Matt Boucher served as a U.S. Marine, it taught him responsibility and gave him a sense of direction

Matt Boucher figures that if he continued acting the way he did in his younger years, he might be spending time in the Hill County Detention Center today.

But after graduating from high school, he joined the U.S. Marines. It taught him responsibility and gave him a sense of direction.

Today, he is an electrician and a member of Havre City Council.

He figured out that the military was what he needed when he was a junior in high school.

He always liked the Marines because, he said, "they just looked sharp, so clean looking."

He met with the Marine recruiter - who impressed him and quickly signed him up.

After graduating from Havre High School, he went to basic training and was off to San Diego.

Marine life ess just what he needed, he said, looking back at the experience.

"It grew me up. It gave me a lot of what I needed," he said.

He trained to become a helicopter crew chief and graduated from Marine SERE school - survive, evade, resist and escape - an intense two-week program. Then, he was sent to North Carolina to air crew member school.

He was then sent to Hawaii, where he served the rest of his hitch, except for his time in Iraq.

He spent April to November 2007 in Al Asad, Iraq. The deployment came six weeks after he got married.

He said his experience was similar to what many military people describe.

At first, he said, time flew by, then the next thing he knew, he had one month left.

That's when paranoia set in, he said.

He was sure that after getting through so much, the last month would be the problem.

Not so, fortunately, and he went back to Hawaii.

He developed close friends in the Marines, he said, and the service developed his personality, so he considered re-enlisting.

He thought about it long and hard, he said, but decided to move ahead with his life and came back to his hometown.

But Boucher often thinks of his experiences in the Marines, and he stays in touch via Facebook with many of the friends he made.

As Veterans Day approaches, he said, he thinks about his service a little bit more.

"In my day-to-day life, I don't think about it much," he said, "but I have a real sense of pride."

And he knows that there is one group he can go to when he needs to talk to someone.

"I'm not one to walk around waiting for someone to say 'thank you for your service,'" he said.

But it's great being able to talk to veterans - from any service or any era.

"I can strike up a conversation with any veteran," he said, and he always thanks them.

"Veterans deserve thanks," he said.

He has only one regret.

It's tough, he said, watching television and seeing areas he fought to defend now falling to the enemy - ISIS this time.