Another Monday Night by Dan Bieger

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So we told ourselves."
Marvin laughed at that. "Our class. Yeah, right! Not difficult to be the best and brightest of that lot."
"Except we weren't, Marvin. We weren't. We went off to a war that we did not have to go to."
"They'd have drafted us, anyway, Stephen. We were prime draft material. No money, no jobs, equipped with all our limbs. I could hear them licking the envelope."
"Remember taking the oath?"
"You and me, the two of us, the recruiter, and the stupid Butter Bar at the Recruiting Main Station doing his damnedest to look official and all he looked was silly. Had a hard time not smiling if not outright laughing."
"Wasn't real, was it?"
Now Marvin looked up from his drink, glanced at Stephen, assured himself the man was grinning at the memory, and then answered: "No, but nothing is real to teenagers. That's what we were. Me seventeen...and a half. Very important that ‘and a half.' And you just over eighteen. What the hell did we know?"
"Everything. We thought we knew everything."
Grinning in return, Marvin said: "The blessing of youth: omniscience exceeded only by naivete."
Neither spoke then, both addressing their drinks, the grins fading from their faces.
"You remember the oath doesn't mention lawful orders, don't you?"
Marvin was startled. "No," he admitted, "I remembered that it did but now I know I don't remember the exact words."
"Looked them up. ‘Obey the orders of the officers appointed over me and according to regulations and the UCMJ.'"
"Well, that's it, then. The UCMJ."
"Yep. Article 92. That's where the ‘lawful' creeps in."
Marvin sat back in his chair looking at Stephen. The momentary confusion of not remembering the words of the enlistment oath now replaced by a striving to remember their basic training. He couldn't picture the class that covered this topic and he said so.
"Neither do I," Stephen admitted. "But that's where we must have learned it because I can't believe we got it when we got to our unit."
"Important part is that we got it, right?"
"Yeah, that's the important part. But just suppose for a moment we didn't get it till later. Like when we got back."
Marvin immediately shook his head in denial. "Nah, we must have had the training before then. Must have been in basic."
"Must have been," Stephen agreed. Noticing his drink about finished, he signaled Senor Viejo. Turning to Marvin, he asked his friend if he was ready. "By the time they get here I will be," Marvin answered so Stephen signaled for two to the old bartender.
"You know what else that oath doesn't mention? Duty. It prescribes duty but doesn't mention it. Nor honor. Nor country though each is contained in the oath implicitly, country a little more explicitly than either duty or honor."
"Yeah, but we'd read MacArthur's speech at West Point. Do you remember arguing with me about that one."
"We argued? I thought we agreed."
"We agreed with the sentiment but you said that he defined the terms and I said he didn't."
"Who was right?"
Stephen grinned the smug reply.
"If he didn't define it, he damned sure enshrined it," Marvin said, the reply acknowledgement of insufficient memory while affirming memory sufficient to the task at hand.
"Yeah, he did.