Letter to the Editor: Silver Wings on My Chest

Making the decision to join the military, for most people, is not an easy one. The thought of which weighs more heavily when facing that choice in time of conflict. With increased odds of grabbing your gear and guns to travel and meet the unknown half-way around the world, many mothers have shed tears at the news of their sons and daughters leaving. Personally, I am an old man in this game by comparison, having enlisted in the pre-9/11 army as an airborne infantryman. Training in Georgia’s summer heat for a war that might never come, the dark events of that September day changed the course for so many of us.

While all veterans have worn the uniform, the decision to serve is different for everyone. Some may have felt the GI Bill benefits were worth the sacrifices to be made. Others sought a way out of their foreseen destinies in places like Deep East Oakland, East Garfield Park in Chicago, or Hell’s Kitchen in New York City. Many more well-to-do volunteers were predestined for places like West Point Military Academy as a finishing school before receiving their commission. Still others were perhaps following some innate call from within themselves. Whatever their reason, they made the individual decision. There is no draft in today’s military; those in uniform are presumed to be there because they want to be. To be a service member and a veteran is, after all, a personal choice to belong to a distinct cultural group in American society.

As the late, great mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote, “If you can see your path laid out for you step by step, you know it’s not your path.” My decision to join and to serve was not based on patriotic duty with star-spangled eyes; it was much more primitive and selfish than that. Mine was a desire to test myself in ways I could never have done here at home, to follow that ancient path that mythologists such as Campbell suggest belong to the hero (which I certainly am not), with no idea where it might lead. I wanted the silver wings of a paratrooper on my chest, but more than that I wanted the experiences that came along with wearing them.

Wearing those wings on my chest has satisfied my desires for travel extensively, to meet people from many cultures, as well as to engage in man’s most detestable behaviors—that of combat. Those silver wings are like a dues card which allow a trooper to engage in unique rituals only a small percentage of the military population are ever a part of. Having jumped from “perfectly good aircraft” with paratroopers from all over the world, I have been awarded the wings of foreign militaries from every continent on the globe. While these are, to most people, interesting and shiny metal accoutrements, to me they are symbolic and represent a certain spirit of humankind. The spirit to go where no one else wants to go, to do the things no one else wants to do. To travel into the darkness knowing that there will be light on the other side.

This is my culture. The army was my ticket to the world and, coincidentally, here to Utah State University where my studies of humankind continue. A veteran on campus is someone who has been tested in ways many will never afford themselves. We have been out of our comfort zones more often than we have been in one. Although the war is over for many of us, we carry that fighting spirit with us in a genuine hope of making this world a better place—beginning with ourselves.

—Mike Nelson is an aging student at 33-years-old who is seeking his way into the College of Humanities and Social Sciences’ social work program. He is a husband and father who attends classes at the Brigham City Regional Campus. He enjoys long walks in the mountains and winds less than 13 knots.