15 — Wake-up Call from Above (Great Lakes: Nov 1970)

As I bounced around in the front seat of the truck, we left behind the WWII barracks and entered a new world.  The training side of the base was modern and carefully laid out.  Brick and stone barracks lined the road.  Four barracks were connected in a quadrangle enclosing a large cement courtyard.  We offloaded our gear and made a dash to claim our sleeping racks, waiting at attention on the sparkling clean floor.

As Recruit Petty Officer Chief (RPOC), I was summoned to our company commander’s office at the end of our floor.  He was a Chief Petty Officer with over 20 years service in the UDT and SEAL teams.  Since I was interested in UDT, I was excited to hear that.  About 5’7’’ and wiry thin, he was the strongest person I have ever met. 

[Later that week he demonstrated his strength by lifting me completely off the ground with one hand grasping my shirt collar.  We had been struggling with a punishment that had us all standing with our rifles in outstretched arms parallel to the floor.  When a number of us (including me) began to lower our rifles as our arm strength reached its limit, he picked me up and held me in front of him.  “I can hold Wasserman here off the ground with one arm longer than you can hold your rifles with two arms!”]

During my meeting with him in his office, he began to go over my duties as RPOC.  I had been thinking about my new role while riding in the truck.  How could I be RPOC if I might be called in by CID and discharged anytime in the next month?  I swallowed hard and said, “Sir, you may want to consider someone else for RPOC.  I may be pulled out of training in the next few weeks.”

He stared back at me and did not reprimand me.  That was a surprise.  He stared down at my records in front of him and remarked that there was a note from one of the chaplains that my training might be interrupted.  Apparently, the chaplain was respecting my privacy.

I was dismissed from his office and he called in another recruit and made him RPOC.  Since we were all the lowest of recruits, no one questioned the change. 

Training was a lot more interesting now.  Since the wind was so bad, we could not march outdoors.  We practiced our close order drill in our barracks or in a gymnasium.  Whenever the “Hawk” (the nickname for the gusting winds) was around, we would be allowed to make our way as best as we could when moving from place to place outside.  The Hawk made it impossible to march in unison.

Each evening, we would hand wash our skivvies (underwear) and hang them outside on clothing lines in the quad.  The wind wasn’t too bad as the buildings protected that inner courtyard, but it was awfully cold as we stood outside in our fresh skivvies and shower shoes trying to carefully tie our ditty-bags (small laundry bags) on to the clothes lines.  Without the wind chill, a few of the nights reached 32 degrees below zero.  My cold soon became walking pneumonia and I found myself in the nicer hospital on this side of the base.

As I was waiting to be treated by the corpsman, several of the UDT recruits came in with frostbite on their toes.  They had been out running in their swimming trunks and barefooted.  This was on the same night that it had reached 32 below.  Fortunately, none of them lost toes. 

The corpsman who had just finished treating them came over to treat me when the UDT company commander came storming in to check on his men.  Guess who was their company commander?  My old CPO “Wasserman you are a commie-traitor” friend from my first week on base turned to see me sitting on the edge of a bed.

“What the hell are you doing here?  I thought I told you to get out of my Navy.  Corpsman, what is wrong with “Comrade Wimp” here?  Has he been telling you how he has this “special relationship with God”?  He is a just a weak hippie and a coward.”

“Wasserman, you had better stay out of the way of my men!  If we see you we will run you over!”

And with that remark, he spun on his highly polished boots and stomped out of the hospital with his men following him in their swimming trunks and bandaged feet.   I watched the UDT recruits and my dream of joining them exit the infirmary.

I returned to my bunk for a night of coughing, humiliation and discouragement about my future in the Navy.  I began to hope that I would be discharged and that it would happen soon.

Each morning we were awakened with a recording of reveille and announcements blaring over the PA system.  The announcements usually included some sort of rude remarks to make us aware that we were the scummiest of the scum.  They would also advise us of the uniform of the day and if the Hawk was out.

Usually, the announcement following the recorded bugle went something like this:

“Reveille, reveille!  Wake up you mama’s boys.  Get your hands off your cocks and into your socks!”

This morning there was a variation in this wake-up call.  It started normally with something like what I detailed above, but was followed by this addition:

“Wasserman, Wasserman.   This is God.  Wake up!”

My “divine wake-up call” was the voice of my old CPO coming from the PA system above my head.  My life had entered a new phase—daily harassment by all the company commanders in our quad.

Next:  16 — Whistling Is Safer than Singing (Great Lakes:  Dec 1970)

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14 — A Day in the Sand on the Beach--A Frozen Beach! (Great Lakes, Illinois: Nov 1970)

November in Chicago—not the best time to show up for Navy Basic Training!  As the bus full of new recruits unloaded at the entrance to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, the first thing I noticed was the wind.  I had gone to school in Wisconsin, so cold and snow didn't bother me.  But, as I stepped onto the pavement, I was almost blown over by a gust of wind.

After the obligatory screaming by Navy personnel greeting us, we were lined up and marched off in a bit of a shuffle to get outfitted for our new lives.  We worked our way through long lines of tables where we were handed dungarees, denim shirts, socks, belts, underwear and other bits and pieces that we hurriedly stuffed into duffle bags called "sea bags."  While halfway through the lines, my sea bag was already overflowing.  Since we weren't given the time to carefully pack everything away, I found myself dragging the bag with other items piled on my outstretched arms.   

My problems began when I came to the window for my new navy shoes and boots.  I was a size 13 and that was kind of rare back in the 60s.  I was given boots that reached just above the ankle and dress shoes.  I was not given time to try them on.  It was only later that I was to find out that the shoes were way too tight for my 13-D width.  The largest they had in dress shoes was a 13-C.  Fortunately, I would not have many occasions to wear the dress shoes.  My boots were a different story.  They were too wide and my feet slipped around in them.  Blisters became my constant companion.  

My father had the same large feet, only larger (14-C).  When he went through Basic also at Great Lakes, he had to wear his civilian shoes for a couple of weeks while they special ordered his shoes.  Since he was only 17 when he enlisted and was a high-school dropout from a poor family, I can't imagine that he could afford very comfortable civilian shoes, especially for all the marching and running that you do in basic training.

The next step in the process was a dental exam.  The Navy has always had top-notch dental care.  Of course, this was my moment to shine!  I quickly found myself in an exam chair surrounded by officers.  It seemed like the entire Great Lakes dental team wanted to see my mouth.  I was missing 7 adult teeth.  They just never grew in.  As such, I had extensive bridgework, much of which was cutting-edge for 1969.

After my starring role in the dentist's chair, having already visited wardrobe (!), I was marched off to have my hair done Navy style!  We are all familiar with the buzz cut that is the proud possession of every new recruit.  Of course, I was a long-haired hippie . . . but, I got haircut in Louisville before getting on that bus.  I didn't need anyone to know that I had been a hippie. Basic was going to be difficult enough without drawing that kind of attention to myself!  Little did I know that it would be my newly discovered faith in Jesus that would draw all kinds of the wrong attention.  More of that later!

I had made a few acquaintances standing in line that day, but once we came away from the barbers, we all looked alike.  I couldn't tell anyone apart.  We had to reintroduce ourselves over the next couple of days.  Since we all had shaved heads and were wearing the same uniforms, skull shapes, mouths, ears and noses became the easiest way to pick out acquaintances in a crowd.  Since I had a nose that was a little more prominent than most of my gentile compatriots, I was easy to find.  Just look for the guy with a big nose and big feet—that would be me!

Somewhere along the way they sent us to the mess hall.  Finally, at about 10:30 pm, we were marched off to our new barracks home.  While on the "processing" side of the base, until we were formed into companies and marched to the "training" side of the base, we would be housed in ancient wooden barracks.  When comparing notes with my father, I discovered that I was in the same barracks that he had been in during his training in 1943.  These buildings were o-l-d!

This drafty old building was the source of my first real problem.  The first evening there, I came down with a terrible cold.  Colds are trouble for all of us, but here I was trying to stand at attention, march, and drill with a rifle, etc., while sniffling, sneezing, and trying to sneak in an occasional wipe of my nose.  

The next morning, I had to go for sick call.  That drew the wrong kind of attention to me.  Our chief petty officer (CPO) pulled each one of us out of the sick call line to determine just what our excuses were!  When he got to me, he growled, “What the hell is wrong with you, you skinny wimp?  I bet you are one of those freaks who trying to get out of serving his country.  Give me 50 pushups, you skinny traitor!”  

After struggling through about 20 sloppy pushups, he yanked me to my feet:  “ You are just a weak skinny thing aren't you?  What is your problem?” 

I responded, “I hab a cod, sir.”

“You have a what?  You can't even talk right, you freak—get out of my face and get over to the corpsman.  You better not goof off anymore.  I am gonna be watching you!”

Still suffering the next morning, I was in the sick call line again.  Guess who was there to greet me?  Yep!

By this time, I was so full of cold that I was a walking Kleenex vending machine.  I had tissue stuffed in every pocket.  I was coughing, sneezing and drooling—you know the symptoms.  But one symptom that I had never experienced before was severe dizziness, and the beginnings of what felt like the onset of an LSD trip.  Now, I hadn't had any LSD, marijuana or even a beer in 6 months.  I ended up at the base hospital, but didn't say anything about what had to be a "flashback." 

The next few days were spent in drilling with our rifles, learning to salute, march and studying various manuals.  We had to memorize our "standing orders" which I found to be easy, and in some ways, I began to excel as a recruit.  Learning rifle drills, marching and memorization were all easy for me.  I just couldn't shake this darn cold and the periods of dizziness seemed to be increasing.  I was also experiencing frightening dreams that kept me from resting at night.  I relived bad LSD trips in my dreams and could not seem to wake up from them quickly in the morning.  It was like I was being drugged at night and awakening with a hangover.  And each morning I would take my place in the sick call line.  I missed breakfast due to sick call for about two weeks.

We had a series of lectures by representatives from different elements of Navy life.  I was very interested in the lecture on Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT).  I had always been a strong swimmer and used to experiment with how long I could hold my breath underwater.  The elite UDT teams attracted me.  After I finished the first part of my basic training, I might be able to move over to UDT training.  That excited me.

Other lectures concerned personal hygiene.  The Navy was strong on this.  Aboard ship we would be sleeping with our faces only a few inches from someone else's backside.  Fresh water would be limited while at sea, so we had to learn how to take showers the Navy way, turning the water off and on between washing and rinsing.  We had a lecture from one of the base chaplains.  This chaplain was from the Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies of God.  Of course, he wasn't talking to us about spiritual matters, but about personal matters and offering the counsel of the Chaplaincy if we should ever need it.

A lecture that caught me by surprise was one by one from the CID (Criminal Investigation Division).  Of course, I hadn't ever been in trouble with the law, and because I had at one time considered becoming a lawyer, I was very interested in what he had to say.  As he was wrapping up his lecture about all the ways we could get into trouble and recommending we stay out of trouble, he added a comment that made me sit bolt upright:

“If any of you made any false statements on your application to join, we will find out about you and kick your butt out of our Navy.” 

Remember that this was during Vietnam and most people were drafted straight into the Army.  Not everyone could get into the Navy.  You had to "qualify" and the standards were much stricter than today.  Just before I was officially sworn into the Navy at the recruiting station in Louisville, I had to fill out some last minute paperwork to attest that I hadn't been arrested.  Well, it turned out that I had been arrested in July for sleeping overnight in a condemned building during a thunderstorm.  

There was a field where hippies and others were allowed to sleep on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado.  I had left my tent at a friend's apartment that morning and did not have time to go back to retrieve it before nightfall.  So, I rolled out my sleeping bag in the field.   When it began to rain heavily around midnight, all of us took refuge in a youth hostel that was still under construction next to the field.  Stumbling around in the dark and rain, we did not see the small two foot square sign out front that prohibited entry.  We just walked through the open spaces where walls were planned and sheltered ourselves under the section that had roofing.

About 4:00 the next morning we were awakened by a half-dozen police officers and carted off in a bus to jail.  I spent the rest of the morning in a jail cell and found myself before a judge just before noon.  I happily pleaded guilty to "sleeping in a condemned building," paid a $36 fine and was on my way.

Sitting in the Navy recruiting station, just before I was sworn in and got on the bus for Great Lakes, I put all those details on the sheet of paper before me.  So, I was good, right?  Well, yes, but I suddenly remembered that there was a question about drug usage on the original set of recruiting papers that I had filled out just after returning from my 7 days in May trip to Santa Cruz.  I had answered that I had never used drugs.  No one in their right mind,  or even in their wrong mind would ever answer positively about drug use.  Drugs were illegal and society was not as forgiving about recreational drug use as it is today.

I walked out of that meeting thinking that there was no way anyone could prove that I had smoked marijuana or taken LSD.  I had never been caught—I was fine.  But as my cold refused to get better and the dreams/flashbacks continued, I found myself once again in the sick call line with my favorite chief petty officer.  

I asked if it would be possible to have a chat with the chaplain about a personal matter.  His eyes drilled through my head as he screamed:  “You weakling!  I bet you are one of those conscientious objectors trying to get out of serving!  Are you a conscientious objector, you wimp?”

“No, Chief Petty Officer sir.  In fact, I am a born-again Christian, and as a Christian, I believe it is my responsibility to serve and to be the best sailor in the company.”

“Oh really!  I am a Christian too, boy.  I am an elder in my church.  What church do you belong to?”  He actually had a smile on his face and a pleasant tone in his voice.  Maybe I wasn't such a wimp after all.

“I am not a member of any established church sir.  I just was born-again a few months ago and was in a Christian commune that had some contacts with the Christian World Liberation Front.”

Oy!  That was a mistake.  The smile left his face replaced by a scowl worse than any I had seen before.

“The Christian World Liberation Front?  I know all about them.  I live in San Francisco.  They are just a Communist front organization.  You aren't a Christian—you are a Commie!”

“You go on and see the chaplain you miserable sack of crap!  I hope he gets you out of my Navy!”

The next day, I found myself in the office of that Pentecostal chaplain.  Now, the Jesus freaks I had known had been anti-charismatic.  They believed that anyone who spoke in tongues or preached about "signs, wonders and healing" was dangerous to me as a young disciple.  But this was a Navy officer and my only chance to clear my conscience about having lied on my application.  

I began with the dreams and what I believed were flashbacks.  He counseled me that prayer was the best prescription for dealing with these terrifying experiences.  He said, "I am sure that when you pray that the Holy Ghost will come upon you and help you."  He asked me if I was currently using drugs.  I explained that this had all been pre-enlistment, but that I was worried that the flashbacks and my trips to the hospital might lead to my application falsehood being discovered.

He thought for a minute and then asked me to give him a day to look into the ramifications of it all.  He would arrange for another appointment the following day.

Oh joy!  Just what I needed!  Another day facing my CPO about another appointment with the chaplain!

To my amazement, I had a different CPO the next morning.  My growling/scowling CPO had gone to the training side of the base with his new company of recruits.  So, when the chaplain's office called for me, it was no big deal.

When I got to his office, the chaplain had his serious face on.  “Son, it looks like you are going to have to come forward with the information about your drug use.  And, it may mean that you cannot stay in the Navy.  Now, there is a drug rehab program that will be starting, but it may not be in time for you to take advantage of it.”  

“You will go on with your training, but at some point, you may have to talk with CID.  Now don't worry, since you are coming forward on your own accord, this will not go against you or your record.  You would be discharged under ‘honorable conditions.’  This may take about a month, so just go on with your training and do your best.”

Let's be honest here.  I was of two minds, one that drove me to do my duty to my country and the other that said, "I can get out of the military?  Great!"

Within the week, we were assembled with our fully-loaded sea bags and ready to meet our new company commander who would take us to the training side of the base.  As we stood at ease with our sea bags at our sides, our commander asked for those who had any college credits.

When mine was the only hand raised, he called me out of the formation to talk:  

“Recruit Wasserman!  Your records say you have over two years of college.  You are tall—that's good.  You will be our Recruit Petty Officer Chief (RPOC).  Have your men hoist their sea bags on the shoulders and move out single-file to the vehicles over there.  You ride in the front of the truck as RPOC.”

Well, this was an interesting development!  I had gone from being a commie wimp to the chief recruit, responsible for the 120 men in our training company.  Now, if I could just figure out how to get this incredibly heavy sea bag onto my shoulder!  The CPO showed me how to put my foot under the bag to kick/hoist it onto my shoulder.  I did it once, but had to set it down to show everyone else how.  I was very skinny.  I used to have to run around in the shower to get wet!  If I turned sideways you couldn't see me!  Well, not that skinny, but I didn't have a lot of upper body strength in those days.  While everyone else was trying to get their bags on their shoulders, I just dragged mine over to the truck and the driver grabbed it, and with a smirk on his face, tossed it in the back of the truck.  I climbed in the front with him and we were off!

We are not quite ready for our day on the frozen beach.  First we need a divine wakeup call.

Next:  15 — Wake-up Call from Above (Great Lakes:  Nov 1970)

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13 — Like the Water? Go Navy! (Louisville, Kentucky: July 1970)

A few days after my prayer experiment in Santa Cruz, the deposit check cleared and I had the $40 needed for gas on my return trip.  Rather than returning to Madison, I decided to go home to Louisville and figure something out to keep me from being drafted. 

I had been impressed by Loren at the Jesus commune who had recently finished his tour in the Navy.  I thought I might speak to a Navy recruiter about the "delayed" enlistment program that Loren told me about.  

My parents were happy to see me, and my mother didn't seem to be concerned about my new found interest in Jesus.  As far as she was concerned, Jesus had gotten me off drugs, so he couldn't be all bad.  Neither she nor I had any clue that this would lead me down a Christian road for the next 30 years.  And since she didn't believe in God and only occasionally attended our Reform temple, the Jewish vs. Christian stuff was not an issue.

My stepdad had served with Patton in WWII, and he was more than happy for me to be a swabby rather than a ground-pounder.   He too was a secular Jew, and didn't seem interested in my spiritual struggles.  My real father had served in the Navy during WWII, but I was out of touch with him at the time, as was often the case following his divorce of my mom 14 years before.

The following morning I visited the Navy recruiter and signed up with a delayed enlistment date of November.  I sold my car for $600—imagine what a 66 Mustang would be worth today! I purchased a tent and some camping equipment and set out for Santa Cruz.  During this time in California, I began to read the New Testament and tried to become a good disciple of Jesus.  I remember going to some more Bible studies, hanging out at the boardwalk mission several nights a week, and taking a short trip to Fresno to look up that attractive girl that I had met at the Bible study.  

She apparently wasn't my ideal California Girl.  She was a devout Catholic and I never could figure out what the interest was that drew her to those Bible studies.  After a couple of days in Fresno, I returned to Santa Cruz only to run into some other ZBT fraternity brothers from Madison who were making their way to San Francisco.  I decided to travel with them and experience the Fillmore and the Haight-Ashbury life.  

My frat brothers were wealthy Jews from the East coast, and although they were dabbling in hippie culture, they were booked into nice hotels in San Francisco.  I had to make my $600 last until November, so I sought shelter in another Christian commune.  This one was run by the "Christian World Liberation Front (CWLF),” a Jesus freak organization taking their name from the radical political scene.  Their commune was strictly controlled with nightly curfews and the requirement of nightly Bible study attendance.  I just wanted to go hear some music at the Fillmore, so we had a few disagreements.

By this time, I had begun listening to taped Bible studies by a pastor out of Houston.  He was a biblical scholar and had a gift for making the Bible applicable to everyday life.  Unfortunately, he was an extreme political conservative, but I wasn't paying any more attention to his politics than I had to the anti-Communist preaching of the mission pastor in Santa Cruz.  

I was more interested in Bible prophecy and had been reading the recently published, The Late Great Planet Earth, by Hal Lindsey.  You may have heard of this best-selling story of the “End Times.”  Lindsey was the first to take teaching about the Great Tribulation, Rapture and Second Coming of Jesus and make them sound like something from the nightly network news.  I would later discover that Lindsey had been a protégé of this Bible scholar in Texas.  

[In recent days (March 2009), Lindsey has become an advocate of extreme rightwing views, challenging President Obama's citizenship and losing his show on the fundamentalist Christian TBN television network for saying that true Muslims are violent and moderate Muslims are not true Muslims.]

I had no idea that Lindsey was such a non-thinking extremist, and he probably did not hold such strange convictions in the early 70s.  Nevertheless, I was ripe for the picking as a brand new Christian, birthed outside of any theological influence.  Since I was a non-traditional, outside the established church, "I don't think the traditional church is really Christian," uneducated, straight off LSD, Jesus freak myself, I became fascinated by Lindsey's prophetic outline for the immediate future.

I found myself arguing with the other Jesus freaks at the CWLF commune on this very subject, pulling out Lindsey's book to back my contentions.  Needless to say, I didn't feel welcome there and they were happy to see me leave after a couple of days.  Since I was most likely their first encounter with a "Jewish" Jesus freak, they probably ascribed my contentiousness to my being Jewish.  They may have been partially correct.  One characteristic of my upbringing that remains with me to this day is my wondering spirit.  This leads me to challenge all assumptions, no matter what the source.  That is one of the benefits of having been raised as a Jew.  We are free to question everything, and when it comes to the Bible, we have a tradition of arguing theology that goes back as far as Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord.  Our institutions of Jewish learning have always encouraged argument as the best method for getting closer to truth. Is it any surprise that so many of us Jews have excelled in law, medicine and science?  These three disciplines require posing challenging questions as essential procedure.

I was a wonderer, never satisfied with any answer for long.  And as November brought my new career in the Navy ever closer, I became ever more dissatisfied with the answers I received from my fellow Jesus freaks and the simplistic explanations of biblical prophecy proffered by Hal Lindsey.  

So, if Lindsey had learned under this scholar in Texas, maybe I should go to the source for the answers to my questions.  The pastor in Houston had a worldwide teaching ministry via reel-to-reel tapes which he freely distributed to all who asked.  It turned out that even Craig, Sandy and that strange guy, Al, were listening to his tapes.  Apparently, Al was buying into the conservative politics as well—that is probably why he seemed so out of place in a commune.  He was a social and political conservative living with a bunch of Christian hippies.

[The Houston pastor was Robert B. Thieme, Jr.  He graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Master of Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary.  He left Dallas Seminary before completing the requirements for his doctorate when he became pastor of Berachah Church in Houston in the early 1950s.  Much of Thieme's focus while at Dallas had been eschatalogy, with a special emphasis on the "Last Days" which he believed to be imminent.  

He had taken 5 years of Greek and Hebrew while at Dallas, and with his keen organizational mind, began developing a teaching system centered around historical context, categorical summary, and detailed exegesis of the biblical text.  During WWII, he was the youngest person to achieve the rank of Lt Col in the newly formed Air Force.  He turned down both a military career and a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Dallas Seminary.  

Having grown up in a wealthy and politically conservative California family, he used his inheritance to fund his ministry at the struggling 225-member Berachah Church.  Through his leadership and teaching skill, he turned it into the first real megachurch in the 70s.  Ordained a Baptist in Arizona by his wife's father, he operated the church independently as his own theological fiefdom.  Attendance was between 800-1000 every weeknight reaching 3500 in multiple services on Sundays.  In addition to the church in Houston, there were thousands of "tapers" faithfully listening to his tape recorded Bible studies individually and in groups all around the world.  He pioneered the use of satellite churches using directed broadcasts via dedicated phone lines to at least a dozen remote locations in the US and Canada.  "Tapers" recognized Thieme as their only pastor-teacher, and in many cases, did not have any other church affiliations.  He asked his followers to call him "Col. Thieme" after his retired rank or just "Bob."  He disliked the title "Reverend" and its religious connotations.

Thieme had influence on Hal Lindsey, Chuck Swindoll and John MacArthur, but his extreme teachings concerning the "blood of Christ" led to his alienation from his mentors and friends at Dallas Seminary.  By the mid-70s, Bob Thieme and Berachah Church had become isolated from the rest of the evangelical Christian world.]

As I began listening to these tape series, I also figured out why the commune's local "scholar" who ran the Bible studies in his Santa Cruz home was so focused on Greek.  Thieme went into agonizing detail expounding on the underlying Greek of the New Testament and Hebrew of what Christians call "The Old Testament."  

Since I was asking difficult questions about everything, it helped to have a teacher (on-tape) with access to the original languages of scripture and for him to share the grammar and syntax that led him to his conclusions.  So, it was no longer just "Greek to me," but something in which I was vitally interested.

Of course, a little knowledge can be dangerous.  And I had a very little knowledge that I flung around at every opportunity.  My limited knowledge of Greek and theology in general would get me into trouble on a number of occasions during my military adventures that were about to begin.

I returned to Louisville in October and was soon on a bus headed for Great Lakes Naval Training Center, north of Chicago.  My basic training would be during the cold winter months which would add to the fun!

I didn't know how confused I was at the time.  Do we ever know how confused we are during the moment?  It is only looking back that we can see how mixed up we are at any time in our history.  I was really of two minds with regard to military service.  I really didn't support the war in Vietnam, not so much because of principle, but more from the standpoint of the threat that it posed to my self-centered lifestyle.  I didn't want to be in the military because I didn't want anyone else controlling my life.  Yet on the other hand, I always thought of myself as a patriotic American.

At some point before my “7 days in May,” I had made a short trip to Canada to check out the prospects of moving there to avoid the draft.  After an uncomfortable night spent sleeping in my car in a Toronto grocery parking lot, preceded by a day wandering around by myself unable to meet anyone on the University of Toronto campus, I returned to Louisville.  I concluded that the Canadians just weren't friendly!  I guess I expected them to somehow notice that I was an American and welcome me to into their homes.  Like I said, I was a pretty confused kid.  It was after that short trip to Canada that I stopped over in Madison and had my LSD trip where I meant Chris and Dave.

I felt strange in Canada.  My whole concept of self was as an American and I had watched all the John Wayne movies, the documentaries about WWII, and had spent weeks pouring over day by day situation maps that my stepfather had left from the Sicily campaign when he had been on Patton's staff.  I was drawn to the romantic appeal of being part of a cohesive military unit—I just didn't want to be an infantryman.  I couldn't really call myself a conscientious objector, because my conscience really had no foundation I could draw on to make a non-military claim.  I wasn't opposed to war.  In fact, I saw the war against Germany as serving a morally good purpose in rescuing my surviving Jewish kinsmen from Hitler's "Final Solution."  I just didn't want to go to Southeast Asia.

And then there was my new Christian persona.  As I was listening to Thieme's Bible study tapes, I was also hearing a lot of conservative political opinion.  I was being told that as a Christian, I should do "all things, heartily as unto the Lord."  That meant that I should be diligent in all my activities.  If I were a doctor, I should practice the best medicine; if a janitor, the best at cleaning; if a salesman, the best salesman.  And if I were a soldier  . . . Wait for it!  If I were a soldier I should best killer in my outfit!  Whoa!  What?  That is what was being slid in between the verses of the Bible passages I was studying on tape.

Well, somehow I carried these two different minds with me on the bus on that cold November day as we pulled into Great Lakes Naval Training Center.  I would soon try to take those two paradoxical mindsets through basic training.

 

Next:  14 — A Day in the Sand on the Beach--A Frozen Beach! (Great Lakes, Illinois:  Nov 1970)

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