Our personal accounts describe the range of experiences that our military service provided. We eight were not a “band of brothers” who shared military experiences in a single command at the same time. Rather, we were a group of civilian friends either before or after active military service. In recent years, we have shared our thoughts on that service and its relevance to the present day American armed forces.

We served in the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Marines and Air Force. Our services were in the United States and overseas, combat and non-combat. Yet, they provided experiences that we shared and that we agree on half a century after our service ended. We identify a dozen of those common features.

• 1. Pride in our military service: Whether our service was in front line combat or stateside desk duty, we look back on our years in uniform respectfully, even if not always fondly. Our service gave us a strong sense of what it meant to be an American.

• 2. Service as a maturing experience: Unlike most first civilian jobs, our military service was often far from home and parents, mentors, classmates and friends. Often it involved doing initially unfamiliar work. It did not allow the abandonment of that work without criminal consequences.

• 3. The lifelong value of physical conditioning and/or competitive athletics: Regular exercise or competitive sports remained, for most of us, an attractive part of our life in our post-service careers.

• 4. Early opportunities for leadership: Military service, particularly at the officer level, typically required service in leadership positions. This often involved working with multi-million dollar equipment under challenging conditions. We did this work in our early twenties often far sooner than we would have in our first post-graduation civilian employment.

• 5. An unease with the way military service is praised today: We performed our military service during the latter part of the Vietnam War and Cold War eras when a substantial portion of privileged young men avoided military service of any kind. A significant and visible minority of them sharply criticized the military. Often the criticism was directed at the uniformed military members themselves rather than at their civilian leadership. Those of us who did serve found much to admire about military leadership, but also things that did not impress us.