Leaning back in his chair with his 11-year-old dog Patches on his lap, Iolan Paul Zirjacks keeps track of the worlds events through numerous newspapers as well as a subscription to The Army Times.
He is 32 years removed from his days in the Army, where he achieved the rank of Sergeant Major, the highest rank an enlisted soldier can achieve, during his 30-year military career.
Though he doesnt use a computer or own a cell phone, he is still very connected to the worlds events.
Zirjacks, 83, grew up in a different time, during the Golden Age of America, and graduated from Humboldt High School in 1953. He knew very little of the world that awaited him, or where it would lead.
In 1957, while working in Chanute, he and a friend walked into a post office and ran into an Army recruiter, which led to a life of service.
Me and my buddy on a whim, were like, hey, lets join the Army, he said. Just being impulsive boys, we joined on the spot. The very next day we were whisked away to Kansas City and ended up in Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. We went to basic training at Fort Hood, Texas, and started off in the infantry. Then I went overseas to Germany and got out in 1960. Turns out life in the military suited me.
He married his late-wife Judy that year on Christmas Day. Paul liked working on electronics so he went to work for the Army Security Agency while being stationed in Vint Hill Farm Station just outside of Warrenton, Va.
It was a very secretive place. I carried a top secret special access clearance for 27 years, Zirjacks said. Anymore it scares me with all these people working at the White House with no clearance. In my day, they would have all been kicked out. You couldnt just grant each other clearance.
THEN IN 1967, Zirjacks went to the Vietnam War. While he and his wife enjoyed life in the military, he said those were terrible years.
I was there during the Tet Offensive in January of 1968. We thought we were going down then. It was the general uprising of the country, where they tried to take over the entire country. We managed to beat them, but I think that is where the war got lost in the peoples minds. It was all downhill from there, he said. There would be long periods of calm but February and March of 1968 were terrible. I was glad to get the hell out of there before I got killed. I remember going to the Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon and it was just lined with silver boxes. We were losing people at a rate of 100 per week. There are over 58,000 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.
Zirjacks recalls standing in a field in Thailand in January of 1972 and hearing the war was finally over.
A lot of good men were killed in those years and its too bad to even think about. It was a war that never should have been fought. We have been trying to stay away from war every since. But being in the military you cannot be political.
He has visited the wall many times and said people still leave mementos at the site.
In 1977, Zirjacks unit, which had previously been its own little Army, was absorbed into one group named the USA Intelligence and Security Command, headquartered in Fort Belvoir, Va.
