He was standing outside, two storefronts looming over him. Joe Allen, a former high school basketball player at Whitnall High School in Greenfield, had run out of options. No college wanted him. He was at a crossroads, about to make arguably the biggest decision of his life since the time he figured it might be a good idea to come out of the womb.

Since finishing at Whitnall in June, Allen had no plan for his future. He was working at a liquor store to make money, but that’s no long-term career and, Joe knew it.

One day in September, dissatisfied with the direction his life was headed, Allen sat down with the want-ads in his home on Milwaukee’s North Side. One advertisement caught his eye, and after speaking with his parents (“cockamamie,” said his mother, Elaine), Allen was off to his future.

The year was 2000. It was pre-Sept. 11, pre-Iraq War, and Joe Allen was looking to enlist in the U.S. military. On one side, there was a U.S. Army Recruiting office and on the other, the Air Force. Clutching the Air Force advertisement in his hand, Allen went to hear what they had to say, but hoop dreams were still lingering in the back of his mind.

Four years, the Air Force’s time requirement, is a big commitment for a kid who just got out of high school and still wants to play basketball in college. Next door, the Army wanted two. Joe Allen took those two.

The mental strain of basic training was far tougher than the physical demand for Joe. For a kid who stands well over six feet and has a 47-inch vertical, the army hadn’t had many recruits who could keep up with Allen. A learning disability, which he hid from the Army, kept him from excelling mentally.

Allen had a rough time at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, but the strain helped him learn to train his mind like he trained his body.

While in Carolina, Allen found out that his two-year commitment wouldn’t be good enough for the U.S. Army. He had an HSED, a high school equivalency diploma, that bumped the minimum service time to three years. By the time he found out, it was too late.

Would he have enlisted had he known going in that he was going to spend three years in the army? “Probably not,” Joe says. “Actually… hell no.”

The HSED that Joe held was doing more than just holding him back from an early exit. It was keeping him from getting to pick his own job in the military. The job the army picked for him? “The name for my job was ‘petroleum supply specialist,’” Joe says. You know, transporting fuel for the army. Driving gasoline for the military was a pretty safe job in April of 2001, so Allen didn’t worry as he learned how to drive the truck in Fort Lee, Virginia. After some extra training in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and down time at home in Milwaukee, Joe packed his bags for Korea.

Driving as part of the fuel platoon of the “infamous” 1st tank battalion of the 2nd infantry division in Korea, Joe was forced to grow up quickly. He was in a new world, halfway around the planet from his home, and he was grouped with “a bunch of hardcore battle-tank drivers,” as Joe puts it.

Not only that, but Allen had to deal with inferior leadership. “I’m fresh out of the house, and then I get sent there with bad, I mean bad leadership. I was young and lost,” Joe says.

After getting used to the new world he was living in, Allen embraced it. He lived well in Korea, becoming closer to his fellow soldiers and taking advantage of being on the other side of the Pacific. “It was actually a lot of fun there once I got acclimated,” Joe says. “Cheap clothes, man. I’m still wearing some of them.”

One night, Joe was sleeping well. Sometimes it’s tough sleeping in barracks because there’s always someone awake. It was a quiet night, at least until someone came rapping on his door.

Allen got up and crossed the room. “I went to answer the door and saw nobody, so I went back and lay down,” Allen says. “But as I lay there, I had a feeling. I knew something happened.”

Allen left his room and headed down the hall, where a bunch of his fellow soldiers were huddled around a television. The images on the screen were mesmerizing to everyone in the room, including Joe.

“I knew at that point that I would have to go to war.”

It was Sept. 11, 2001.

Look for Part 2 to the Odyssey of Joe Allen in the next edition of the Post.

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