i was in the army i was in the military police corps i was going to be drafted in the summer of sixty eight dollars what happened was i graduated from belmont high in one thousand nine hundred and sixty seven i went to bentley college which was in a boston at that time and we were a walk down school back then we had to wear ties and jackets and there was no freedom and i just couldn't seem to get to my accounting classes every morning so i failed my major and i was going to be drafted in the summer of sixty eight so i enlisted at the end of february in sixty eight i always i always wanted to go into the army i would have preferred after high school in june of sixty seven to go into the military my parents were somewhat dead set against it they enrolled me in bentley i actually never took a i never fill out the application t bentley i never took an interview my parents basically said you go in there and i showed them why i dropped out and went home one day and told the mother listed in the army and i actually didn't drop out of school until i made sure that the army would take me thinking that i might not be suitable physically my father dropped me off at the south boston base which is with black black falcon pier is now in south boston that's where the boats w to go out to drop me off at five o'clock in the morning and i thought that it was like i was just going to school or what have you and after twelve hours of going through different exams and what have you i got on a bus and they told me down the fort dix new jersey and i was very confused they don't let you sleep they put you through a battery of written test and i went into a basic training for eight weeks then after eight weeks i went into the military police school down  for cordon georgia after i got out of n p c school and i became a sergeant myself you realize that they would acting in your best interest to the process and most services the marines in the army specifically as they break you down they basically break  down you go into conformity you basically you know there was no no room for independent thought somebody said to do something what have you what it taught me is how to get up in the morning and be there on time every place i go that will in the service i was in kansas and they needed someone to go to an academy and on commission as officers cademy and this was for senior people to become senior noncommissioned officers and i only had nine months left nobody wanted to go so they asked me to go so i went  to fort riley and i essentially did like basic training again only with more more tactical logs exam was physically the same as basic but they taught you basically military tactics are including combat that that of the best health camp i ever went to i made a mistake i had i had about three weeks before i went in the military i ate like crazy i ate ice cream and cake and things i didn't think i'd get and i put on about twelve pounds so i went in i went in heavy and  i remember the st one we took in the morning it was dark down in new jersey we went out and we ran and i thought it was like this was our field down here when i was in high school this was the field we were up on where the walling to now and if you want for a run you behind the the post down here in the field house you basically could dog it you could you could drop out so i figured i'd drop my so often a bunch of other guys i had a pain in my hip and i think got to do that so when i got back to the end of the run the drill sergeant came up and started screaming and what have you and told me he said you see that barrel over there across the parade field which i can even see was darkies as crawl on your belly back and forth and that's how it you basically adapt but the fact of you do what you're told and basically all trying to trying to pull through i st went to fort bragg north carolina that's where it's a rather big base it's in fayetteville and during the period of vietnam that's where the nd airborne division was i was not in the airborne i was  what they call a leg if you want jumping out of planes you were called a leg because you didn't have parachute wings but i was an m p there and you know fort bragg was it was a tough place because so many people had come back from vietnam there was an adjustment period nobody really knew what p t s d was back then people would behave that act out to commit crimes there was a lot of domestic violence a lot of a lot of people drinking and what have you but  i looking back on a life i work in a court now still i still talk to young people i tell him that the most important part of your life decisions in the crossroads you don't know how important they are when you make that decision and i was walking to the mess hall to have lunch i never i never really went there and i walked by the captain's office to calm him down so office and they must get the st person walking by so i was walking by and the guy yelled mcevoy his name was staff sergeant blair i can picture it to that today do you want to get out of fort bragg and i said sure sergeant where can i go when i go and he says will career and i said korea it's fine he says you're going to be out here in three weeks so i went now half of my unit of m p s had been in lot of non m p s were killed but those fellows who hadn't been there got sent to vietnam the month after i left and unfortunately a classic military style there were too many military policeman so kind of like  secondary job is you you do what you're told and they went out to become the most m one out in the field and they did ahmer escort so they were driving either all i'm a personnel carriers or something called a v one hundred and that was called the coffin on wheels because it really couldn't stop a bullet much at all but i was fortunate i want i want to win korea not on the front lines but i don't want to i don't want to i don't want to over explain my service but i was an m i was overseas i went up to the d m z twice the demilitarized zone which is very much in the news now and i was an m p i had control of the patrol area between outside of west of seoul east eventually on and a little bit north of there and we had bars or i was my only combat i saw was nightly i would go into bars fifteen bars i would go in and i'd break up bar fights arrest people  i fought but not on the front lines by fought i fought the war of sinchon village of going through bars over night friendships so hard because you're basically it was you in a particular place for one time you know period of time so i have friendships now i keep in touch with about fifteen people i was in korea with my company who through the miracle of facebook we've linked up and i'm going to bunch of group  things for police military police only but i also have my group of fifteen guys who in my unit i became a sergeant overseas i went from being a person who was basically just a patrolman to becoming a sergeant saw i became in charge of my platoon that which i served i did i did make friendships but it's knowing that the friendships are going to end these were these were temporary type would be like going to work in a workplace situation for a year and it was situational type shows but these these  people i know i still keep in touch with pauley i would trust them still with my life every time you went out you're very dependent upon them and they're very dependent upon you and friends you make in life that you know socially or in the neighborhood you really don't know what they have in their else at all you could you could overseas you could make a phone call through the signal corps however it was i think was cables back then there were no satellites it was frustrating for people to try and call home the connections would be bad i never tried what i did as i would sit in a tape recorder small tape recorder and talk to my now wife who was my girlfriend at the time in high school and we kept in touch my handwriting is terrible still to this day it was bad then so my reading the letter for me was frustrating so i i would record tapes and my wife god bless them still has my in my in my letters and my in my tapes will not listen to them but i'm sure i made a lot of promises that i never  went on there i got looks nobody ever came up to me i'm a big guy and i think you know as far as people being spit on the face yelled out i'm sure it happened but anybody who was a civilian who go up to anybody in uniform or in the service  with their quick reaction time i think of you know that it would be bad i did on basic training i snuck colm out of fort dix for a day and a night and i went to harvard square underground i grew up in harvard square i was in belmont street on the cambridge line and take the t down to my junior and senior i spent a lot of time in the square and i went up i was in uniform and my head shaved what have i went up and i got a lot of looks but nobody nobody said i think when i returned home  what they did is they rented they rented planes at that time they rented like something called flying tiger airlines that was seven seventh's and sometimes they were cod go ships put that put seats on them and they actually came back on i went over seaboard world which was a cod place with seats in it and i came back on northwest airlines i i flew home on that i was only on leave for thirty days my had to go to my law student in kansas at fort leavenworth remember sitting home with i i work with dying veterans i sit with people who are passing away as part of an overarching dies alone program i'll tell you about later on if you want but i tell people up to you can still see it in their eyes you can still see the young men and young women come back from the middle east and i tell people that until the day you die you will find that your engine idles a little bit hard nobody else much more alert than i see stuff that other people don't see i don't like crowds i don't the loud loud music i don't like people who are under the influence things that stay with you and that's that all reverts back to the service shoot so it's a life saving skill that you come up with that is it's kind of that these sometimes the lions and tigers are trying to eat you you have to be ready i had a hard time adapting the school or a lot of vets when i went back to benton i went back to bentley and i got to school on a friday january th seventy one i was back at bentley university on the next monday so i went from being in the service on a friday to being a student all of vets sat together in the cafeteria we were all older we were all much more experienced we couldn't relate to anybody even though they were only two or three years young and as we  been on a whole different path a lot of people working out stuff you could see again and they didn't know what p t s d was at that time but a lot of people couldn't sit still i couldn't sit in the middle of a classroom i still to this day i sit near a door i check everything out and a lot of people couldn't get through school they couldn't get through school because it was just too too much stimulation too much going on and i adapted by developing my own skill set and but definitely i think in my case i knew something was was wrong it was it was tough to adapt to i was like one thing i thought being a come in when i said something to somebody it was important if they didn't do it somebody could get hurt so i had to learn that that i wasn't you know god almighty that you know that my words counted and if you tell someone to do something in the service they had to do it how to do it like that that and ask questions why or what have you but the intellectual give and take of college was hard that my viewpoint was to correct you point and that's difficult the greatest life lesson i got out of it was my last i want to open more of prison my last nine months i got put in the hole i was in charge of the disciplinary segregation unit that was a strip celt for the worst of the worst and the military prison was punishment it was it was an awful place to work i couldn't adapt to being locked up  could i felt like i was as locked up as anybody else as i was and wasn't afraid physically but didn't like being confined what i did then as i managed to finagle my way into the honor guard and we were a burial detail of sixteen people we went out on the road and we we buried people who were killed in vietnam ah me people we covered i were east in the brassica in missouri so i was in charge of sixteen people i presented the flag to families we also worked the national cemetery would do up to eight burials a day  of veterans or mostly people who are retired you do one after the other a nude it was grueling work useful work because we were giving something to the families my lot one of my last funerals before christmas of seventy one was a black country squire station wagon was an old ford came down to the grave took out a casket no family was there or what have you nobody came to the funeral so i realized at that time th some people don't have anybody when they die when i retired in two thousand and nine i went up to the bedford veterans hospital i asked what i could do and i got in charge i got as a volunteer of the no veteran dies alone program i m veterans who've been diagnosed as dying summer would lose sicker than other people but i'm also part of the actively dying group that is if you're a veteran at the v a and you're passing away and if you don't have any family left a family can't be there physically or emotionally our goal is to sit with the veteran while he or she is dying of sat with people younger than me and i've sat with a woman who was one hundred and one for war too but it's a very it's a very  i get a lot out of it i've heard a lot of stories a lot of veterans near death will walk to career in vietnam will tell stories that they've never told anybody else before you're in the inner circle they want to talk they know i'm not going to repeat it they have never told their families what it is it's you know some families some as a father no one would want their children to know what they had to do to be able to come home and what they experience and a of people have repressed that so sometimes where they're just to listen and just you know say that we understand best we can and it's it's basically been the hallmark of my life and all my all my military career led me to that eventually so it's another thing when you look back at the end of life there were some big decisions to make so i know i'm so ready to go i'm still i'm still in my mind it's like it's likely people who probably played pro football and they watch the super bowl die i maybe only did defend my house at this point but your engine still keeps fire and it's like i see something on the news and i saw last night and you're  hot starts beat a little bit faster and you're you know you're just it's just it's condition well no it's ok it's you you shouldn't you shouldn't go to you shouldn't go into battle you shouldn't i buried a lot of people were killed in vietnam and i knew i knew people who were killed in vietnam who had been in the service with and i don't i don't believe in wasting a life i think you should have a purpose you should have and i'll come you shouldn't go unless you're going to win a feel i took a master's in political science so i know that i know the political side of war and i just don't think it's they should be sure because people are going to die and you know the american people  it's in the old days did lose you know and you will jim but they lost i think five thousand people in that battle but nobody ever saw it on television now people come home and you see people coming home and caskets and i think it drives that home that you shouldn't you shouldn't waste lives yeah i was about fifteen fellow my fellows in my company from from overseas in korea their m p s i i keep in touch with them a lot we've caught up and we're we're losing people now people my age are dying we had agent orange in my area like they had vietnam veterans of career having a hard time getting qualified for it but i've had a number of people in my company die from different types of cancers that  are attributed to be agent orange the vietnam veterans when they came home from vietnam it took me years to get recognized for having connection agent orange now if you get cancer and you've been in vietnam it's presumptive that you've got it there the korean people the korean veterans now are fighting we had agent orange the i was there we had on our compound but they're not accepting people in so they're waging that battle but it's tough to see is in my my fellow m p s are  year your brother because you're a member of a fraternity ok when that when the biggest fraternity there ever was except you you had they they as i said they they had your life in your hands i went into a bar one time overseas with a new fellow who was a private st class we went into a bar it was dark people were armed mostly with knives  and and straight razor straight razors a big one i was and i went in there and i went down into the dark part of the bar in the m p with you two guys when i was st supposed to kick the person's heels in front of you the guy was sitting there with an umbrella and i had a stiletto sticking out of it a long knife and i was trying to finesse him in the giving it to me and i turned around in the m p had left me gone so i was there by myself in this difficult situation so i managed to  finesse my way out of it i got the guy's id card we got him later afterward so i went back to the gate and i said to him where were you and he said it looked really bad i went for help ok so that was his last night as a military policeman that was his st night as a military policeman in his last because he display simply didn't have the sandan issues to stand so you put your you put your hand literally i was going to get stabbed in the back once in the same bar and my partner yell to me look out and i turned around but i had somebody in a headlock i pivoted with the guy it was this friend i just went to the voice and i saw his front punch up he stabbed him is what he did he was trying to stab me in the back and my  would have taken a knife in the back but it was just you we lied on them your life was in their hands you never you know you go to work or what have you go to school you don't know who's going to stand up and stand up and you literally every day you trust the people we even if you don't like them like you trust of them and they trusted yourself people should be thoughtful and not impulsive when they join the military they should i tell them before they went to basic training to start running a lot but get in shape but it's what you do when you go in the military and i tell this to kids in court i've been a magistrate for thirty one years is you know you have to be careful when you put yourself your life in the hands of other people as other people control your fate ok that you have no free will you can you can go a wall you want in jail you have free will if you if you want to but you do a certain positions you get life in the military outside where you basically give up control of your physical wall being in your life to others and it's it's a difficult process i tell people when the military especially nowadays we're going to combat i say you know look the same but you'll change i said you can expect you can expect to change and the hard thing about getting in the military is getting used to that new person that you are you look the same or what have you but you're a whole different person and don't do