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Of course in my father's generation everybody served. My dad got married late in life — if he were alive today he'd be 87, so he was a World War II guy. He was in the Army, stationed down south, never went overseas. His brothers did, though; his older brother Bill (Bela) drove an ambulance in the Pacific, his kid brother Johnny (Jan) landed at Normandy and took shrapnel at the Battle of the Bulge. They were all Jewish kids from the old country (actually they were from what eventually became several old countries and is now Slovakia) and they were going back to fight for their new country. Their dad, my grandfather, had been drafted into the Kaiser's army in World War I and was promptly captured by the Italians, which gives you an idea of what kind of a soldier he must have been. I have tons of old black and white photos of my dad in uniform, long before I was born, long before he met my mother. He's got the same features as when I knew him, but it's a different guy. Cocky, swaggering, sure of himself. The man I knew in his fifties and sixties was, well, a bit tightly wound. This handsome kid in his twenties with the sharply pressed khakis and his lips stretched wide into a wiseass grin is a whole different cat. I don't know what Private First Class Armin Konig was up to down there at Camp Croft in South Carolina in 1941 but, whatever it was, he was having a ball. But my generation, for the most part, didn't really serve. No draft, no major war in the early eighties, no compelling generational commitment to a cause greater than ourselves — unless drinking and having bad eighties haircuts counts as a cause greater than ourselves, which I don't think it does. Let's face it, my generation — somewhere post-baby boom, pre Gen-X — was a bunch of self-centered, aimless drifters listening to really bad music. Okay, maybe that's not fair, I'll just speak for myself — I was a self-centered, aimless drifter listening to really bad music. Anyway, I never served. When I was 22 or 23, I did fill out a Selective Service registration form at the post office (you're supposed to do it when you turn 18, but I was, you know, busy). When I was 25 or 26 and I was really broke and in between jobs or girlfriends, or both, a couple of times I actually went down to the recruiting station and talked about signing up. But then I'd go home and sleep on it and the next morning I'd decide it would be a lot simpler to just go get a new job or a new girlfriend and that would be the end of that. Later on, all grown up and enjoying a fairly successful career in show business (like most self-centered, aimless drifters I became an entertainer), I had the opportunity to emcee a few USO shows. Not overseas, here in New York. So that was it for military service, I filled out a form and I told a few jokes with some showgirls. Not exactly Audie Murphy, but that's the way it goes. But here's something no one talks about: Men have a biological clock, too. Just like the gal in the cartoon with the thought balloon, "Damn! I'm pushing forty and I forgot to have kids!" It hits guys when they're 38, 39: "Damn! I forgot to put on a uniform and swear to protect my nation against all enemies both foreign and domestic!" You start to feel you missed out on something, a big something. You're hit with a compelling impulse to wear camouflage and salute people. Of course, in my case I was married with three kids when the impulse hit, so the likelihood of acting on it was pretty slim. Also, conveniently enough, at 38 or 39 you're too damn old. With no prior military service the cutoff age for the Army is 35, for the National Guard it's 37. It's 26 for the Navy Seals, in case you were wondering. One day, I was discussing this ticking biological clock (set, naturally, on that confusing military time) with my buddy, and former paratrooper, Paul. He understood. He, too, had a family; he, too, was in the middle of a successful career. But lately, as he approached 40, he was getting occasional pangs. There were times he really missed jumping out of airplanes and buying cigarettes duty-free. We were in my den, talking. He was at my desk tooling around on my computer. I was pacing and pontificating. "If only there was some kind of military service for guys our age," I said. "Something where you didn't have to go to basic training for six weeks, something you could work into your regular life on a part-time basis, something where you weren't going to get sent to Bosnia..." "Like a military auxiliary," he said. "Exactly," I said. "Look at this," he said. And there it was. He had found the web site for something called the New York Guard. Apparently under "search" he had typed in "military service for middle-aged guys who don't want to go to Bosnia." I had never heard of it but it looked promising. I spent quite a few months researching the New York Guard (wouldn't want to jump into anything). In 1917, the state's National Guard forces were sent overseas to defeat the Kaiser (and help the Italians capture my grandfather). With the National Guard gone, there was no one left to watch New York's vast aqueduct system, which was particularly vulnerable to acts of German sabotage. So Gov. Chester S. Whitman commissioned the creation of the New York Guard. Made up of off-duty cops and volunteers who exceeded the age requirements for overseas duty, the original 1st Provisional Regiment was put on active state duty for 19 months, during which several succumbed to the deadly Spanish Flu pandemic that was sweeping the nation. Ever since, the New York Guard has served both to assist and backup the National Guard in any way that's needed. I looked into the commitment: one weekend day and a couple of evenings per month, one week a year of annual training. State service only, no Bosnia. I could actually do this, I thought. Well, the weeklong annual training did give me pause; like our president I like to sleep with my own pillow. Would they let me bring my own pillow? Actually I've reached the age where I'm a three-pillow man: one for my head, one for hugging, and one between the knees. I have very specific pillow-related requirements. What if I had to sleep with some government issued "military" pillow for a week? Could I do it? It was something to think about. I got the forms, looked at them, filed them away, looked at them again. Every couple of months, I would take out the forms, look at them, and tell my long-suffering wife, "You know, I really ought to just join the New York Guard. I really ought to just go ahead and do it!" Then I'd obsess some more about the pillows, and I'd put the forms away, and that would be that. Then came that Tuesday morning in September. Because of my USO connections, I spent the first month after the attacks at the Ground Zero respite centers. There was a boat docked down there, a dinner-cruise ship. Around-the-clock adrenaline powered a giant swarming hive of cops, construction workers, FBI agents, Coast Guard, National Guard, Air Force, ATF agents, Salvation Army volunteers, movie stars, beauty queens, mayors, governors, prime ministers, heavyweight boxers. And firemen. Always the firemen. Big, beautiful, covered in dust and sweat, their hearts broken. I served coffee, I told bad jokes and good ones. I kibitzed. I schmoozed. I listened. Along with hundreds of other New Yorkers, I did what I could to provide a moment's distraction for the guys on their breaks. Lunch breaks in hell. By the second month, the cruise ship was gone. The bosses had arrived; things were organized. There were more and more construction workers, fewer and fewer military and law-enforcement personnel. The firemen, of course, were still there. The firemen would be there 'til the end. But it was time for me to go home. The next few months, like the rest of the world, I spent not sleeping and watching too much TV. And not sleeping and reading. And sometimes, just not sleeping. Then one day I took out the forms for the New York Guard, filled them out, and mailed them in. That night, for the first time in a long time, I slept. So that's how I found myself, at the age of 40, dressed in camouflage BDU's and combat boots, standing in the middle of a vast Army camp near my suburban Westchester town, assigned to MP duty. Young National Guardsman would be arriving throughout the night to spend the weekend training at Officer's Candidates School. My mission: Show them where to park their cars. It was a beautiful, clear night. The mountains just to the north and east were outlined by moonlight. I took deep, deep breaths and filled my lungs with the clean air and thought about my dad, manning a jeep-mounted machine gun, his helmet slouched at a jaunty angle, his thin lips stretched wide in a wiseass grin. The king of cool, young and strong and armed to the teeth in glorious black and white. Here I was, a good 15 years older now than he was then — a middle-aged corporal, helping strong young men half my age park their cars. "How you doing? Drop your gear off in the barracks, building 505 right over there, sign in, then come back here and if you could line her up real tight next to that van over there I'd appreciate it." They were good kids, very polite. They were here to learn how to lead other young kids into battle. Maybe they were going to get sent to Afghanistan. Or Iraq. They parked their cars nice and tight, just like I asked them. I stood there looking up into the clear night sky. The first plane had flown directly over the spot where I was standing. It flew over very fast. Heading south. I looked at the cars I had helped park. They were parked nice and tight. The cars were parked nice and tight and all the young kids were asleep in their barracks. They had dropped off their gear in Building 505, signed in, then lined up their cars nice and tight. Just like I asked them to. I looked at the cars. And my lips stretched wide into a wiseass grin. And I thought; "Take that Osama, you SOB." — Comedian Dave Konig starred on Broadway as the DJ Vince Fontaine in Grease! and won a New York Emmy as the co-host of Subway Q&A. He just completed his first novel Good Luck Mr. Gorsky.
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are a lot of 40-year-old soldiers in the movies. Tom Hanks won World War
II in Saving Private Ryan, Mel Gibson kicked commie butt in We
Were Soldiers, George Clooney battled the Iraqi Republican Guard and
stole all the gold in The Three Kings. And that's about as close
to the military as most guys my age have ever gotten. I'm 40 years old.
Over the course of my life, no matter what age I was, I must have known
hundreds and hundreds of people my age and, in all that time, I've only
known two who served in the military: My friend Mark was in the Navy in
the early eighties; another friend, Paul, was in the Army at the same
time. That's it. 
