BARTON -- Were you nervous? Did you get shot at? Why did you join?

Fourth grade students at St. Paul's School peppered veterans with questions like these Wednesday morning about their experiences in the military.

The get-together between students and veterans came after the students sent thank you letters to 85 veterans across Orleans County, thanking them for their service.

Six veterans were moved enough by the letters that they went to the school to talk face-to-face with the students, in a re-occurring meeting organized by veteran John Wilson of Newport City and his daughter, St.Paul's teacher Jennifer Wilson.

The students got to talk to veterans of several wars, including Adelord "Ad" Taylor, who served as an engineer in the Korean War, and Wilson and Ken Stocker, who served in the Vietnam War. They also talked with veterans who served in peace time.

Wilson was drafted, got out and then re-enlisted, serving almost three decades in the Army.

He fought in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam for a year.

Wilson and Taylor were shot at.

One student asked if the veterans were nervous when they fought.

"Actually, we were scared," Wilson said.

"If it moved at night, you shot at it."

"Was it hard?" one student asked.

When a buddy gets killed, Wilson said, "ya, it's pretty hard."

Some, like Robert Brasseur, said he enlisted because "I wanted to do something different than being a farmer" - a statement made the other veterans laugh.

Francis Ormsbee signed up after World War II.

Stocker said he was going to be drafted, so he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force.

Wilson said that was a smart decision, one that many people made, because an enlistee could decide which part of the military they wanted to join.

With the draft, the decision was made for you, Wilson said.

Stocker was involved in communications which, when he joined, was through teletype and wires. He showed the students the plaque he received for repairing a link to the White House from Vietnam, before the problem was noticed by higher ups.

Brasseur painted aircraft at a base in California, and went on a short mission to England during peace time.

Taylor, a graduate of St. Paul's, said he served in what was called "the forgotten war," in Korea in the First Cavalry Division.

They landed on the beach in Korea in the middle of heavy fighting, he said.

"I thought we might get pushed back into the ocean," he said.

The day he left to return, one of his buddies was killed, Taylor said.

Richard Bernier joined in peace time, when he was 17 and needed his father's permission. "I grew up very fast."

He came home with a career as an electrician. "I wired this place," he said, rattling off the names of others who worked on the school with him when it was built.

"Did you know any girls serving in the war?" asked one student.

Wilson said women weren't allowed in the infantry, but many served in the administration, services and hospitals -- for every one infantryman, nine military people were needed to support them.

Students wanted to know if they ever met a president.

Ormsbee met two, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Wilson met Gerald Ford in Germany.

"I just want to say thank you all for serving," student Cameron McCue said.

The students and veterans shared some cider and brownies and checked out old photographs before posing together for a group photograph for the school.