Some 100 years ago today, “18.5-year-old” student Robert Anson Heinlein of Kansas City signed up for a three-year stint in the Missouri National Guard, taken on to the rolls of the 110th Engineers.
He was actually just 16, still a full half year before turning 17, but, a smart kid, he was already a senior at Kansas City Central High School, where he was a Cadet LTC in its JROTC unit.
Via the Missouri State Archives
Attending regular weekend drills and a summer camp, he quickly became a corporal.
Heinlein didn’t stop there.
After bombarding Missouri U.S. Sen. James Reed with more than 50 character reference letters urging an appointment to the Naval Academy while the youth was attending Kansas City Community College, Heinlein became a midshipman in June 1925, later being discharged from the Missouri Guard as a staff sergeant in 1928, just before earning his butter bar as a Navy ensign with the Class of ’29, ranked 20th of 243, and was soon in the fleet.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Throughout 46 novels and dozens of short stories, Robert Heinlein was always flanked by what he learned and remembered from his days as a young Soldier in an engineer unit with the Missouri National Guard, an Annapolis Mid, and as a young line officer in the fleet.
“Citizenship is an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part…and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers