The moment Pat Tillman decided to turn his back on his professional football career, as player for the Arizona Cardinals, he instantly became a hero to many. He had selflessly turned a blind eye to the millions of dollars his contract awarded, to fight against terrorism.
It was a decision he made in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. He served his time in tours to Iraq and Afghanistan, but it was an unintentional bullet that did him in; his death a tragic result of friendly fire that was kept secret even at his funeral, so as not to soil his reputation as a war hero. He was awarded the Purple Heart and a Silver Star for his bravery.
Joe DiMaggio
Joe DiMaggio is one of the best baseball players of all-time. But even if one is not a fan of the sport, men and women across generations would know him as the lucky stud who married the sexy blonde and famous actress, Marilyn Monroe.
This baseball legend served in the military during the Second World War, but despite him being drafted, he was never part of all the real action that held the world in shock. Instead, he was assigned as an athletics instructor in bases around America, thousands of miles away from the enemy.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s military experience may be no match to all the fight scenes we’d seen him endure in films like Terminator, but he did spend real service in the Austrian army before he became a popular weightlifter, actor, and eventual governor of California.
His enlistment however, was not by choice. The law of his home country mandates that, at the age of 18, all Austrian males should serve at least a year in the army. He was a conscript. During his time, he managed to bag the Mr. Europe Contest while actively serving in the army.
John Glenn
One can only gaze into outer space and dream of what John Glenn has achieved throughout his life. He certainly was ahead of his time, a valiant risk taker, and for that his rewards were out of this world.
John Glenn was the first US astronaut to orbit the earth. He completed three orbits in total in 1962, after having started merely as a backup pilot for Alan Shepard and Virgil “Gus” Grissom. He joined the Project Mercury Astronaut Training in 1959 and served both in the Marines and NASA. He then pursued a political career and won a senatorial seat out of Ohio.
Kirk Douglas
Being one of the last surviving stars of the film industry’s Golden Age, Izzy Demsky, better known as Kirk Douglas, is an American actor, producer, director, and author.
He gave himself the name Kirk Douglas in 1941, right before he joined the navy, and shortly after the US entered the Second World War. He served the military as a communications and gunnery officer in anti-submarine warfare. What he could have achieved thereon we will never know, as he was medically discharged after suffering injuries following the dropping of an accidental depth charge in 1944.