Jock Miller served in the US Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps at Ohio Wesleyan University. Upon graduating from college, he served in the U.S. Army at Fort Dix, New Jersey then in a Control Group in the Enlisted Reserve for six years.
While at Fort Dix's Basic Training, Miller served as the Platoon Guide for November Company's forty-four soldiers for whom he was responsible for seven Squads. Because he is an Amateur Radio Operator, K2MUS, his M.O.S. was Intermediate Speed Radio Operator in the Communications Division, and he was responsible for running the CX 26 Communications Army Vehicle. He taught Morse Code to the Army soldiers on the J-38 code key at twenty WPM (Words per minute).
Miller was an M1 Sharpshooter, and while going through Basic Training at Fort Dix, he learned bayonet fighting, how to throw live hand grenades, execute hand-to-hand combat, fox hole defense, crawl under barbed wire cradling his M1 while night-fire tracers were being shot over his Platoon. At the end of his Fort Dix training, he experienced a live full battle field simulation that gave the Army soldiers a shuttering ground shaking glimpse of what real battle field situations would be like in Vietnam: Army tank fire, flame throwers, howitzers, machine gun fire, grenades, and live M1 fire at distant targets all exploding and leaving the battle field in a conflagration of smoke and fire. "I will never forget the fear and awe of that simulated battle. The earth trembled and the sound was deafening,” Miller said.
Miller did not go to Vietnam because he was enrolled in a Control Group in the Enlisted Reserves, but his November Company of forty-four soldiers were sent overseas into battle. Half of them did not return.
Jock Miller was given an Honorable Discharge after completing six years of service.
