Personal photo of my dad in the army

Interview with Mark Foose, Military Life at a Young Age, History 150 Spring 2022, Conducted by Erin Foose, March 17, 2022

Introduction to Interview:

The military is a large part of the US economy and provides a number of jobs and opportunities for education and training. There are several branches of the military, including the Marines, airforce, army and navy. There are many challenges to life in the military, including, of course, fighting overseas, and the uncertainty that entails. Choosing the military can be a sacrifice for a life and that is the risk people are willing to take.

During the years of military, it was mostly men who joined and did jobs.  Between 1981-1984, women joined the military in increasing numbers. Now, women have joined the military and they may not do the same thing as men most of the time but they get the chance to fight for their country. This change has been significant for the military and employing more people but not just men. Women tended to do other small jobs like nursing while serving the military and while that isn’t the same as men, the chance that women have being in the military is important and inclusive.

Biography: My dad, Mark Foose, was born in California. He is a 58 year old white male. He  joined the military right out of high school and he was in the army from 1981-1984. My dad’s dad was also in the military and my dad had the option of going into the military from his parents. My dad worked with tanks and other mechanical work. He worked with other women in the army doing the same jobs. After the military, my dad went to a school in Arizona where he got his diploma and started his career of mechanical design engineering. My dad just went into the military and never really went to college but did go to the school in Arizona and get a degree.

Erin 0:00
Can you introduce yourself?

Mark 0:02
Sure. I’m Mark Foose. I’m Erin’s Father, I’m 58 years old. I do mechanical design engineering for a living currently. I was in the US Army, and I was in from 1981 to 1984.

Erin 0:22
Okay. So, I know you joined the military after high school. Can you describe your decision on doing that?

Mark 0:34
So when I was in high school, when I was about to complete, my senior year, I didn’t have any firm plans for what I was going to do after high school, I didn’t really want to go to college. I didn’t, I had a, you know, like a menial [not requiring much skill and lacking prestige] job, I didn’t have a career job. And so my dad kind of gave me an ultimatum and said that I had three choices, I could either go to college, and they would help pay for it, I could live at home, get a job, and pay rent if I stayed there, or I could join the military. And so I always wanted to fly. I always wanted to, like be a pilot and stuff. So I thought, if I joined the military, I might be able to be a pilot or something, you know, fly planes or something like that. So I made the decision that I was gonna join the military.

Erin 1:35
Okay. So how did you feel when you first got into the military?

Mark 1:44
I was nervous. I was like, really nervous, anxious, I didn’t know what to expect. I was I was like, overweight, I was an overweight kid. Right? At that time, I was overweight. So I knew that in the military, like, everybody was like lean and mean and in good shape, and they did a lot of exercising and all that kind of stuff. So. So that made me kind of, you know, nervous and stuff. Because I, I knew that they were gonna make me work hard. But I wasn’t, you know, I, I didn’t really know a lot about what to expect.

Erin 2:19
So which branch did you join? And can you describe that branch in the military?

Mark 2:24
I joined the Army. Describe the branch. The Army does mostly like, all those stuff on the ground, they fight battles, you know, like up close with the enemy like hand to hand combat. They move around. They’re the they’re the largest group in the military. They have the largest amount of people in the military. Sometimes they parachute to the place where they’re fighting. Sometimes they fly in by helicopter and things like that.

Erin 3:04
Can you describe what jobs you had in the military, and if there were any discipline as well.

Mark 3:12
I was a, I started out being trained to be a helicopter mechanic, working on helicopters, because again, I wanted to be in the flying area. But when I got to, after I did my training, and I got to the first base, my first army base, or post they call it, when I got there, they said they didn’t have any positions for aircraft mechanics. So they put me in a, what they call an armor unit. And that’s where they have tanks. That’s where all the groups of people that drive tanks and operate the tanks. And they told me I was going to be a mechanic for tanks. And I told the person I said, I don’t know anything about that. How, how am I going to do that work when I don’t know anything about working on tanks? And the guy said, well, they’ll train you on the job. called on the job training, they’ll teach me what I need to know there. And so I wasn’t happy about it, because I was supposed to work on helicopters, but that’s where they originally put me was working on tanks. I did eventually end up in an aviation unit working on helicopters. So as far as discipline, what do you mean?

Erin 4:24
I guess like if you didn’t do your job, did they make you I guess, like, you know,

Mark 4:28
Oh, yeah.

Erin 4:29
They make you like run, do they make you do? Like, that

Mark 4:32
sure. Like, yeah, I mean, there was always discipline. They’re very strict in the military about doing what you’re told about following orders and doing the things that they tell you and so if you Yeah, if you don’t listen, you don’t do what you’re told. Yeah, there’s definitely discipline, different kinds. Sometimes it could just be a you know, like, they’ll yell at you and they might put a letter in your in your folder that you didn’t do your job well or like one, not one time, but I was not good at the physical training part of it. And I didn’t want to do a lot of physical training, I didn’t like it. And so they have to you have to do a run, you have to run in a certain amount of time, a certain distance. And I couldn’t, I was terrible at running got short legs. And so I didn’t make the run in the time that we were supposed to do it in. So they sent me to, because I failed, I failed the run. They sent me to something called remedial PT, which is I mean, I call it a punishment. To me, it was punishment. It’s like punishment. But basically, I had to go and I had to run every night with other people. There were other people that had the same thing. They had remedial PTSD[fitness training in order to gain muscular strength and endurance] because they couldn’t pass a test. So we’d have to go every night when everybody else got off work and go do what they want. I had to go to remedial PT to continue to exercise to try to get better. So that I considered that punishment. Some people might not have.

Erin 6:05
Since military was mainly men, by any chance, did you see like women around in your branch or?

Mark 6:12
Yeah, actually interesting story. The first when I was in basic training, the beat I went to basic training of Fort McClellan in ala, it’s an Alabama trying to think of the town that’s around it, dos dos, and I think it’s called Dothan Alabama. And we were one of the first training groups in basic training, to train with females. So there was three groups of males, and there was one group of females. And we all train together, we didn’t sleep, we didn’t sleep at the same building. We had separate sleeping quarters, they had their own sleeping quarters. But whatever we did, we did together. So like, if we were out exercising, they were exercising with us. If we ate lunch, or breakfast, or the mess hall, they were eating with us, if we shot if we were shooting weapons, they were shooting weapons with us. So it was one of the first groups to ever do that, to have women together with the men in one group. And as far as like, once I got out of there. Once I got out of basic training, and I got out of school. There were there’s a lot of women, but they weren’t doing a lot of the jobs that the men do the like the women might be doing nursing or clerical work [administrative tasks in an office such as answering the phones]. They weren’t handling weapons, they weren’t working on helicopters. They weren’t driving tanks or fixing things. They weren’t doing that kind of work. I don’t recall if I ever saw a female. In those areas, there might have been one, maybe two, I just didn’t notice them. But like I said, most of them were doing other types of work, though.

Erin 8:00
So since you were in the military for some time, can you describe the biggest challenge you had while serving?

Mark 8:08
The probably was in three years, I only served three years. But probably the biggest challenge for me was the following orders. Not that I couldn’t follow orders. And I didn’t want to but just I didn’t like it. I didn’t like in the morning, when we get to work. The first thing we had to do was line up in lines, they would inspect our uniforms, make us pick up trash, you know, do these kinds of things. I didn’t really like that I didn’t care for it. I just wanted to do my job, and not have to do all that other stuff. And but you don’t have a choice, you have to do what they tell you to. So that was probably my biggest challenge.

Erin 8:52
I know that after the military, you moved to Virginia, or at least at some point you moved here to Virginia, can you describe your decision on making that move?

Mark 9:02
Well, I didn’t. After I got out of the military, I the skill that I had in the military. I didn’t really want to continue to pursue that. I didn’t work in helicopters I could have there are helicopter mechanics that are you know, outside the military. But I didn’t really after doing all that I didn’t really want to do it. I didn’t have an interest anymore in doing that kind of work. So I needed to do something I needed to figure out what I was going to do with my life as far as a career and so I I didn’t come to Virginia, I ended up going to school in Arizona. So I left the military I picked mechanical engineering mechanical design to do as my career and I found a school or I knew of a school in Arizona in Phoenix that did that kind of stuff that taught that and so I signed up after I got out the military I signed up to go to school there and and that’s what I did. I went to school in Arizona and completed my diploma. It wasn’t a degree, it wasn’t a college. So I got like a diploma from that school, then I started my career.

Erin 10:15
So after the military and the school you went to was there any possibility of wanting to change decision along the way?

Mark 10:29
Not really, I mean, I was happy with my decision to what I chose to, to do for a living my career. I was happy with that. And so I don’t, yeah, I don’t have any regrets about that. I don’t look back and, you know, thought maybe I should have done something different or, or anything like that. So yeah, I was I was fine.

Erin 10:49
Has there been any social changes that you may have noticed? And can you describe what that may have been?

Mark 10:58
Social change that I’ve noticed where

Erin 11:00
like, from

military to the school, or just, I guess, after graduating high school, just through that whole process, any social change, you noticed?

Mark 11:10
I mean, not really. And I mean, that’s, that’s a tough question. Any social change? It was a long time ago, to try to remember back then. But yeah, I mean, back then social change did not happen very quickly. Right? Social things would change very slowly, because people just didn’t, we didn’t talk about it. It wasn’t that it didn’t seem that important. Right. So social change would be subtle. Like, for instance, women, you know, getting like women taking on jobs that mostly men would do, right, that kind of stuff back then what happened very slowly. You might have a few women that try it, and some are successful, but most are not kind of thing. And so I guess I don’t know. I mean, I was like I said, I was young. I was 20, 21 years old. 22 years old when I went to school. My school was only for a year. So I got out. You know, it was a year so not a lot changed over that period of time. There wasn’t a lot of change that I could see.

Erin 12:24
Well, that’s all the questions I have.

Mark 12:26
Okay

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Research: For research I had a very little information about the military and my dad experience. I did try to think of everything he mentioned before and used that information to start to shape my interview with him. The JMU library had some good sources but most of them weren’t military based but more so a certain war that happened. Those sources did use military information base don what happened but I wanted to know just some information that happens within the military and especially the army since that was the group my dad joined. I did look outside of the JMU library and used some websites that are acceptable based on the information I need before starting the interview. Once I completed the interview, I looked into articles, journals, and peer reviewed articles in order to understand what my dad mentioned and even some more about the military. My research done pre interview, wasn’t what I expected and I based the interview more on my previous knowledge he mentioned about his experience. As for post interview, it was easier to look up research and to find information since the information my dad told me was more exact that I could look up. The research I found was more helpful than the research done pre interview.

Process of Interview: This interview was conducted in person and through the voice memos on my phone. I knew I was going home for spring break and I would see my dad. I planned to do it a day or two into being home but my dad waited towards the end of spring break to get it done. I did debated with using zoom since I know how to use it but I felt that it wouldn’t really be necessary since it would be conducted in person. I didn’t have to edit a lot since there wasn’t many mistakes except for my name, words not being correct, and defining certain terms. the editing didn’t take too long to do but there were some errors to fix and I listened to the interview while editing so I was able to fix anything needed.

Bibliography:

“Gender Perspectives and Military Effectiveness: Implementing UNSCR 1325 and the National A.” PRISM | National Defense University, 1 Mar. 2016, https://cco.ndu.edu/PRISM/PRISM-volume-6-no1/Article/685108/gender-perspectives-and-military-effectiveness-implementing-unscr-1325-and-the/.

Goldstein, Joshua S. War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Military Personnel: First-Term Personnel Less Satisfied with Military Life than Those in Mid-Career. General Accounting Office Washington Dc, 2001.