MILQUEST 2010 2 hours/10 QUESTIONS Andy “O.A.T.S.” Syor accepts the challenge

MILQUEST 2010
2 hours/10 QUESTIONS

Andy “O.A.T.S.” Syor accepts the challenge

MilQuest
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to respond in 50 words or less to each of the following questions and prompts during a maximum two-hour window of opportunity.
1. If you could change one thing about U.S. foreign policy, what would it be? It's adequate, seems to me non-WWII participants are now the economic and terrorist problems.

2. If you had all the money in the world at your disposal to use for improving one thing for military people, what would it be? No answer, I figured my experience was "quid pro quo" and Uncle Sam takes pretty good care of
me. 3. If you could take one person from any era, any country, into battle with you, who would he or she be? General Dwight Eisenhower

4. Who is the military person you most respect? Commandant Marine Corps

5. What is the most important thing civilians can do to support their troops? I believe most civilians support their troops, but there is always the five percent. Now political involvement, that’s another situation.

6. What do you most love about military life? Experience gained. 7. What is your military pet peeve? None to mention

8. What is the most important leadership principle? Lead by example.

9. What or whom is your most frequent military ghost? Being recruited at Tun's Tavern.
10. What is your favorite project or organization that benefits military people and how can others contribute? Veterans of Foreign Wars Join

A Note From “O.A.T.S.”

I regard myself as a good natured, conservative, Alpha male, brought up in the Fifties, before political correctness became popular, in a "You Jane, Me Tarzan" society; it worked for us. Enlisting in the USMC the day after my 17th birthday, I broke my hip in a car accident on the same day. Being a Marine on the books, but unable to train, I began my military career convalescing at Bethesda Naval Hospital, followed by light duty at HQMC Henderson Hall, before being sent to boot camp. After Parris Island and Camp Geiger, it was leave, and then off to staging with 3/5 at Camp Pendleton. Returning from Vietnam, my next duty station was Naval Air Station in New England. I had an agreement with my father to get a high school diploma while in the Marines, so I took and passed the GED on the first try. After Vietnam, finding Marine Barracks duty a snooze, and with my hip bothering me a bit while stationed in Maine, I took an early medical/honorable discharge and ended my career at Portsmouth Naval Hospital before I was 21 years old.

Society has changed since then, and I recognize and occasionally tolerate that, but "I am, what I am," myself, along with my combat-seasoned peers. I thought the Sixties were black and white, noir, minimum gray, and I’m not looking to "mend fences" with the 87% majority of the Sixties or any other generation, as I relate to the 13% of the generations that were and are the Armed Forces that have provided the means for the majority to function, to protest, and to have a good time. I still consider my combat memories to be part of an "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die" adventure, that I wouldn't change for anything.

“Shall we dance?”