In honor of Veterans Day, here’s a list of celebrities who’ve served in the military:
1. Adam Driver. He joined the Marines after 9/11 and served for almost three years, before being medically discharged after a mountain biking accident.
2. Morgan Freeman. He was a radar technician and Airman 1st Class in the Air Force from 1955 to 1959.
3. Tom Selleck. He was in the California Army National Guard from 1967 to 1973.
4. Tony Bennett. He was drafted to the Army in the final years of World War 2, and was right on the front line.
5. Rob Riggle. He was a Marine for 23 years, and served in Kosovo, Liberia, Afghanistan, and Albania.
6. Clint Eastwood. He was drafted during the Korean War, but never saw combat. He served as a lifeguard at a base in California.
7. Robin Quivers. She served in the Air Force from 1975 to 1978.
8. Ice-T. He enlisted in the Army in 1977, after his then-girlfriend gave birth to their daughter. He served in Hawaii until 1979.
9. Mel Brooks. He was a combat engineer in World War 2, where his duties included defusing land mines.
10. Chuck Norris. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1958, and was sent to South Korea . . . where he developed his martial arts skills.
11. Gene Hackman. When he was 16, he lied about his age to enlist in the Marines in 1946. He served in China, Hawaii, and Japan.
12. James Earl Jones. He joined the ROTC in college, but never got sent to the Korean War. Instead, he was stationed at a base in Leadville, Colorado in 1953.
(Interestingly, he made his film debut in the 1964 classic “Dr. Strangelove”, where he helped deliver THE BIG ONE.)
13. Sinbad. He was in the Air Force in the early ’80s, but he claims he was almost discharged for going AWOL all the time. He was finally discharged for, quote, “parking my car in the wrong position.”
14. Sidney Poitier. He lied about his age to enlist during World War 2, and served at a VA hospital in New York.
15. Drew Carey. He was a field radio operator in the Marines from 1980 to 1986.
16. MC Hammer. He was in the Navy for three years in the early ’80s.
17. Alan Alda. Before playing an army surgeon in Korea on “M*A*S*H”, he actually served six months during the war . . . as a gunnery officer.
18. Oliver Stone. He was wounded twice in battle in Vietnam in the late ’60s. His experiences were the basis of his movie “Platoon”.
19. Robert Duvall: He served two years in the Army AFTER the Korean War. He was stationed in Georgia.
20. Sadly, the list overlooks Bea Arthur. . . who was in the Marines during World War 2. She worked as a typist, a dispatcher, and a truck driver.
Happy Veterans Day from the @smileymorningshow