Memorial Day

My soul hath them still in remembrance,
​and is humbled in me.
Lamentations 3:20
 
Today I did not have to go to my work assignment...

I did, however, attend our Memorial Day banquet, which was held in the prison's North Complex Conference Room.
 
Every correctional facility in New York State has a Veteran's Organization which is run and managed by the inmates who are veterans, and who at one time served in one of the five branches of the U. S. Military. Our chapter here at Sullivan has about fifty men. Each one is doing time for a crime, or crimes, after his time in the service. Many will be surprised to learn that a sizable portion of convicted felons were also in the Armed Forces, serving their country.
 
I served in the U.S. Army from June 1971 to June 1974. I enlisted the day after I graduated from high school. I took my basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey. I then took combat infantry training at swampy Fort Polk, Louisiana. My military Occupation Specialty ("MOS" was "11B20""--an infantryman in a mechanized unit.

From Louisiana, after a thirty-day leave, I went to South Korea where I was assigned to the 1/17th Mechanized Infantry Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division, 8th U.S. Army. I was part of the force that was assigned near the border between North and South Korea (near the DMZ).
 
I had to be ready in case the forces in Communist North Korea ever made their charge into the South. Fortunately, this never happened when I was there. But it will happen one day. This is inevitable, unfortunately. There will be a time when the North and South will be at war again.
 
D.B.