I had dropped out of college and the Selective Service was about to classify me as 1-A - next in line for the Infantry in Vietnam. Not wanting to end up in the infantry, the strategy was to enlist (for three years instead of the two years of the draft) and sign up for the longest electronics school on offer. The course was called Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) 32F20 - Fixed Ciphony Repair (whatever that was), a 44 week class..

I eventually learned what Fixed Ciphony Repair refers to. 'Fixed' means that the equipment was not portable - it would be installed in a building of some sort, although it could also be in a trailer. 'Ciphony' is the encryption/decryption of voice and/or data. Actually, voice signals would be digitized before being encrypted and converted back to analog after being decrypted. Voice digitization was cutting-edge technology at the time. CDs were many years away.

Two critical assumptions in my thinking were so, so wrong:

1. The U.S. Army was not living in pup tents with rudimentary radios and electronics. In fact, there was an IBM mainframe installed at my Vietnam post – MACV Headquarters.
2. The enlistment only promised that one would start a course. Anyone who flunked out of the course found their 3-year enlistment was still a ticket to the Infantry. And, I had no knowledge of electronics and had recently flunked college physics.

Lo and behold, I discovered in the first weeks of the course that I was trainable! I could understand electrical flow, voltage and current, transistors, resisters and diodes. I could look at, understand and trace a schematic diagram. As important, I discovered a talent for logical thinking and problem solving. I was good enough at this that I was selected to be an instructor when the course was completed. And that gave me training to get up in front of a class (or a meeting) and explain technical materials.

Eventually, I found myself in Vietnam. But I was at MACV headquarters, which had almost as many colonels and generals as the Pentagon. And my equipment was in air-conditioned rooms and well protected. It was still a dangerous place, but if you had to be there…

Some years later, my Army training helped me get my first 'real' job as a Technical Editor. That helped me get a position as a Technical Writer at a company that had a dedicated word processing system (there were no PCs yet). That word processing system had a BASIC interpreter. One night I started playing with BASIC, had an idea, and wrote my first program to input, store, change and print out work orders for the factory floor.

From then on, my career has been built on computing. And it all started with some stupid decisions made by a 19-year old!