Text 8902, 53 rader
Skriven 2013-06-26 08:44:00 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
   Kommentar till text 8896 av Joe Delahaye (35641.fidonews)
Ärende: Japanese Common Sense
=============================
Joe Delahaye wrote to Roy Witt:

 >>  JD> Yup, Joined the RCAF, which turned into the Canadian Forces
 >>  JD> (could not say Armed Forces for some stupid reason), and switched
 >>  JD> to green uniform. Switched back to blue when they renamed it the
 >>  JD> Air Division, and now after I retired it is the RCAF again <G>
 >>
 >> At 18yoa I went down to the Marine Corps recruiting office at the
 >> local Post Office and took the test to enter the MC...passed that with
 >> flying colors and was on my way to the medical examine in Chicago when
 >> they pulled me aside and said I was too smart to be a Marine, but the
 >> Navy would take me in a (NY) second...I told that recruiter that if I
 >> couldn't get into what I wanted, I'd never go. And I never did...six
 >> months later they gave my join-up buddy a Section 8 divorce and he
 >> became the town's 1st hippy driving a VW flower bus...ten years later
 >> they were taking draftees and putting them in the MC...that never
 >> happened before in the history of the MC...go figure.

 JD> You must have had a draft card, seeing as we are roughly the same age
 JD> <G> I believe the draft was still in effect at that time.

I did, but I was also an Apprentice and then a Journeyman Tool & Die Maker
then. T&D makers were exempt from the draft, except when they first
graduated from the apprenticeship. A few of my co-apprentices from the
class a year ahead of mine were drafted when they graduated. Joe Brown
never came back and his best friend was all screwed up by agent Orange. He
died at the ripe old age of 45...Frank Hadajokas lived through it, but he
was affected mentally (nightmares & cold sweats) by the memory of the guy
in his foxhole that got his head blown off. He died just last year. Frank,
his wife Kay, my first wife and I were friends since high school...

 JD>  I was serving in Germany during Vietnam, and at that time we had a
 JD> Nuclear weapon with US guardians (MP).  I knew several of them, and
 JD> one in particular had had several tours over there.  He was on his
 JD> way back there.  I often wonder how he made out, or if he made it out
 JD> alive.

I often wonder about that myself. My cousin was onboard a patrol boat and
snipers got a lot of his shipmates. Somehow he survived his tour and went
back for more.  I remember him sitting in my living room in San Diego and
telling me about his war experience. That was in the late 60s and I didn't
see him again until 2002 when I ran into him in the 'assisted living' home
where my mother was living. A lot of what he had planned for the rest of
his life in 1969 didn't work out as well as he wanted. Other than that, he
seemed well adjusted.


         R\%/itt


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