I don’t think I’m out on a limb by saying a good number of us old geezers and young geezers remember December 7 as Pearl Harbor Day, just like June 6 as D-Day. Donald Trump isn’t included in that good number of us because he thinks Pearl Harbor is some kind of jewelry store on the gulf coast of Florida. He ought to be watching The Revolution by Ken Burns currently making the rounds on PBS stations to learn exactly how the American rebels “captured the airports and railroads from the British” (I’ll never forget Trump making that statement, one that will live in infamy in my brain).
With the Day of Infamy approaching and my recent book presentation at Yellow Bird Books in recognition of Veterans Day, my chicken-poop military mind was transported back to 1969 and my own Day of Infamy, September 3, the day I boarded the bus that carried me and a bunch of fellow lost souls to the Army Induction Center in Chicago to ascertain if we were physically and mentally competent enough to be shipped to an Asian jungle to kill commies.
Once inside, we all stripped down to our tidy whities and followed the yellow line on the floor to the different guideposts along the way where doctors would examine various parts of our anatomy and collect samples of the fluids coursing through our bodies.
When it was my turn for the eye exam, an eye doctor checked me over and, with the half dozen or so other guys, I did the colorblind thing by gazing at charts and identifying numbers made up of little colored balls inside a big ball composed of little colored balls of a color different than the little colored balls that made up the numbers. As I followed the guy ahead of me out of the room, a GI in a white coat pulled me out of line, handed me a clipboard and sent me to an adjoining office that contained a bunch of Spanish Inquisition-looking equipment and another eye doctor. He took my clipboard and had me sit in the examination chair. After some fiddling with various paraphernalia in front of my face, he asked, “Do you walk into walls often?”
“What? No,” I said.
“I’m surprised,” he said. “Your vision is 400/20.”
“Does that mean I can go home?”
“No. It means you ask the guy in the foxhole next to you which way to point your gun.” He gestured toward the door. “Get back in line.”
Great, I thought. I could soon be taking a nosedive into a pungi pit and I get Shecky Greene for a doctor.
It goes without saying that I made it through the physical exam, mental exams, and associated tests. While sitting in a noisy classroom with about 59 other guys waiting to see what came next, a sergeant cradling an armful of manila folders walked in and told us to be quiet. “I have a surprise for some of you,” he said. “The Marines need some help so 26 of you will be joining them.”
Sixty guys sucking in their breath all at once sucked all the air out of the room, creating a vacuum I thought would cause the walls to cave in. The sergeant began yanking folders out of the batch he held and calling names. I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth as he got to the J’s. “Jacobs.” When he pulled out a “Jonas” folder, I knew I was safe.
If you should be in the mood for similar acts of military heroism (Warning: Shameless plug coming) stop into Yellow Bird Books and pick up a copy of “The Militarized Zone: What Did You Do in the Army, Grandpa?” It may even have my signature scribbled in there. For sincere acts of military heroism, also get My Story: Experiences of a LRRP/Ranger in Vietnam 1968-1969. Both are available exclusively at Yellow Bird Books.
And take a moment of silence for all who died at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.