Veterans Month
November 2003
NS Veterans Remember
Joe Mondello
IT - Accounting & CDU Support
Atlanta
I am a veteran of the U.S. Army from the Vietnam era, but I was so blessed to have narrowly escaped being sent there. I was drafted in December 1969, a full year and a half after I had graduated from college. Like a lot of other wise-guy college kids, the Army sent me to Fort Sam Houston near San Antonio in hopes of making a combat medic out of me.
After that training was completed in May 1970, half of my class was sent directly to Vietnam. Many did not survive. I was sent for three-month on-the-job training to train in the field with an artillery unit out at Fort Carson, Colo. Then I was reassigned to work as a physician's assistant in a unit dispensary.
While attached to the artillery unit, the executive officer of my battalion saw me teaching a class in cold-weather survivor training and asked me if I would like to work on the volunteer Army Project in the Chief of Staff's office. He had the power to take my name off the list of those shipping out for Vietnam shortly, and so I agreed to take the job. I ended up writing a history of the Fort to document the effects of the volunteer Army experiment. I ended up serving out the balance of my time there, never having to go to Vietnam, never having to kill anyone, never being put in harm's way, unlike many of my fallen brothers.
I do not believe in chance or coincidence in life. I believe that God had other plans for me, though why me and not the next guy, I'll never know. I think Vietnam was one of the most devastating events of the twentieth century for our country, but we did manage to emerge, hopefully a lot wiser and perhaps a little chastened.