U.S. Marine Corps from 1950 to 1952, the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve from 1952 to 1960 and the Ready Reserve from 1960 to 1967. He retired from the Marine Corps Reserve in 1974, having attained the rank of colonel. He was awarded the Navy Cross and Silver Star decorations for heroism in combat and two Purple Hearts as a Marine during the Korean War. He then volunteered for the Vietnam War before eventually turning against it. In 1992, he wrote his fourth book, The Taking of Hill 610, describing some of his exploits in Korea. Political career McCloskey served as a Deputy District Attorney for Alameda County, California, from 1953 to 1954 and practiced law in Palo Alto, California, from 1955 to 1967, cofounding the firm McCloskey, Wilson & Mosher, a forerunner to the firm that eventually became Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. He was a lecturer on legal ethics at Santa Clara University and Stanford Law School from 1964 to 1967. He was elected as a Republican to the 90th Congress, by special election, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of United States Representative J. Arthur Younger, after defeating Shirley Temple in the primary. He was reelected to the seven succeeding Congresses, serving from December 12, 1967 to January 3, 1983. In a 1981 interview, he stated that he thought he "was the first Republican elected opposing the war" despite the fact that his "constituency, two to one, favored the war in 1967". McCloskey was the first member of Congress to publicly call for the impeachment of President Nixon after the Watergate scandal and the Saturday Night Massacre. He was also the first lawmaker to call for a repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that had allowed for the War in Vietnam. He chose, in early 1975, to see for himself the effects of US bombing in Cambodia, stating afterwards that his country had committed "greater evil than we have done to any country in the world, and wholly without reason, except for our benefit to fight against the Vietnamese". In the 1972 Republican Party presidential primaries McCloskey campaigned on a pro-peace/anti-Vietnam War platform and obtained 19.7 percent of the vote against incumbent President Richard M. Nixon in the New Hampshire primary. At the New Mexico Republican Party state convention Rep. Manuel Lujan Jr. cast a decisive vote that resulted in McCloskey being awarded a national