"We had lost half our class to the rigorous demands of the course ..."
"The first thing he told us was he couldn't tell us what we were volunteering for."
"Only two of the five ignored the old military maxim, never volunteer for anything, and signed on..."
NEXT WEEK:
More money, you say?
More money,
you say?
by Jean d'Isle
' 
fter
9 months of living and breathing Russian, to the extent
that several of us dreamed in the
language, graduation time
approached. We had lost half our class to the rigorous
demands of the course . . . and then there were five. I
would not have believed it before undergoing such intense
schooling that the first casualties of the course would
be those who had some prior Russian language exposure. In
the first few weeks, while the rest of us were fumbling
over the basics of the Cyrillic alphabet and dislocating
our jaws trying to produce sounds we'd never heard
before, the ones with a year of college Russian were
getting by with a minimum of effort. But within three
months, we had moved far beyond the first year of college
level Russian, and those who had not applied almost every
waking hour to their studies and built up the necessary
momentum, fell by the wayside.
A few weeks before graduation, 
we had
a visitor representing an unidentified organization, who,
it turned out, came on a recruiting mission. The
instructor left the room and my four classmates and I
listened to the visitor make a rather peculiar pitch. He
was looking for volunteers for a special program. If we
volunteered, and were accepted, we would be assigned to
the program immediately after graduation. The first thing
he told us was he couldn't tell us what we were
volunteering for. He could only say that it involved
periodic family separation, it was dangerous, and we
would get more money. I felt a little like a mercenary
when I let myself be swayed by that final bit of
information. At that time, an Ensign in the U.S. Navy
made $222 a month (which seemed like a lot after the $90
a month we got in OCS); it was really not a whole lot to
live on. So I ignored the family separation and danger
part of the pitch and succumbed to idea of making more
money. Only two of the five ignored the old military
maxim, never volunteer for anything, and signed on; and I
was the only one to actually receive the assignment out
of school.
Reporting to my new duties a month out of school, I
looked forward, with more than mild curiosity, to finding
out what I had signed up for. When I met my fellow
"volunteers" 
for the
first time, I was immediately struck by the fact that
almost all of them were prematurely gray and a couple of
them could just barely manage a cup of coffee without
spilling it. Oh boy.
For the next three years I earned that extra money, leading small teams of specialists on hazardous missions in various parts of the world. At the end of the assignment, I was pleased to discover that prematurely gray hair was not a necessary consequence of such duties, but there were times when handling a cup of coffee was a real challenge.
__________________________________________________
Jean
d'Isle is a retired naval officer living
in Hawaii.
During his
military career he served in a number of overseas
assignments, including Germany, England, Spain, Viet Nam
and Puerto Rico. Following his retirement, he was an
adjunct faculty member of Hawaii Pacific University and
is currently under contract with the U.S. Navy at the
submarine base in Pearl Harbor.
Jean's column, View From d'Isle, is a regular feature of VegSource On-Line Magazine.