In 1966, Fogerty went to an Army recruitment office right around the time his draft number came up, as reported by the Fort Knox News. He signed up to be a supply clerk with the United States Army Reserve. He ended up being on active duty for six months and serving in the Reserves for two years. After going through basic training in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, he was stationed at Fort Knox in Kentucky, which Fogerty described as “pretty intense because this was right at the height of the Vietnam War. Every young man’s clock was running pretty fast.” 

Fogerty credited his military experience with teaching him personal discipline and maturity and noted that his service influenced his songwriting. He specifically mentioned that his song “Wrote A Song For Everyone” was about “a guy who went through the military at a very emotional and volatile time in history.” Another song, “Porterville,” which ended up being the first song released by Creedence Clearwater Revival after the band changed their name from its earlier iteration, The Golliwogs, was reportedly “conceived in the heat of Kentucky,” and begins with the lyric “It’s been an awful long time since I been home.” According to Fort Knox News, Fogerty wrote the song while he was “marching for countless hours on a 1-mile square asphalt parade field, dreaming of someday becoming a rock star.”