Veterans Day sparks gratitude for a life changed, a country served
Another Veterans Day has passed and it certainly rekindles how much my time in the military has meant in my life of 81 years.
Back in the early 1960s, while living in Massachusetts, I had my pre-induction physical to get classified for the military draft. I came prepared with a letter from my family doctor declaring that I had a heart murmur and high blood pressure. I was not allowed to play sports for the high school from which I had graduated.
The physical was not for the timid as approximately 100 guys including myself paraded around in our birthday suits going from one military doctor to another. The doctor who checked my heart and blood pressure wrote on the paperwork that you carried around from station to station that I would be classified 4-F. However, in writing his explanation of why I was not qualified to serve, he erased his original wording and re-wrote it differently.
When I finally got to the last station with my paperwork stating I was 4-F, they saw that the wording had been erased and changed. They did not buy my explanation of how anybody wearing only a birthday suit could erase anything.
We walked back to the station where the doctor wrote up the paperwork, and his shift was over, and he was long gone for the day. At that point I was hustled into a soundproof chamber where five doctors examined my heart and lo and behold three of them decided I was not 4-F, but was 1-A. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper.
Some months later I came home from work and on the table was my invitation from Uncle Sam. Four days later, I took my first step on the terra firma of Fort Dix, N.J. Somehow, actually it was not that difficult, I graduated from basic training. The worst part of basic training occurred one day when our whole unit was out on the rifle range.
Right after resuming our training from lunch, everything came to a sudden halt. Everybody was quickly loaded back into our trucks, and no one knew what was happening except for our instructors, who remained totally silent. When we got back to the barracks, we all lined up outside and were told that President Kennedy had been shot and died. Trying to find a dry eye in the formation would have been more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack.
On the last day of basic training all 500 recruits in our unit received their marching orders as to where they would be continuing their training. I was the only one in our unit to be reassigned to another unit at Fort Dix. I was assigned a MOS (Military occupation specialty) as a clerk typist. Kind of weird because I did not know how to type.
However, when I arrived at my new company, they needed a combination supply clerk and mailman. They also made me an acting Corporal which meant I now had two stripes without any extra pay. Now I was all dressed up with very few options as to where I could afford to go. However, I could afford to stay at the YMCA in Philadelphia. The cost for a single room was around $3 a day. Every Sunday night they would have a free USO dance replete with young women. During the last dance of the evening, I decided to ask the closest girl nearest me to dance. She said "yes," and we have now been married for 57 wonderful years to include three great children.
I have often wondered how my life would have turned out if that military doctor approximately 60 years ago had not erased his original writing on my paperwork and I'd never been drafted. Knowing me, I would have stayed in Massachusetts where I was a happy camper and probably lived a very uninspiring, lonely life. I am convinced it would not have been anywhere near my reality of living a great life married to the girl of my dreams and I thank God that he intervened and made this all possible.
Don Landry is a resident of Franconia.
This article originally appeared on The Intelligencer: Veterans Day sparks gratitude for a life changed, a country served
