He Joined the Army in His 40s... to Die

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Up next, a story out of Clemson, South Carolina. Today, the oldest a person can be if they wish to join the army is 35. But for a short time during the war on terror, one could join in their 40s. Our next story comes to us from one of these men who joined late in life.

Here's Ken Skar. My whole life, I was an artist. I was the exact opposite of someone you'd think who would join the army. And I grew up in the 80s and 90s, which was a very peaceful time for our country. We weren't really at war. The military was what other people did.

I never even considered it. I always wanted to be in the arts, be a writer. And I ended up working in theater and television for a long time. I was a scenic artist, like for Broadway plays and television shows.

We're the ones who paint the sets for plays, drops, and the murals that are in the backgrounds of television shows. Yeah, I was always the art kid in high school. I was the nerdy little guy.

This was back in the 80s, like I said. When I was in high school, I took art class like two or three times a day. That was sort of my refuge because I wasn't one of the popular kids. And I got bullied by the football players, like all of us nerds did back then. So art was my refuge.

And so I was always artistically, creatively inclined. And that's not the typical type of person that joins the military. When I was growing up, the people that joined the military were like rednecks and people that couldn't get into college. At least that was the perception. And that was my perception.

I'm ashamed to say I had the wrong perception, like a lot of people back in those days in America. What happened was I was a show business. I lived in San Diego. I was working at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego. And then I went into television.

There's a lot of television that happens in San Diego. And then me and I got married, and my wife and I had kids. And the cost of living in San Diego is so high that we decided to move back to our hometown in Colorado. And I started my own painting company. But then my marriage fell apart very suddenly.

And it kind of sent me off the rails. And I got to a really low point in my life. And I started looking into options basically to kill myself. Basically to kill myself, I looked into buying a gun and shooting myself. I even went to a gun store and looked at guns for the first time in my life. I'd never even thought of owning a gun until then.

The thought just kind of hit me of my kids moving on in life without their dad and knowing their dad had done something like that. So I'm like, well, maybe there's another way I could go out that's maybe more noble. And so I actually looked into the Foreign Legion. There's still a Foreign Legion, believe it or not.

And that sort of led me into the American military, looking into the military. And at the time, this was 2009. So we were at the height of the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The army had raised its maximum age to 42. It's back down, I think, to 35 now.

They just raised it up to that for maybe a year or two. Most people my age that were 40 that tried to join back then didn't make it through MEPS, which is where you go to get analyzed if you can even be a soldier. You know, most people my age had back problems or knee problems and they're like, you know, would get denied.

But I passed all the tests. And so the army's like, come on in. Be a soldier, Scar. And I said, well, I'd like to be a photojournalist. They're like, oh, there's only like a few of those in the whole army.

There's no spots for that. And I said, well, thanks anyway. And I left. Then they called me back a couple months later because I had scored really high on the ASVAB, sort of like the SAT that you take when you graduate high school where they sort of determine how smart you are and what you know.

And if you're smart enough to join and be a soldier. So anyway, I scored really high on that test. And so they called me back a couple months later and said, hey, you still want to be a photojournalist? You know, a spot opened up. I said, okay, I'll do it. So that's what led to me being in the army at 40.

It was basically a weird kind of half a suicide attempt. I like to tell people. When most people ask me, I say, I just wanted to serve. You know, and that window opened up for people my age and I kind of jumped through it.

And that was also part of it. When I went to basic training, they did give me a lot of grief. Old man Scar, you know, and my name itself, my drill sergeants love my name, Scar.

S-C-A-R is my last name, right? They're like, bring your pride over here, Scar. We know you just can't wait to be king.

The whole Lion King thing, you know. You know, when I first bust into basic training, you know, they put you out on buses. It's just like in the movies, man. You're all a bunch of fresh-faced, you know, ignorant, don't know what you're in for in your civilian clothes. You get on a bus and they take you onto the base and the bus parks and a drill sergeant jumps on the bus and just starts yelling at you, just like in the movies.

And this drill sergeant jumped on our bus with his hat, you know, and his uniform just completely squared away, yelling at us. And then his eyes locked on me and he looks at me and he's like, you look seasoned, he says. He says, how old are you? And I said, I'm 40 drill sergeant. And he says, 40?

I'm 40 and I'm about to retire. He says, if I had to do this all over again at this age, I'd cut my own nuts off. That was my first five minutes in the military. And you've been listening to Ken Scar tell his story and what a story it is. For all purposes, he was just a meandering artist who struck up a decent gig in San Diego, doing production arts for TV sets and for theater. But his marriage dissolves and then everything goes sideways and he's contemplating suicide, but doesn't take it all the way, praise God. And then he finds the military and that sergeant.

And what a funny scene that must've been for him, certainly not the sergeant. When we come back, more of Ken Scar's story here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country. Stories from our big cities and small towns, but we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to our americanstories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.

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Listen to Untold Stories, Life with myasthenia gravis on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we continue with our American stories and with Ken Skar. When we last left off, Ken had decided to join the Army in order to, in his own words, kill himself after his marriage fell apart. He did this in his 40s, making him much older than most of the recruits and subject to some jokes at his expense.

Let's continue with the story. I got grief from the minute, literally the minute I arrived at basic training. But then when they had to run with me, I usually had the fastest runtime in the Army and pretty much in any of the services. If you have a good PT score, physical fitness score, that gives you more respect than almost anything. You get immediate respect if you're in shape. In the Army, when I was in, the physical fitness test was how many push-ups you could do in two minutes, how many sit-ups you could do in two minutes, how fast you could run two miles, right?

I could run two miles in about 12 and a half minutes. That was enough to pretty much beat any other soldier in my unit most of the time. As soon as they saw I was in shape, that kind of gained me some respect. And then when they saw what I could do with the camera, that also got me respect. But, you know, every unit I went to, and I wasn't in that many units, but I had to like earn respect as being an older guy and I usually did, you know, you're in a bay with 60 other recruits, all the other recruits in my bay were 18, 20, maybe 21.

I went to basic training at Fort Benning. It was one of the hardest, you know, three months of my life. It was the mental part. It was the dealing with all the stupid idiocy that comes with being with 60 young men and living with 60 young men in a room for weeks and weeks at a time. So much ridiculousness happens.

And as an older man, it was very hard to just get through, get through that part of it and just like keeping myself from strangling one of these kids that whole time. It was just like in the movies, you know, they did such, it's designed to make young men do stupid things. And they do, they do. And they did. And I was just like, don't you see? They're trying to make you act like this.

You act like this and now you're acting like this. Sneaking out of the bay in the middle of the night to go across the street, because in basic training, they take away everything. They take away your phones. They take away sweets. They take away coffee, cigarettes.

You know, you don't get any of that stuff. And some of these recruits that I was with, going a month without a Snickers bar was like too much for them. So they like snuck out of the bay across the street in the middle of the night to where there were some vending machines and bought a bunch of candy and chips and tried to sneak back into the bay with them. And of course the drill sergeants caught them. And so we all got woken up at 3 a.m. that night. We all had to wake up and they smoked us. And that means when they make us do pushups and sit ups and all these other physical activities, nonstop for, you know, for an hour as punishment.

Because when one person in the army messes up, the entire unit gets punished. And that was hard to deal with. That was hard. That was a hard three months to get through.

Let me tell you. I got through it and I couldn't believe it, you know, and graduating basic training is one of the proudest moments of my life, you know, at 40 years old. My gig in the army was I was a 46 Quebec, which is a photojournalist or combat camera, they call us. And we kind of act as public relations. We also like tell the story of soldiers. That was the main job was telling the story of soldiers and what they do and trying to bring them deserved recognition. It was a really cool gig because when I was in Afghanistan, for instance, I got to go see all the different things soldiers do. I wasn't just stationed in one combat outpost or one forward operating base, right? I got to go all over Regional Command East, which was the area of operation that I was in. I got to go on air assaults and Black Hawk helicopters. I got to go on transportation missions with transportation units, you know, driving across the country. I got to go on foot patrols with scout units. I even got to spend a day with John McCain when he came to visit. So it was a big variety of things I got to do, which was something a lot of people would never imagine you can do if you join the Army.

So we deployed in August of 2011. And my first unit was to forward operating base Tillman. And I jumped out of the chopper. There was green smoke going off on the landing zone. I jumped out with all my equipment and my rucksack. And I could hear the.50 caliber machine guns going off. Just over my right shoulder, you could hear machine guns going off. And that was intense.

And I set it under my breath. Dang, that's intense. And the soldier that had come to pick me up, he's like, what's intense?

Because he'd been there for six months. And I said, that machine gun going off up there, that's intense. And he's like, you know, those are our guys shooting. And I said, yeah, but they're shooting at someone, right?

They're shooting at someone. The soldiers that had been there were completely desensitized. He's like, yeah, whatever, you know. But to me, it was like, holy cow, what have I gotten myself into? I'm literally in a war zone. And that's the first time it really hit me, like, what have you done, dude?

What have you done? And then, you know, the next day, I mustered with the unit that was there. They were going out on a foot patrol to patrol outside the base. There was a place where they had been getting shot at, mortar rounds. So they were going to go to this poo, point of origin, where these mortars had been being fired at the base. So we were going to walk out the gates of the base, out into the lands outside the base, and through the little villages out there until we got to this point of origin to see what was going on, assess the situation.

So we mustered before dawn in the dark, and the platoon leader, which was, I think, a second lieutenant, he gathered everyone around and said, okay, guys, we take fire every time we go out there. So just keep your heads on a swivel, be ready for anything. And I'm standing there thinking, how the hell did I get here? I'm a 40 years, I'm a painter. What am I doing here?

You know, it was way too easy to get there. I just got online and looked up how to join the military. And less than a year later, I'm in Afghanistan, about to go out on my first mission outside the wire. I had my full kit on, which is all the body armor you have to wear. I had my M4, which is the weapons they give us. You know, I have, as a military photographer, we have all the same equipment as any other soldier.

And then plus that, we have our cameras hanging around our shoulders to take pictures of what happened. We walked out the gates that morning, and I was just scared to death. I was scared to death. But I could not do it at that point.

I did it. I walked out with them. And within a couple hours, I felt a lot more comfortable, because I realized these soldiers that I was with knew what they were doing.

And if anything happened, I would probably be OK. You know, they would know what to do. And so I just started taking pictures of them, walking through these amazing, mountainous regions where we were. And then later in that day, sure enough, we got ambushed. We took fire, and we all had to dive behind rocks and return fire. And I earned my combat action badge, my very first mission outside the wire that day. We were out there for over almost three days, I think. We spent the night on the top of a ridge. A lot of things happened during that mission. But that was my very first mission outside the wire. And by the time I got back to Fob Tillman, I was a different person.

I was a soldier. And what a story Ken Skaar is telling. And imagine having to try and win the respect of a bunch of 18, 19, and 20-year-olds when you're 40. Usually, it's the other way around, and then having to live with them and all the nonsense.

We all love teenage boys. But my goodness, when you're in your 40s, and you have to live in bunk beds with them, days and weeks and months at a time, well, this is a new test of will and character. And it turns out, this was a formative experience. In Ken Skaar's life, he gets deployed to a war zone. What have you done, man?

He asked of himself. And then that first mission outside the wire, three days. And he said it best. By the time I got back to the Fob, I was a soldier. And by the way, any man who served and then gone into combat has had the same experience. And it doesn't mean people who served who didn't get to the combat aren't essential, but there's something about combat. As Winston Churchill said in our great Churchill piece, that bullet whizzing by your head, well, that's when you feel most alive.

When we come back, more of this remarkable piece of storytelling, Ken Skaar's story here on Our American Stories. And when people ask you, is that the latest iPhone? You could just be all cool about it and say, oh, yeah, I mean, I get the latest one every year.

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After 30 gigabytes, service may be slowed. Receive a comparable iPhone model each year with an acceptable trade-in every year. Requires credit qualification and 36-month phone financing agreement. I'm Jonathan Strickland, host of the podcast, Tech Stuff. I sat down with Sunan Shahani of Surf Air Mobility, which recently went public. We talked about flying in electric planes and regional air mobility. The future of travel doesn't have to include crowded airports, cramped seats, or long road trips.

It can be as simple as using an app to book a short-range flight on an electric plane. Learn more on Tech Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. living with the debilitating muscle weakness and fatigue caused by this rare disorder. Each episode will uncover the reality of life with myasthenia gravis. From early signs and symptoms to obtaining an accurate diagnosis and finding care, every person with MG has a story to tell. And by featuring these real-life experiences, this podcast hopes to inspire the MG community, educate others about this rare condition, and let those living with it know that they are not alone.

Listen to untold stories, life with myasthenia gravis, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we continue with our American Stories and Ken Skars' story. Ken joined the army late in life, in his 40s, after spending years working as an artist. After graduating basic training, Ken would become a 46 Quebec, or a photojournalist, and was deployed overseas where he took many photographs of our troops in action, sometimes under fire himself.

Let's continue with the story. The photographs turned out pretty good. I got a lot of them.

A lot of them got picked up all over the world. I got some good shots of our guys out there. As a photographer, it's always the ones you don't get that kill you. When we got ambushed, I hid behind a rock with a couple other soldiers, and they started returning fire.

And I got some shots of them, which weren't very good. But if I had to turn my camera just to the left of me, one of our guys had a SAW 249, which is an automatic machine gun. And he was just opening up down this riverbed at the enemy.

Just total Rambo stuff. And I just stood there and looked at him like, wow, that's really cool. And I didn't think to turn my camera and take some pictures of him. And I regret that to this day, because those would have been award-winning photos if I had just thought of that.

And years later, I always think back. I'm a much better photographer now than I was then. I didn't know photography when I first got to Afghanistan. I didn't know how to work the cameras.

The Army gives us these really great Nikon professional cameras with all the lenses. And I sort of learned as I went while I was over there. But if I could go back now, I would take much better pictures. But as it was, my pictures turned out pretty good.

The composition was good. And I was surprised, because as military photographers, military journalists, all our content is public domain. It belongs to the American public.

And media outlets know that. So they know where to find our stuff if they're looking for photos of a particular thing, or if they need a photo for a certain story. So my photos almost immediately started getting picked up by USA Today, New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, Huffington Post, you name it. I was amazed, because also as military photographers, we can go places that civilian photographers can't go. And my stuff still gets picked up. I still find my photographs on websites.

Or friends will call me or text me like, hey, Scar, is this your photo? And I was like, holy cow, it is my photo, you know, in AP. It's like, it's amazing the places my content went.

So that was kind of cool. One of my most famous photos is of a, was when I went to Oregon E on that first mission before they flew me to FOB Tillman. I had a couple days at FOB Oregon E, which is a weird name for a place.

I still don't know why it was named that. We had a howitzer crew there, which is howitzer triple seven cannons, which are these giant weapons that can send around, I don't know, hundreds of miles with pinpoint accuracy, right? These guys have to take into account the curvature of the earth when they aim their weapon. I had a couple days at this base, so I went down to just take some shots of these cannon crews firing. One of my shots, I captured the flame, the ball of flame that comes out of these cannons that the naked eye can't see. And the ball of flame just perfectly framed the soldier that was pulling the lanyard to fire the cannon. And I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. You know, so I went back to the office and uploaded the picture and it got picked up all over the place immediately.

I didn't even realize how unique that photo was. I had the US Army photo of the year was the easiest photo I ever took. I was in a Chinook flying from Bagram to Jalalabad, and Jalalabad is where the Khyber Pass is, big city. I don't know how far the flight was, a couple of hours maybe. But we got in this big Chinook helicopter and the load master, which is the soldier that's in charge of loading everything, whether that's people or equipment, into the aircraft and making sure it's locked down, strapped in. She saw I had a camera and she sent me at the very back of the Chinook. And we took off and we're flying and, you know, between Bagram and Jalalabad are these incredible mountains.

It's the Himalayan, it's the roots of the Himalayan mountains. You know, if you follow them up far enough, you'll get to Mount Everest. So there are these incredible mountain ranges that we're flying over, just beautiful. And I don't know, we're like 30 minutes into the flight and she presses a button and lowers the tailgate of this Chinook helicopter mid-flight so we can look out and see all the mountains as we're flying over them. And then she walks out and sits on the edge of the tailgate. You know, she's like strapped in, but she like dangles her feet over the edge of this tailgate and just kind of watches.

There was another Chinook following us and she was sort of watching the Chinook and looking at the scenery as we're flying over it. And I just kind of turned and like took a shot of her sitting there and it was the U.S. Army photo of the year that year, easiest photo I ever took. They have an entire award system, so it's kind of like the Emmys or the Pulitzers. The military has its own awards.

It's a very big deal if you're in that job field. So yeah, the Department of Defense, they have their own awards and the Army has awards. They're called the Keith L. Ware Awards and they're named after a Medal of Honor recipient who was a public affairs officer.

And I've won 22 of them. And one of them was I was named the U.S. Military Journalist of the Year in 2013, which is the highest award given in that job field. I came back in August 2012, flew back to Fort Hood, my kids were there to meet me, which was great. The one thing I wanted the most was a Starbucks coffee because we didn't have Starbucks in Afghanistan.

So I got myself a Starbucks coffee and it was the best tasting coffee I ever had. Now I work at Clemson University. I'm in Public Information Director. So I do a lot of kind of what I did in the Army.

I take pictures, write stories. You know, this was 2014, so I was still the standing United States Military Journalist of the Year. So that helped me get an interview at Clemson. I kind of got my foot in the door and that's sort of how I landed the job. So I had an amazing portfolio after five years as an active duty soldier, as a combat camera photographer, you know, portfolio that a lot of photographers would would kill for probably. So because I had so much opportunity to take pictures of amazing events and things. And I'm proud of what I did when I was over there. You know, I really tried to elevate what our soldiers were doing and elevate the citizens of Afghanistan.

You know, winning hearts and minds was a big part of our job. I would have never imagined when I was young being a soldier. But now that I have been a soldier, I'm glad that I was, because it was just meaningful to be a part of something bigger than myself. And a special thanks to Monty Montgomery for the post-production and Faith Buchanan for the pre-production on this story. And a special thanks also to Ken Skar for sharing his full story with us and the hard parts especially, and that part of his life where everything could have turned south. And I have experienced suicide in my own family and anyone who has knows the consequence.

A beautiful niece of mine took her own life and if she had gotten through that day, anything was possible for her. And my goodness, awards for shots, his photos appearing everywhere, AP, HP, that's Huffington Post, the NY Times, Fox News, USA Today, US Army Photo of the Year, from suicide to that and more. And he said he was proud of his military service, proud of what he'd done with his life. Now he's doing it on a great American college campus and that's the campus of Clemson University in South Carolina.

The story of Ken Skar here on Our American Story. You're at a place you just discovered. And being an American Express Platinum card member with global dining access by Resi helped you score tickets to quite the dining experience. Okay, Chef. You're looking at something you've never seen before, much less tasted.

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