Chapter 5 - “You're in the Army Now!”

Summary

On December 12, 1950, I reported for duty. At the recruiting station in Worces¬ter there were many high-school classmates of mine, and we were all in a som¬ber mood, anticipating being sent into the war zone a few weeks later. As soon as we were loaded into the buses, I felt I was transported into another world. First of all—and that was something I had never experienced—the English language completely changed from “civilian” to “army.” That meant that every adjective and adverb spoken by most people was the F-word. I had never heard this kind of language and was quite shocked (though I understood that I had to get used to it). We reached Fort Devens in a couple of hours, and the first thing that happened there was a physical examination and vaccination. My physical went very smoothly until it came to blood pressure. When I get excited, it al¬ways goes up. The doctor noticed it and asked me to lie down for ten minutes while he examined others. When he asked me to get up and take the pressure again, it had of course gone down. Then the doctor asked me what my profes¬sion was, and when I answered that I was a musician, he said: “Ah, what would a musician be without a little high blood pressure, you are in!”

Remembering what Rabbi Nadich had asked me to do, I went to see Chap¬lain O'Malley who greeted me in a most friendly manner and assured me that he would do everything he could to place me in a musical organization in the army since I had all the qualifications. However, he said, I would have to take the bat¬tery of exams to be administered the next day in order to be placed correctly in the army. He again told me not to worry and to come back on Friday evening when all the exam scores had been tallied.

The next day, all of us new recruits were ushered into a very large room and exam booklets were issued. They were numbered, beginning with English, Mathematics, and so on. I went through the first ten exams easily and, since the questions were of the multiple-choice variety, I had no problems. Then I encountered an exam marked electronics. I raised my hand and asked the sergeant to come over.