been integrated into an all-male basic training center.

They tore us down and built us back up.  Our confidence grew.  The company ranged in age from 17 to 35 – then the oldest you could be.  It was a group made up heavily of people from the poorest of the poor from Barrios of LA and from Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island.  There were a handful of corn-fed, pasty-white working class suburban and farm kids like myself.  A smattering of inner-city kids from places like Detroit and Houston and Chicago.  We came in all colors and religions.  But by the end we all oozed one color – Army Green.

The day I graduated in my dress greens, I stood before the world a very proud citizen, honored to serve my country.  Proud of the choice I had made.

I was a Cold War warrior.  Our enemy was the Soviet Union, North Korea, and China.  We’d only been out of the Vietnam fiasco for a handful of years.  During my time, the communist fist released its grip on much of Europe and the USSR crumbled.  Our mission was vigilance.  Our strength was in our numbers.

Eleven years later, the entire military would downsize.  Troops were slashed in numbers, bases were closed wholesale, and we would have to do more with less.

Numerous engagements later, it’s clear to just about anyone who has more than a working knowledge of our military that we are stretched beyond capacity, nevermind the inanity of the “long term deployments” in which we find our selves so deeply mired.

Deployments rotations are longer and more frequent and we’ve had to come to rely on our national defense arm, the National Guard, to make up numbers we lack.  It’s impacted the service members in all kinds of way:  PTSD, physical injuries (or death), skyrocketing divorce rates, spousal battery and abuse, financial woes for those left behind, Veteran’s Administration shortfalls and less-than-stellar service levels, and much more.

And, a disproportionate number of our service members are from the less advantaged populations.  They carry the burden for those with more options.  You know those advantaged folks, right – the ones who drive their gas-guzzling Escalades and Suburbans with their “I Support the Troops” stickers who are more than happy to let “those other guys” do the actual service.   They also don’t seem to mind the billions we spend on the war, but don’t want to pay any more for healthcare, education, or serving the needs of our less advantaged populations that might give them choices outside of military service.

Today, I honor our active duty and reserve and Guard forces as they continue to protect me from an enemy we can’t beat – religious zealotry.  I honor their service in the face of all those who choose not to serve when they could.  I honor the veterans of wars past, misguided police actions, and politically motivated invasions.  I honor our GLBT troops who stay closeted in order to serve.

These service members go where called, without question, anywhere at any time.  They do their sworn duty.  They offer their country literally everything they have every single day, too often offering their very lives.  How many of our politicians who make the decisions to offer up our troops like sacrificial lambs can say the same thing?