Veteran's Day 1968

To all Veterans and someday-to-be veterans, HAPPY VETERAN'S DAY.

Forty years ago today I was being processed out of the U.S. Army at Fort Dix, NJ. Several of my buddies from Utah, and other areas of the country, were also being discharged in a group that was going home from Germany. I'd been looking forward to this for so long that I was running on adrenaline. Except for a catnap here and there I hadn't slept in over 24 hours.

We arrived at Fort Dix somewhere around 2:00 a.m. and were processed through customs. A GI ahead of me had his duffel bag searched. In the bottom they found a stack of porno magazines. The customs inspector said, "You know you can't bring these into the country," and they went into some sort of receptacle. Maybe later the customs agents had a look. Gotta see the evidence, you know. I'm sure there was a lot of porn in those pre-Internet days that was smuggled in, but a lot that was confiscated.

We were bused to the messhall, which even at that ungodly hour of the morning was staffed by basic trainees. We were tired, but I'll bet the KP's were even more tired. Can you imagine working the all-night diner? These poor guys suddenly had a hundred or more people to feed. As we went through the line I noticed a lot of trainees gawking at us. We were in our Class-A uniforms, with all our ribbons, patches, brass and insignias. I'll bet to them we looked like a bunch of generals. It hadn't been all that long since I'd been a trainee and didn't know the difference between grades or rank.

We were processed as quickly as possible because it was Veteran's Day, a federal holiday, and no one wanted to be there. I understood that normally it took about three days to clear Fort Dix, but they got us done in a matter of hours so they could all go home. Our discharge papers, our DD214 forms, were typed and presented to us. We were also given travel money. As the clerk said to us: "You have choices. You go by privately owned vehicle (POV) and you get the most mileage money for travel. You go by train or bus you get less, you go by air you get the least of all." He paused for effect. "You don't have to put down POV if you don't want to." Naturally, every one of us wrote down POV. I worried for a couple of years afterward that Uncle Sam would come knocking at my door and ask for his $500 back. Like everyone else I headed for the airline counter and got a flight to Salt Lake City. Cost: $55.00.

Before we left we stood in a formation. Dawn was breaking. A sergeant stood in front of us. "Now this is a goddam holiday. You're gonna be veterans on Veteran's Day. Everything's closed today. But if it was up to me I'd march every goddam one of you to the barber shop and get your goddam hair cut. You are a disgrace to the goddam uniforms you're wearing." With that last goddam farewell to the troops we were suddenly free men, shaggy heads and all, piling into buses for the nearby Philadelphia airport.

My buddy Wally and I snoozed on the way to Chicago's O'Hare International. We had to make a connection, but had a couple of hours to kill. We headed for an airport bar. While we were having our drinks--rum and Coke--we saw a commotion in the concourse. We looked up to see a dozen or more people moving fast, led by Diana Ross, the singer late of the Supremes. After forty years that memory is still clear: Ross was wearing a floor-length white mink coat which was flapping open as she ran. The people behind her were carrying luggage, and one man even had two small poodles in his arms. They were all African-Americans, and they were all wearing fur coats.

Diana Ross at LAX this year. No mink coat for this trip:

My brother picked me up in Salt Lake in the late evening, and we talked some before I crashed. I had been up for what seemed like days. We had left our unit in Nuremberg, Germany, on Saturday the 9th, traveled by train to Frankfurt, and except for our time at Ft. Dix we had been in airports and on planes ever since. That Monday night I slept in my own bed for the first time in a long time. The next morning I got up and went to see Sally. As I think back on those events forty years ago it's like the old cliché: It was the first day of the rest of my life.

For another Veteran's Day message click here.

Last year's Veteran's Day message is here.