Yes, I know he was in the Wild Bunch and Marty. But it was repeats of McHale’s Navy shown on our itty bitty portable TV after school that I learned who Ernest Borgnine was. He was McHale, of course. And Joe Flynn was his boss and Tim Conway had hair and was the McHale tattle tale. And they made WWII’s Pacific Theater, er, funny.

But war was NOT funny to Borgnine. According to Wikipedia:
Borgnine joined the United States Navy in 1935, after graduation from James 

Hillhouse High School^[7] in New Haven, Connecticut. He was discharged in 1941, and re-enlisted when the United States entered World War II and served until 1945 (a total of ten years), reaching the rating of Gunner’s Mate 1st Class. He served aboard the destroyer USS Lamberton (DD-119).
In a British Film Institute interview about his life and career, Borgnine said of the war:

After World War II we wanted no more part in war. I didn’t even want to be a boy-scout. I went home and said that I was through with the Navy and so now, what do we do? So I went home to mother, and after a few weeks of patting on the back and, ‘You did good,’ and everything else, one day she said, ‘Well?’ like mothers do. Which meant, ‘Alright, you gonna get a job or what?’^[8]

In 2004, Borgnine received the honorary rating of Chief Petty Officer from the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Terry D. Scott—the US Navy’s highest ranking enlisted sailor at the time—for Borgnine’s support of the Navy and naval families worldwide.