Enlisting
In the fall of 1992, I returned to Western Illinois University for my sophomore year. My older sister was attending Eastern Illinois University and my younger sister was only a couple of years away from college herself. My parents worked their asses off to send the three of us to college, but it wasn’t a cakewalk. I didn’t want to live my adult life trying to pay back student loans. Frankly, I didn’t want to be in college at all but my parents made it very clear that was not an option.
A friend came to me and said that he was planning on enlisting in the Illinois National Guard to help pay his tuition. He explained that in Illinois, if you were attending a State school and were in the Guard, they paid your tuition. You would also receive pay for attending “drill” once a month and you’d be getting GI Bill money as well. In the back of my head, I saw this as my way out of college. I would enlist, go to basic training, then transition to the Active Army and that would be that.
We went to see the National Guard recruiter in our college town. A lot of people remember their recruiter’s name. I have no clue who that guy was. I know he was nice enough and verified everything we already knew. He told us he would have to drive us down to St. Louis to the MEPS (Military Entry Processing Station) to go through the medical exams, the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) test, and then sign our paperwork.
I went back to the dorm and got both my parents on the phone. I told them what I was planning to do, strategically leaving out the part where this would be the end of college for me. They asked a few questions and were overall supportive. My dad asked the one dreaded question…what was I planning on doing in the National Guard? What was my job going to be? I told them I was going to be an Infantryman. My mom was curious why I wasn’t going to be a Military Policeman since I was pursuing a degree in Criminal Justice. It only made sense to her. Actually, it would make sense to anyone. I made an excuse of some sort or another, knowing that I wanted to test myself by going into the infantry and that my degree was irrelevant because I wasn’t planning on coming back.
My dad was pretty quiet. He knew that even though it was the National Guard, being an infantryman meant being a grunt and fighting the fight. He served during Viet Nam, along with the majority of his friends. He knew what that meant, and what it could mean if a real war ever broke out. They both supported my decision in the end.
I went down to St. Louis with my buddy and stayed in a hotel. The first night there, we took the ASVAB. Some of the guys partied in the hotel. Some of them were enlisting and “shipping out” from there. My friend and I were enlisting as “delayed entry” meaning we would enlist, attend drill with our National Guard unit until the following summer where we would head down to Ft. Benning, Georgia to attend basic training and advanced individual training. We were college students after all, so we had to work around that school schedule.
The second day was a series of medial exams, blood draws, eye tests, etc. My knees were already bad, so I endured some kneeling on cold tile floors and duckwalking around so the doctors could ensure we were fit to serve. Eventually, I sat down with a very excited Sergeant First Class to sign my paperwork. Why was he excited? I had achieved the maximum score on the ASVAB. I could fill any one of a number of difficult to fill jobs in the military. “Any service, any job” is what he told me. I was about to make his job a little easier, or so he thought, by filling one of the very difficult jobs to fill.
“That’s nice. Infantry. Illinois National Guard.” That’s how I responded. His face fell. He pushed. He talked about big enlistment bonuses. Filling spots for Infantry in the National Guard was easy for a recruiter. He needed me to be more than that. I wasn’t having it. I held my ground. I threatened to get up and walk out. He flinched. I signed my paperwork that day, enlisting as Private Novak, 11 Bravo, Infantryman, assigned to Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 123rd Infantry Regiment, 34th Infantry Division, Illinois National Guard.
That was 30 years ago. November 13, 1992.
The shorter version of the end to that story is that I didn’t quit college, even though I was damn close to failing out. I did go to basic training and the infantry school the following summer. I did fall in love with the Army. I absolutely hated being a private. Thankfully, I had a drill sergeant that recognized something in me and told me I needed to go back to school and become an officer. That’s what I did.
But, thirty years ago on this very day, I started that journey as Private Novak.