Why?

The country that sent us off to war was not there to welcome us home. It no longer existed. We answered the call of one President who was now dead; we followed the orders of another who would be hounded from office, and haunted, by the war he mismanaged so badly.
Many of our countrymen came to hate the war we fought. Those who hated it the most - the professionally sensitive - were not, in the end, sensitive enough to differentiate between the war and the soldiers who had been ordered to fight it. They hated us as well, and we went to ground in the cross fire, as we had learned in the jungles.
In time our battles were forgotten, our sacrifices were discounted, and both our sanity and our suitability for life in polite American society were publicly questioned. Our young-old faces, chiseled and gaunt from the fever and the heat and the sleepless nights, now stare back at us, lost and damned strangers, frozen in yellowing snapshots packed away in cardboard boxes with our medals and ribbons.
From the prologue of We Were Soldiers Once...and Young by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (Ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway

I woke up this morning at 5am...and in my efforts to fall back asleep (it's Sunday, no need for this!), I started surfin' the TV...found The District reruns (why'd they cancel this show!?)...caught the end...The Chief and Ella were at the Wall. No words were spoken. The image always, ALWAYS hits me. I cried. My father was a Vietnam vet. He was, what he considers, one of the unlucky one. He made it home. He dealt with getting spit on, called names, and all-around disrepected for his service. He lost friends and a part of himself that I'll never be able to experience. He volunteered for service during the War. VOLUNTEERED.

That is why I want to serve. Because many before me have and many after me will. I love my country.