Volunteers.
If bad guys hijack our
jets and fly them into our buildings, most of us go to work the next day
without doing anything about it. After
all, there are people who take care of those things, aren’t there? We let them take care of it. If we tried to do anything, we’d just be in
the way. So we say.
Except for a few of
us: A very few of us go to work the next
day listening for the call. Probably
they will have some coffee and talk on the phone and then go home to dinner, but
maybe they will hear the call. Probably
they will hear American Idol, but
maybe they will hear, “The Redcoats are coming!”
If they hear the call,
they will not return to their offices.
They will pick up their rifles and move to meet the new threat, just
as the Minutemen did 233 years ago.
Most of us who remain behind in those offices will not even notice they
have gone, as stoic humility is one of their many virtues.
A United States Army
Reserve soldier goes to work each day at Allstate or Pepsico like the rest of
us, but is always ready to step into another life if our country needs one more
full-time soldier in a hurry. A
reservist who has not been called is free to move in the corporate (or trucking
or farming or some other) world, but a reservist is always ready to be activated.
~ ~ ~
My wife is a
reservist. She does something with
computers in the corporate world, except for one weekend each month when she
does something with computers for the army.
A few months ago she told me that she would be training for a full week
in April. I imagined that they were
upgrading from TerroristTracker version 2.1 to version 2.2 or something like
that, so I asked, “Training for what?”
“Training to go to war.”
Every reservist is a
soldier and every soldier is a rifleman.
She would go to
Chapter
One: Sunday. We arrived, had dinner and then went to
work. Photos 1001 – 1095.
Two: Monday in the M-16
rifle trainer, photos 2001 – 2050.
Three: Still Monday, “Land
Nav” (overland navigation) photos 3001 – 3159.
Four: Tuesday morning on the
“
Five: Tuesday afternoon on
the “
Six: Wednesday morning on
the M-9 Pistol Range, 6001 – 6486.
Seven: Wednesday afternoon in
the Radio Class, 7001 – 7239.
Eight: Thursday and Friday,
Medical Training, 8001 – 8373.