I’ve included my mother’s thoughts about being an Army Brat and an Army wife. See “Being an Army Wife with Army Brats:”.

I am an Army Brat. From the day I was born at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington D.C. 

Till the day or night I drop dead my life and personality was shaped by growing up as the son of an active Army officer. The experience is shared by thousands of families whose similar experiences molded the children so much so that they are referred to and refer to themselves as Army Brats. So here I share my perspective about what it is to grow up as an Army Brat.

I’m going to start out by listing where I lived from birth to when my father retired from the Army:

1949 Washington DC
1950 Washington DC
1951 Ankara, Turkey
1952 Ankara, Turkey
1953 Washington DC
1954 Fort Sill, Oklahoma
1955 Fort Knox, Kentucky
1956 Frankfurt, Germany
1957 Washington DC
1958 Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
1959 Travis Air Force Base, California
1960 Travis Air Force Base, California
1961 Pacific Grove, California (Father in Korea)
1962 San Francisco Presidio, California
1963 Retired we moved to Pebble Beach, California

From September 1949 to September 1963 (14years) my father was assigned to 11 different stations in the US, Europe and Asia. Typically we lived in one location for about a year, unless it was overseas when it was two years.. Then we would have a month or so to move during which we would visit places along the way. It wasn’t until I was 10 years old and we moved to Travis Air Force Base that we lived more than one year in one place in the US. Up until then it was standard Army practice to move people every year despite the cost or effects on the families involved. Other branches of the military had different policies. The Air Force moved people every two years. Justification for this policy was probably based on giving officers a wide range of experience in managing the diverse aspects involved in having an effective military. But there are many ways to educate soldiers that don’t involve moving so often. My thinking is that civilian oversight of the Armed Forces was more concerned about preventing a group of officers from establishing long term relationships making them capable of usurping control and threatening democratic control.
Anyway. I figure by the age of 13 I had traveled over 50,000 miles just moving around the world. And my parents made sure that we saw as many of the important sights along the way. In fact they made a point of visiting at least one famous site every summer as we moved to our father’s new assignment. The following experiences typical of Army Brats gave me a vision of the world we live in vastly different from someone who had never been more than 100 miles from his birth place in his entire life.
By the time I went to college I had been in  11 countries worldwide and every state in the US except Maine, Alaska and Hawaii (I eventually visited all three, Hawaii many times), As a kid I had flown across the Atlantic in a military transport, taken a train across the US (the Zephyr), travelled by car, bus, and ocean liner. I had seen the Rocky Mountains, the Alps, the White Cliffs of Dover, lived near the Mississippi River, been to the Mammoth Caves and Carlsbad Caverns, Mount Rushmore, Old Faithful, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Alamo, the Eiffel Tower, the Bosporus, the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sofia, Notre Dame, St Peter’s Basilica, St Paul’s Cathedral, Statue of Liberty. the Roman Colosseum, Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam, Smithsonian, all before college. I had experienced earthquakes in California, tornados in Kansas, dust storms in Oklahoma, humidity in Virginia with dragon flies as big as a fist, saw dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum, went up in the Washington Monument, seen the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorial, Empire State Building. Disneyland and the Matterhorn and on and on.

Seeing and experiencing the world first hand; seeing and talking to the people takes away a lot of prejudices that are perpetuated by ignorance. Such is the Army Brat. Comfortable anywhere in the world. Comfortable with change. In fact the brat becomes uncomfortable without change. My travel days did not stop once I left home and my father retired. By the age of 50 I had been around the world 6 times. Visited every continent but Australia. I like movement. I find driving relaxing even meditative. I am a human doing.
Being an Army Brat has some questionable consequences. Consequences that came to mind only when I began to question certain patterns of behavior of how I related to other people. Attending a new school every year meant I was faced with meeting new fellow brats at the beginning of every school year; getting to know them for one year then moving to a new school and never seeing them again. Brat behavior adapted to this repetitive cycle by minimizing having deep feelings about schoolmates. And the fellow brats did just the same with me. As a brat I introduced myself at he start of the year. I made friends with some but not lifetime friends just this years friends and then leaving them behind at the end of the year. One strange practice at the end of the year was to ignore it as an end. Brats never said goodbye. The last day of school was no different than any other school day. No promising to stay in touch, no hugs and tearful partings. There was no point in behaving differently since everyone behaved the same, no deep feelings, no attachments, no painful departures. It was not that I didn’t want longer lasting friendships. It was that they just weren’t possible considering the lifestyle of the Army Brat. It wasn’t until college that I realized I could have longer lasting friendships and that I realized how important it was for me. As a result I am still close friends with several I met as a freshman and others I met in my fraternity. Even after more than 50 years I still play golf regularly with my closest friend, but I keep in touch with many others with birthday cards or dinners and periodic visits. That doesn’t mean I’ve overcome my hesitancy to develop deep relations with others. It just means I’ll do whatever is necessary to perpetuate the relationships I do have. I can’t ascribe my hesitancy to bond deeply is solely the result of being an Army Brat. I have met others who once freed from the Army situation learned to connect. I ascribe it to another life altering experience discussed in “Shit Happens” when I got cancer (an aggressive juvenile fibro mitosis of the lower parotid gland) at the age of seven.

List of Brats (Not just Army but all branches of the military including Air Force, Navy, Marines). See Wikipedia Army Brats for a more complete list

Military brats    (From Wikipedia: see for a more complete list)

Some I identified their occupation, most are famous

Air Force:

Suzanne Collins          hunger games author

Chris Cooper        actor

John Denver

Pam Grier

Mia Hamm

Helloise

Kris Kristofferson

Swoosie Kurtz

Annie Leibovitz

Ronnie Lott

Priscilla Presley

Victoria Principal

Peter Sarsgaard         actor

Bart Starr

Stephen Stills

Tank

Gore Vidal

WC

Mykelti Williamson          forest gump

Danny Wuerffel

Army

Amy Adams    actor/actress

Patch Adams

Christina Aguilera

Gregory Benford          sf author

Jackson Browne

LaVar Burton

Joelle Carter

Jerry Cantrell        Alice in Chains

Faye Dunaway

Herman Edwards         football

Harris Faulkner       fox tv anchor

Newt Gingrich

Ann Harding         actress

Priest Holmes

Robert Horry          NBA

Martin Lawrence

Timothy Leary

Tommy Lee       Motley Crue

Douglas MacArthur

Amy Markham

Markiplier        Youtuber

Julianne Moore

Shaquille O’Neal

Tahj, Tamera and Tia Mowry

Mary-Louise Parker            actress

Sally Quinn            author

Lionel Ritchie

Michelle Rodriguez       actress

Jeri Ryan          7 of 9 actor /actress

Michael Stipe            REM

Sharon Tate

Robert Kelly Thomas       Matchbook twenty

Blair Underwood         actor

Gore Vidal

Bruce Willis

Reese Witherspoon

James Woods

Tiger Woods

Marines

Pat Conroy       author

Deborah Foreman         actress

Emmylou Harris

Robert Hays   actor

Heather Locklear

John Phillips        Mamas and Papas

Mary Doria Russel       sf author

Austin St. John           power rangers

Ann Wilson           Heart

Navy

Hoyt Axton

Billy Beane        Oakland A’s

Bill Cosby

Steven Culp          actor

Robert Duvall

Kathie Lee Gifford

Mark Hamil

Marcia Gay Harden

L. Ron Hubbard

John McCain

John S McCain, Jr

Steve McQueen

Jim Morrison

Lou Diamond Phillips

Service unknown

Dan Hicks

Tre Cool         green day

Canadian military brats

Michael J Fox

Alanis Morissette

UK military

Tim Curry

Samantha Eggar

Bob Marly

Colin Greenwood        Radiohead

Christopher Hitchens      author

Engelbert Humperdinck

Christopher Isherwood

Elton John

Christopher Lee

Malcolm McDowell

Spike Milligan

Charlotte Rampling

Rick Springfield

Tilda Swinton