You're in the Army now!

The Draft and the United States Army

In 1959 I was twenty-two years old, living in Oakland California. It was before the “all volunteer army” and the draft still dominated the horizon. Whatever lay ahead was seen through the prism of the draft and the prospect of getting a letter that began “You are hereby ordered to appear …..”. The prize in the letter was two years in the United States Army. The almost certainty of getting such a letter was dreaded by most young men. It played large in determining choices. It made planning difficult, not that I was very good at planning my life. Those typical paths: job, college, marriage could be expected to encounter a sign reading "DETOUR do not continue, go directly to the Army, do not finish your life". Dealing with specter of the Army boiled down mainly to Resist, Hope or Comply. The resist path entailed either leaving the country, getting a medical disqualification or a school deferment, which was at best temporary. I had no chance of a medical deferment; my school history would have made an educational deferment near impossible. Leaving the country was, for me, out of the question. The Hope option was hoping the age of twenty-six, which was the cutoff age for the draft, still four years hence for me, arrived ahead of the letter. Comply meant mostly joining to get it over or, in my case, volunteering for the draft. By volunteering my name went to the top of the list maintained by the Selective Service Administration so that the next batch of draft call-up letters would include one for me. Aside from ending the uncertainty, volunteering the draft meant that the tour would be two instead of the three years, the minimum time one could join the army. The certainty was preferable, given my thinking at the time, to the questionable hope of not being called or having to go in at a later time. My decision to volunteer for the draft was hardly made as part of well thought out plan for my future. I did not have any particular goal in life and though I had been out of high school for four years and had attended some college I was far from graduating and even further from having any idea what I would be doing twenty years hence, or even two years hence. Getting the army behind me was as close as I came to planning a future path. So I filled out the paperwork and the Army took me seriously and shortly I was ordered to take a physical, to see if I was fit to be in the Army. As expected I passed, thus dashing any hope of a medical deferment. The decision to volunteer for the draft was to be one of the last choices I would have for a while, like a couple of years.

7 July 1959

Very shortly after my physical exam I got the letter to report to the induction center in Oakland, California on 7 July 1959. I had made my choice; I was about to live it. At the induction center I learned just how ephemeral choice was. After filling out some papers and answering some questions I and the other inductees we were lined up and given the "choice" to “Step forward, by stepping forward you enlist in the army, if you do not step forward you are subject to prison.” Maybe not the exact phrase but certainly the meaning. There was no complicated legal language in that choice, just a clear indication that my ass now belonged to the United States Army. We were then loaded on to a bus destined for Fort Ord, near Monterrey California. The bus arrived later that day. So began eight weeks of “Basic training”.

You're in the Army now!

The bus ride had been un-eventful. Just a bunch of guys trying to figure out what had just happened and wondering what in hell we had just entered. I certainly did not know what to expect though I was pretty certain I was not going to enjoy it. The difference between us new "recruits" and cattle was that cattle did not have to line up in a "formation", our first lesson in living the Army way. Next step, remove individuality by dressing everyone in the same uniform and haircut. We were all destined to learn to fire weapons, throw hand grenades, stab straw stuffed dummies with a bayonet while yelling "KILL", don gas masks and wander around in a darkened room, live in near constant discomfort and ignore the ever present poison oak plants. So would go the next few weeks with the classes and training only interrupted by stints of Guard Duty and Kitchen Police, helping the cooks run the mess hall. There in Basic I learned what I called the first law of surviving the Army, convince them you are part of the program, a form of “Go Along to Get Along”. Daily, during our standing in formation outside the barracks, our lives were inspected. Was everyone's bunk neatly made, how uniform was the appearance of the footlockers, which had to remain open? The cleanliness of the barracks and other signs of a "good soldier" tabulated while we stood lined up in formation. The best of the five companies in our battalion, judged weekly, avoided guard duty and KP. Not having guard duty or KP was desirable so I took to waiting till all the other trainees had gone out to get ready for the formation and I went around to each soldiers footlocker and made sure every toothbrush pointed in the same direction with the bristles all oriented in the same direction, and I did whatever re-arranging necessary to make razors, belt buckles, and anything in sight in every footlocker appear as consistent as possible. I found that these small steps helped, so that when the barracks were inspected my company, Company C, was chosen as the best and were exempt from guard duty and KP for seven of the eight weeks of training. My goal was to be left alone as much as possible, to get through my two years with as little hassle as possible and my little “walk through” was my attempt ease my tour. I thought my contribution was anonymous but, alas, this was not true and our sergeant was more observant than I had given him credit for and when the end of basic training came my platoon sergeant nominated me as one of the “Outstanding Trainees”, a group of eight out of about two-hundred-fifty, comprised of the five companies of about fifty men in each.

My Basic Training was during the “Cold War”. The action in Korea was a half dozen years in the past and the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" and the resulting Vietnam mess lay ahead almost the same number of years. Lack of heavy military action did not deter the war mentality as the country's political discourse included such phrases as “Missile Gap”, “Iron Curtain”, “Red Menace”, “Satellite Nations” and other reassuring terms. Even though in that summer the U.S. was not involved in any “Police Actions” or battles against “Insurgencies” the country was definitely still primed for war. Because there were no wars that summer and no immediate threat of one the training was less stringent, this was a “Peace Time Army”. Other than stabbing straw dummies and shooting at targets about the most dangerous thing we did was throw a live grenade and duck for cover. But overall nobody, including the training sergeants, took it very seriously. In addition to the "battlefield" training the army had its own way to choose my future, my military life. That way was a battery of tests to help the Army decide how I should spend the rest of my tour of duty. The results of those guided the army in choosing my future. I was luckier than most. I at least was offered a choice of paths. It was a choice of two advanced schools, Guided Missile site equipment repair or Cryptography with an additional offer that I was qualified to apply for Officer Candidate School (OCS). Immediately OCS was off the table for me. I was an unwilling soldier and OCS meant an obligation of eight years instead of six, meaning that even after I got out after two years the army could call me back in for whatever reason for the remaining term of the eight years, no thanks. I was not sure what cryptography would entail but it sounded boring; repair it was.

Fort Belvoir, Virginia

I took the experiences gleaned in Basic Training with me into my advanced training and chose to play along and apply myself to what the army wanted, a product. The army dealt in products. Basic training produced a soldier, so too classes in the army were designed to produce a product, I was shipped from California to Fort Belvoir, Virginia just outside of Washington DC, to become a product, to attend “Advanced Training” school to become a “MOS 357.10, Guided Missile Installation Electrical Equipment Repairman”. MOS was Army speak for “Military Occupation Specialty” your military assignment. As it turned out if I had joined instead of volunteering for the draft choosing a career path in the army by joining would have been at best a hoped for goal. A friend enrolled for three years with plans to become a deep-sea diver, a so-called “Hard Hat Diver”. Shortly after he enrolled job qualifications, the MOS, were reclassified to “Officers Only”, he spent most of his three years as a stevedore loading and unloading ships in Greenland, a truly poorly named frozen spot. Another friend signed up, also for three years, for radio operator school so he could be close to his fiancé. He spent most of his tour on a mountain top in South Korea. My choice to volunteer for the draft was luckier for me.

Advanced training school was full time. Eight hours per day of classes and study after class hours. Our job was to learn. It helped that I had had some college and had some experience in studying, writing, evaluating and thinking. The classes covered topics such as electrical theory, hydraulics, combustion engines, including both gasoline and diesel as well as basic machines. Credit the battery of test that the army had administered, they had correctly predicted that I would be suited to the path they had chosen for me. I enjoyed the subject matter. Further I did well. Most of the instructors were civilians except for a few who had previously passed through the course themselves. Expectations from the trainees were not high and often the instructors seemed to just be coasting with a tendency to teach what was going to be on the test. Often my questions were unanswered and I was left to find the answer on my own. In one particularly telling incident I had to explain to the instructor how a certain winding for an electric motor worked. At the end of the the school I was chosen as “Outstanding Trainee” which is military-speak for “Best In Class” and selected to be congratulated by the base commander. At the graduation ceremony as I was being congratulated by the base commander he commented to the school commander that he should keep me there as an instructor. I offered that regardless of my chances I was still hoping to be assigned to somewhere on the west coast. In spite of his suggestion my assignment was already forged by the army bureaucracy.

I have always believed that my fate was decided by another draftee. Many of clerical positions, like company clerks, were filled by draftees because they typically had more education than the typically younger joiners. Somehow the destinations of those graduating in my advanced class had a tongue in cheek flavor, which I always envisioned as the work of another draftee. Of about fifty trainees almost half were from the east coast and had joined for three years, another near half were from Texas with similar three year terms, one was from Seattle, a draftee, one from Los Angeles, also a draftee, and me from the San Francisco area, another draftee. When the destinations were revealed the half from Texas were to be sent to Germany, the half from the east coast were to be sent to Texas, the one from Seattle went to Seattle, the one from LA went to LA and I was destined for the Bay Area. I still see the bulge of a tongue in a cheek.

Point Bonita Lighthouse

My assignment was to a missile site located on the coast near the Point Bonita Lighthouse just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County. Missile sites were along the Pacific coast to “Intercept” any planes or missiles that might attack the United States. Sites were bifurcated, a site for the actual missile and remote from that a radar site used in guiding the missile. Since my MOS had to do with repair of the missile site equipment my assignment was there with the missile and not on a mountain top top which controlled it in flight. My stay there was brief. Within about three weeks I was transferred to the Presidio of San Francisco where I would spend the rest of my tour in the army. My status as Outstanding Trainee seemed to make me desirable for what was a plum assignment, basically a day job at the Presidio.

SFAADS

I was assigned to the San Francisco Army Air Defense School for operators of missile control equipment. The school did not have a missile, only the control equipment for the missile, which resided in small bus sized movable buildings overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In spite of my glorious title I mainly made sure none of the huge engine driven generators which powered the school ran out of gas. Except for rare occasions the school was a weekday daytime event which mostly gave me weekends off. The school was rather loosely run to the extent that when a yearly inspection came around much of the equipment not directly related to the missiles was loaded on trucks and driven around base during the inspection to hide items that were not allowed by the "Table of Organization and Equipment", the dreaded TOE. Fork lifts, extra vehicles and such, listed as "Found On Post" were best hidden from the higher ups. Because the school was loosely run a lot of the personnel applied for and received permission to live "Off Post", i.e. not in the barracks. I applied for and received permission to live off post, but since I was not married I was not eligible for “separate rations” which was an additional stipend for food for those not living on post, in the base barracks. Normally these permissions were only given to married personnel but as I said the school was a little loose. I was willing to economize to get the freedom to not live in the barracks. I planned to arrive early enough and stay late enough to eat at the barracks mess to save money. I rented a room in a house on Oak Street next to the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park.

Downey Street

Downey street is short. It starts a couple of blocks from the Panhandle at Frederick and runs up toward Twin Peaks intersecting with Ashbury as it curves just below 17th Street. It was just a few blocks from my rented room on Oak street. Downey street is near to what was later to be called the Haight-Ashbury though at that time it was called the Haight-Masonic and my older brother, Cliff, rented an apartment near the top of the street so we were able to occasionally hang out together.

A few months after I rented the room Cliff was moving to another apartment and I arranged to take over his apartment on Downey. It had three small rooms and a bathroom. The apartment was basically a walk-up basement. The ceilings were only about seven feet with the bathroom, toward the back of the unit where the ground upslope reduced clearance, clocking in at about a six foot ceiling. I inherited some of Cliff's decor, including a fishing net draping over one wall to cover the peeling wall-paper. Since the unit would probably not have passed building codes the rent was cheap, even for the decade, at $25 per month, handled by a rental agency downtown.

The neighborhood around my apartment on Downey street, which Cliff affectionately called Watermelon Alley, did not have a lot of character, just houses, apartment buildings, a few local stores, restaurants and bars plus an occasional supermarket. Its main attraction was it proximity to both the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park. I settled into a routine of work/army with weekends free most of the time. Even though the rent was cheap my monthly take-home pay from the army was only $78.00 per month. It would be a tight budget but the freedom seemed worth the cost. Shortly after I moved in a new base commander rescinded all “separate rations” for those living off post. Since I did not receive them the order did not affect me but all other unmarried personnel living off post moved back to the barracks because of the loss of the extra money. The rescission was meant to force the men to move back on post but since I had not been ordered to move back on post I quietly continued to live off post accompanied by my brothers cat, Fats, who stayed with me till Cliff found another apartment that allowed pets.

Fats

Fats had his own quirks. He liked to come into the room to ignore me, lying still staring at the wall to accentuate his independence, and my relative unimportance. He also like to chase pigeons. He would wait till a car came up the street and trot along using the car as a moving blind till he got abreast of where the pigeons were congregated, stop to let the car move on, then chase the pigeons from his new staging ground. I always assumed it was a futile venture till one night I awoke to the sound of crunching to find Fats eating a pigeon on my chest, feathers covering the rest of the bed. Score one for deception. Lions in Africa using safari vehicles as camouflage had nothing on this city cat. Just another bit of life on Downey street.

Bear Photo

I was living a double life, Army by day and civilian by night. To supplement my income I took a job in the evening at a photo processing plant, Bear Photo. The job was my evening life, my support for the independence of living off post. The thought the expense of living off post might force me to move back on post gave me the determination to make it work. I had taken photography at college and the job seemed a good choice. The job was running a color film developing machine. My job was to, in total darkness take the film out of its light tight protective container and hang it on a holder so the film could travel through the developing chemicals. The machine was about two feet wide ten feet long and about five feet high. Most of the machine was in total darkness so every thing had do be done by feel. The machine had a mechanism on each side which moved film carriers forward through the machine, one step per minute. The process was to put a carrier for the film in the teeth of the mechanism and load film onto the carrier so it could travel through the developing chemicals. Each carrier was a rod, which spanned the width of the machine, with seven clips to hold the film which hung down weighted by another clamp. My job was to peel back a paper covering from a roll of film to get to the film, attach the end of the film to a clip on the rod then strip the rest of the paper from the roll and attach a weighted clip to the other end of the film, again all this in total darkness required for color film. Figure it out; one rod with seven clips, once per minute meant about eight seconds per roll to perform all that, seven times, before the machine picked up the rod, lifted it five feet up into the air and lowered the film into the vat of developer chemicals. Ready or not that rod was picked up to enter the chemicals. Great fun especially in total darkness. Not having to live in the barracks made the job bearable. I got little sleep but at least it seemed almost like a bad job that I could not quit.

Still in the Army

After a night of loading film I would go home to bed and be up in time to be "in the Army" the next morning. Driving to the post in the mornings I imprinted the sound of fog horns with my not having as much sleep as I would have liked and swore to use that sound as a tool to remind me that even if things became dire I would not "Re-Up" and sign on for more than the two years required by the draft. Even though I was not living in the barracks I did not escape some of the more normal duties like KP, "kitchen police", and guard duty. Guard duty was the less desirable because it usually meant a night of no sleep which was only compounded with my normal lack of sleep. KP meant helping the cooks run the kitchen and mess halls. My brother had been a cook in the army so I knew that keeping the cook happy was paramount. I knew from him that cooks were critical of their pots and pans so I always volunteered for what was usually considered the worst task, pots and pans. I would keep a tub of hot soapy water and not dump the pans in it, and instead scrub the pans in an open sink with a stiff brush which I dipped into the soapy water. This process worked well because the soapy water did not get saturated with the grease from the pans and was both easier and did a better job. I have a fond memory of the cook standing behind me, pulling his cigar from his clenched teeth to say "Fine KP". When the pots and pans were cleaned after the morning mess I could take the rest of the morning off, an option not available for those who sought an easier assignment, the cook found more for them to do. Clean pans were a "get out of jail free" card. Between days in the Army and working nights little time was left for much of a life. Highlights were mockingly few.

Impending Arrival

Being stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco in what was essentially a 9-5 job insulated me from much of day to day military "cold war" mentality. I was not however shielded from all of the mania and fear mongering of the era. The paranoia seeped into my little oasis near the park in almost innocuous but insidious ways. One such oozing was a sign posted a store-front warning of the "Impending Arrival of Communist Goods". Our neighborhood was under siege and the enemy was coming in the form of some pots and pans made in Poland. We were being alerted to guard against this communist aggression by boycotting the supermarket that planned to sell this merchandise which was meant to destroy our democracy, or so the posting implied. Little came of the boycott attempt and so ended the closest I came to military action during my military career. Ultimately I did not have to stand guard against the purported arrival. Life on Downey street went on.

Early Discharge

My time in the army was nearing an end; I was a "Short Timer"; due to be discharged in a short time. I had applied for an early release to enroll in school, the early part a sop to exiting personnel to make reintegration into civilian life easier. My discharge was just a couple of weeks away. The early release was limited to three months and since I had entered in July an April date was the earliest I could be discharged. Local colleges would have already been in session so I had enrolled in a private trade school, Heald College located in San Francisco, as the only enrollment that would fit. My discharge was scheduled for April 3, 1961 and I was looking forward to freedom. I figured the remainder of my time would be easy and un-eventful.

Busted

One morning after some heavy petting with a woman I knew from work I decided to forgo showing up for work and sleep in and go in late, a less than smart move. The commanding officer called me into his office for punishment. Punishment was a demotion from Private First Class, the highest rank I had achieved, to Private, the lowest rank and my rank the day I entered the army. The captain made inquiries about my future plans and I made it clear that I did not intend to extend my stay in the army. He also asked me which was my barracks. I informed him that I did not live in the barracks but lived off post. He was not happy and asked who had given me permission to live off post to which I replied, truthfully, "Your predecessor." He threatened to pull my early release but seemed to realize the futileness of the situation because my discharge was immanent and settled for only the demotion.

OUT!

I spent the remainder of my time coasting until the evening of April 2, 1961 when I drove to the U.S. Army Personnel Center in Oakland. At 12:01 AM April 3, 1961 I walked into for the separation process. I did not want to be in the army any longer than necessary. Later that morning I walked out once again a civilian.