When I enlisted in 1972, racial integration was a fact in the American Army, but was an on-going mess outside the gates of every base. At that time, the very few women in the military were very separate and no one could be openly Gay, but the Army was ahead of the civilian world in racial integration.
Part of the success of integration in the Army was shared suffering. Everyone in Basic Training of whatever background had a common enemy in the Drill Sergeant. After Basic, soldiers of every color had a real enemy in Vietnam. Rifle squads live by trusting each other.
During my first enlistment between 1972 and 1984, I lived in an Army that changed from a draft to a volunteer Army. By 1977, one of the Volunteer Army infantry battalions in the armored brigade I served in was majority minority--Blacks and Hispanics were almost 70 percent of the soldiers in the unit.
By the way, in the 70s the ranks of Black Drill Sergeants grew rapidly. It was still difficult for minority soldiers to achieve officer ranks, but Drill Sergeant was open to every career sergeant who mastered all the essential soldier skills. And that meant soldiers of every background were taking orders from a Black man from the first day of their service.
The Iraq War saw the integration of women in the Army in a way they never had been before and later Gay soldiers were allowed to serve openly. Last year Transgender soldiers joined the ranks. The President is issuing orders to ban Transgender soldiers, but he is fighting a trend that toward inclusion that is more than a half century old and will continue.
The military squeezes people into tanks, destroyers, Humvees, submarines, aircraft and holes in the ground. In those confined spaces, they learn to survive and thrive.
I wish there was a civilian equivalent of a bunker or a Stryker vehicle. We would have better world.
