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And again pre-deciding what to do would be pre-deciding experience and thus may not be objective. The solution was given me. It was maybe in December or January that I got draft papers and had to go for a physical in Chicago. So I had to make my first real decisions based on my new philosophical groundwork.
I did not want to go into the army. I knew there were ways to get out of it, but I had not the wherewithal to even consider such an option. I did make one major decision that would probably affect the whole of my life. Instead of being drafted I decided to join. Draft was two years. Enlistment was four years. They had a special program that if one enlisted for three years, in exchange they would guarantee your place of duty or job, but not both. Since anybody I had ever known went either to Germany or Korea, notorious for the winters, I took the extra year for an office job. No matter where I would be I would be inside and warm.
They were true to their word and I was misassigned to a company clerk school without knowing it, and they corrected it by reassigning me after one week. My best friend Jim was drafted on the same day as I, and he enlisted also for the duty assignment of Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. And he spent his army career there. We were in the same basic training barracks together, he upstairs like heaven, me downstairs like well.
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