Peterson grew up in a poor family in
Boaz, Alabama, and when he was fifteen years old, his high school was visited by
Army National Guard recruiters. Attracted by the benefits of food and clothing, he enlisted and entered
active duty at the age of sixteen, but was sent back to school upon the discovering of his age. After graduating, he returned to the military and was stationed at
Fort Bragg as a paratrooper in the
XVIII Airborne Corps. Peterson was a member of the
United States Army Parachute Team (Golden Knights), and worked with
NASA on performing
High Altitude Low Opening (HALO) landings. Peterson was later assigned to the
Third United States Army for thirty days, during which he was placed in the
77th and attended
Ranger School in
Fort Benning, followed by survival training in Antarctica and language studies in California, the latter in which he learned French and Vietnamese. Peterson served in Germany and Okinawa with the
10th and
1st Special Forces Groups respectively before being deployed to Vietnam in 1963 as an advisor and eventually a combat role. He served multiple tours during the
Vietnam War until 1972. However, the mission failed after two aircraft were destroyed during refueling. Peterson compared the debacle and resulting public backlash to that received by American troops withdrawing from Vietnam: "We had to abort, put our tail between our legs, same way we came out of Nam. We just didn't finish the job. [...] We had way too much TV coverage in Nam. The public don't need to know our missions; it messed with intelligence. Nam was a hard time, soldiers condemned for pulling the trigger. Of course, if you waited one second and thought about it, you were dead. We fought for the country, and our own survival. It wasn't pretty. You were there to save your people." ==Racing career==