Off To Join The Service

A few days ago, a friend of mine was talking to his father about how he got into the Army. This friend was so captivated by his father's tale that he asked him to put it in writing. This my friends, is the first part of that tale.....enjoy!
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Germany 
Part I

Almost everyone joined something. It may have had something to do with patriotism, though probably not very much. It was instead a way to be somewhere else, doing something different, with people we hadn’t known for years. Most went to the army, some to the navy, and a few became marines. Not to do so meant a person would never have left Inwood. And while it was a wonderful place to grow up, it was not a place to stay, not without having compared it to someplace else and the people to those from other parts of the country, or other parts of the world

It was my understanding, based on the experience of everyone who had ever gone into the army, that one went from Fort Dix to Germany. I expected to do the same, but that was not to be. Instead, I was given the job of keeping the Red Menace, the Communist Horde from invading Oklahoma. As far as I could tell, I was successful.

This adventure began in my sophomore year at Manhattan College. I was in the Business School, not knowing what else to take. I was adept enough to know engineering was not to be my career. I had no sense what a slide rule might do, how electricity worked, what could be learned from blueprints or other such things. Liberal Arts were never considered, in part because I had no real notion what they were, but also because I was reluctant to be either liberal or artistic. The College offered physical education, but that seemed silly and could lead only to teaching gym. So, business it was. I had been majoring in Spanish I and Accounting I, having taken both classes days, nights, and summers. I was on a second round of Statistics, without having an inkling what it meant.

Ours was a Catholic College, and the feast day of the order’s founder, May 15th, was a holiday. I had met my friend Jake, and having nothing else planned, we decided it was the day to become soldiers. He was doing about as well as I in school, and we realized that at the current rate we would graduate and qualify for Social Security in the same week. Jake and I had been in grade school together. We went to different high schools, but came together around football and where we would hang out through adolescence.

Jake was quite capable, and had there been a leader it would surely have been him. He knew what should be done, and how. He was wise, in a crude and funny way. He could sometimes be frightening, as he teetered on the edge of control, as sometimes happened when he was drinking, a behavior that would intrude with greater frequency, but not always. Jake was kind, too, and protective. He wanted things to be right, and done well. He was exuberant, vital, loud, brazen and played football with an abandon that endeared him to teammates and to those watching.

We took the subway to the draft board, somewhere in the forties, on the West Side. They asked when we wanted to go, and we said sometime in June. That would give us time to finish school, if not to pass all of the courses. By being drafted we were committed to two years, rather than three which awaited those who enlisted, and four it they had an interest in the Air Force. On the way home I went by the out-of-town newspaper stand in Times Square, getting the Halifax paper for my father.

The paper was to make available a more benign answer to the question, ‘What were you doing downtown?,’ which it did. My father took it well, and seemed less surprised by the answer. Mother was more distraught, but there was nothing to be done, which made protests useless. I don’t recall her becoming immediately reconciled, but my parents were aware of the limits of wishes when choices were not their own. It was done. When my grades arrived, and I was headed for another round of Spanish and had barely left Accounting I behind, it helped them see that college was not where I then belonged.

On June 25, 1959, I was off to defend the nation, and to see Europe along the way. I walked to the subway with my father, but we were taking different lines. We said good-bye in ways we did so many things. There was no display of emotion, nor had there been when we had left Mother. He headed to work and I to Whitehall Street with the letter of greetings from Selective Service, a subway token taped in the corner. That we were not demonstrative seemed more an act of trust. We accepted, without identifying them, the feelings each might have. We assumed they were good and that we cared for one another as w ell as anyone could, or ever would.

With day under way, I went to meet Jake, who appeared as expected and a bit hung over. At Whitehall Street, we began the routine about which everyone had ever spoken – the physical, a ritual that was less formal and less thorough when administered to groups rather than to individuals, and which focused on the number of arms, legs, eyes and ears one might have, the total being divided by four with those having a score above one and below three passing the test. We spent a lot of time waiting, which it turned out was good training for military life. We got to know whomever was standing where we stood, and most were good company for the time we were together. It was during such a lull that Jake walked by, headed home.

His blood pressure was too high even for the army’s standard. I thought it no surprise, given what he may have drunk the evening before; but, it was still a bit disconcerting. ‘Oh, well’ is, and has been the available response to any number of things; and is, I assume, how I responded to the sight of Mahoney headed home. I wondered how he would be received in front of Schifani’s store by the guys who had just said, ‘So long.’ It would be funny, another of Jake’s misadventures; and it would remain funny only as long as the army found him acceptable on the following day.



To Be Continued.