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Old 03-10-2015, 06:47 PM   #12
fatlazyless
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.....regretfully, no military service probably because I was eighteen years old and I hit a #303 out of 365 in the Viet Nam draft lottery back on April 1, 1970, and everyone higher than a 180 was supposedly not to be drafted ..... hut-hut-hut ..... and something like 56,000 American G.I.'s and 2,000,000 Vietnamese got killed in the Viet Nam War between 1966-1974.

I can remember walking over to the Guild's Drug at the corner of Fairfield and Newbury, where deLuca's is now, and buying a Herald to check for my draft lottery number, and what a relief, feeling like I won it big with a #303 ..... no worries man!

.....otherwise you just know I really really wanted to join the Marines as a pvt so's I could be the point man......way out-front... on the rat patrol ...... crawling through the hot, wet, bamboo jungle just south of the dmz... creeping and crawling through the jungle with an ar-15 cradled across my arms and a big 16" bowie knife clinched between my teeth .....
aaaarrrrrrrgggggghh!!! ...... just waiting on the next black pajama charlie out in the jungle there to show ....... but no way Jose ..... was not to be .... now that I hit it big with a #303.

You know that the boxer, Muhammad Ali .....'the mouth from the south' .... www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeFMyrWlZ68 ....lost his championship title, and went to prison for three years or so starting in '67 because he refused to get drafted into the Army .... or something.... about the same time.... it was big news ... and today Viet Nam has dedicated a statue for him.

In 1970 my dad was a 55-year old lieutenant commander with 2 1/2 stripes- USNR, having served from '42-'45 active, and in the reserves from '46-'74, and if he he told me once, he told me a hundred times to stay out of the military. He died in 2010, at age 95, and now has a dark blue 'U S Navy' baseball cap resting on top of his dead body chest, inside the coffin, because he really liked the Navy.
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Last edited by fatlazyless; 03-14-2015 at 04:26 AM.
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