The Itch to Serve: And how one 40-year-old scratched it - serving in a military auxiliary

There are a lot of 40-year-old soldiers in the movies: Tom Hanks, for example, in Saving Private Ryan. But 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 of people my age. In all that time, I've known only two who served in the military: My friend Mark was in the Navy in the early Eighties; another friend, Paul, was in the Army. That's it.

In my father's generation, of course, everybody served. If my dad 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 theater; 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 -- what is now Slovakia -- and they were fighting for their new country.

I have tons of old black-and-white photos of my dad in uniform, long before I was born. He's got the same features as when I knew him, but it's a different guy: cocky, swaggering. 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 -- and caught up in a cause bigger than himself.

My generation was different: basically 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, I had the opportunity to emcee a few USO shows. Not overseas, but in New York.

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 that says, "Damn! I'm pushing forty and I forgot to have kids!" It hits guys when they're 38, 39: You start to feel you missed out on something big. I was married with three kids when the impulse hit, so my own 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.

One day, I was discussing this ticking biological clock with my buddy, former paratrooper Paul. He understood. He, too, had a family and 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 website 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. In 1917, the state's National Guard forces were sent overseas to defeat the Kaiser. 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 the New York Guard was created. Made up of off-duty cops and volunteers who were too old for overseas duty, the original 1st Provisional Regiment was put on active state duty for 19 months. Ever since, the New York Guard has served to back up and assist the National Guard.

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?