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Playing Army, What Age Did You Stop?


otter42
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I know, I know, we're still playing Army in a way!  I found a Christmas pic of me decked out in my gear, and it reminded me I was in my teens and still heading to the woods to patrol.  But it did bring back a memory of being embarrassed to leave the house dressed up. I would change outside so no one would see. We also had horses and I would put my Mattel Fanner 50's and holsters in my saddle bags, then would strap them on when out in the woods alone.  Just wondering at what age did you put your gear away in the footlocker.  

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Me personally, I'd say I became more of a collector at 14. I stopped right around then but you know every now and then i'll walk around the neighbor hood in all my Nam or Iraq stuf.

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I was still playing Army in high school.

 

As a matter of fact I was able, with the help of one of the teachers Gill Burnett who was an OSS agent in WW2, to turn playing Army into a winter sport.

 

We had to take a sport and I didn’t like wrestling Swimming or basketball so with the help of Mr Burnett we turned playing Army into a winter sport.

 

Mr Burnett loved compass readings and the local swamp.

 

We had two teams competing against each other who would carry telephone poles and follow the compass reading which would always take us through the swamp, amongst other things.

 

Mr Burnett would be standing on a hill high above us in his warm trench coat watching us with binoculars.

 

On the final day of the season we would get sent out at night, follow the compass readings, avoid the other team and the Newport police, who had been alerted to our task and make sure we got our telephone pole to its destination.

 

We also did beach landings on the local beaches some of which still had WW2 observation towers for keeping watch for German U-Boats.

 

As I got older I played with toy soldiers in the garden and Avalon Hill war games at the dinner table.

 

 

 

 

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7 minutes ago, manayunkman said:

 

As I got older I played with toy soldiers in the garden and Avalon Hill war games at the dinner table.

 

 

 

 

These ones?

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Think I was around 35-36, when I got out of the U.S. Army National Guard.

I was never deployed for anything so I cant say I ever really did anything but have fun in there.

Accompanied by a little  suffering and misery as even in training, infantry gives you a taste of misery.

lol

It was fun, I got paid for it too.

 

I guess I'm still playing !!! In a small way.

See my backyard !!! lol

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  • 2 weeks later...

......interesting topic. Below is a helmet cover given to me by a cousins FIL 59-60 years ago. Surprised it survived because it was much abused until I was probably 10-11 years old. Then I was a late bloomer, enlisted in the real Army in 1980 at the ripe old age of 25 (turned 26 in BT,lol). ETS'd in 1984, ten years later got involved in BP shooting and reenacting. Today, mostly do Grand Army of the Frontier shoots, two classes 1866-1899 IW-Span Am and EEM 1900-1916. So, short answer, guess I'm still playing Army in some form or another!

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33 or so when I was medically retired. If not for that probably would have been around age 40... or since I was in the Guard by then I'd still be in for another 12 years until hitting the mandatory retirement age. I had a lot of points from being Regular Army so it made sense to stay in longer to get even more for more pay upon hitting age 60 when pay kicked in (or whatever it is now, I stopped paying attention).

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Manchu Warrior
On 9/28/2021 at 10:15 AM, FriarChuck said:

Not sure I ever did...

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My son always told m that he was in the Chair Force and I never realized that USAF Airman actually go to the field and get dirty

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