McRoberts earned his Marine Corps commission in 1959 from the Navy ROTC program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “Freshman year I spent the summer on a destroyer in the North Atlantic, and I knew that was not my cup of tea." He was 29 years old when he first arrived in Da Nang in January 1966 with the advanced party for the Marine Corps’ all-weather fixed wing fighter squadron 235 (VMF(AW)-235). “The only time I actually got hit,” he said, “was from a rice farmer with a rifle as I was taking off from Hue.” He says, “My wife wasn’t for the war when I left, and she wasn’t for the war when I got back.” She did, however, support him. During his tour they stayed in touch through the Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS) and with cassette tapes. McRoberts describes typical missions that included close air support for Marines on the ground, and interdicting river crossings on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He says, “We sure did bomb an awful lot of trees.” McRoberts eventually retired from the Marines as a colonel after seven years of active duty and 17 years in the reserves. He returned to civilian life in April 1967 with a job as a test engineer at Boeing, where he retired as their chief test pilot for commercial airplanes in 1997.