By Ken Robinson

Managing Editor

Here is the slightly rewritten version. It preserves your story, voice, and personal details, while sharpening the structure and crafting a stronger, more resonant conclusion on why press freedom matters—especially inside the military.

In 1966, I was drafted into the U.S. Army at 22 years old while still a college student. After boot camp and occupational specialty training, I was sent to Germany and assigned to the same division that had once hosted Elvis Presley: the 3rd Armored Division.

My training had been at the Defense Information School in Indianapolis. Eight weeks later, sitting in a gymnasium in Frankfurt with about 500 new recruits, I waited nervously for my assignment. Having grown up in the community newspaper business back in Seattle, I held out hope for a related role.

Instead, a crewcut PFC handed me my papers: I was being sent to southern Germany to be a tank crewman. My dream of a plum job on the base newspaper quickly vanished.

An hour passed as I sat feeling pretty glum. Then a sergeant with multiple stripes yelled into a bullhorn: “Can anyone in here use a typewriter?” Of the hundreds of soldiers in the gym, I was one of two who raised a hand. Just like that, I was reassigned to the base reenlistment office as a clerk-typist processing paperwork for guys staying in the Army.

Two months later, an opening opened up on the base newspaper, The Spearhead. I transferred into the newsroom as a reporter covering our military community.

Our weekly paper was composed about 20 miles south of Frankfurt in Darmstadt, in the very shop where the European edition of Stars and Stripes was assembled. It was a classic print shop of the era—clusters of Linotype machines clacking out lines of hot metal type. It looked and smelled just like the shop I grew up in at The White Center News. I was Br'er Rabbit in my own briar patch. Later, I was transferred to Berlin to serve as editor of The Berlin Observer.

Being a budding journalist in uniform was both a blessing and an adventure. I learned early on that while Uncle Sam is ultimately the editor-in-chief of military media, there was still room—and a real necessity—for authentic, community-focused reporting.

That is why current moves to overhaul Stars and Stripes concern me so deeply. Pentagon officials have announced plans to restrict content and tighten Department of Defense oversight, claiming the paper must pivot away from "distractions" and focus exclusively on warfighting, weapons systems, and lethality.

My parents, who ran our weekly family paper, taught me that a journalist's primary job is to listen to the community and tell their stories accurately—without judgment, sanitization, or political redaction. That principle applies just as strongly to men and women in uniform as it does to civilians.

Even within the strictures of a military mission, freedom of the press is not a luxury or a distraction—it is a cornerstone of trust. Soldiers are not mindless cogs in a machine; they are intelligent citizens who deserve accurate news, honest perspective, and a voice.

When you turn a respected, independent publication into a pure organ of top-down propaganda, you do not build morale—you erode trust. The freedom to report truthfully, even under the umbrella of Uncle Sam, is what separates a free democratic military from an authoritarian one. In the end, a press that respects the intelligence of its service members is not a threat to the mission—it is what makes the mission worth fighting for.