Sometimes I think I was unlucky just to miss compulsory National Service in the UK. It just ended as I was about to enter Trinity College, Oxford. My record at Oxford was appalling, far from justifying the scholarship which the College mistakenly awarded me. I spent most of my time playing poker (badly) or bridge (reasonably well). My essays were generally completed from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I think two years National Service might well have straightened me out.
There was some compensation, although not very desirable, in 1963. By then I was in New York working for Grey Advertising in the media department. In that department was a rather attractive young lady who appeared to be untouchable. This of course was temptation which I couldn’t resist. We became friends. We became lovers. We used to take her small daughter to Sunday lunch at the Plaza Hotel. It was bliss. But it came with a curse.
The curse was the US Army and why should I have been eligible? It was because arriving in New York with a Green Card gave me six months licence to decide if I wanted to stay in the US. At that point I needed to register for the draft. Remember this was the height of the Vietnam War. So I attended a group medical. What a levelling experience that was but I won’t go into detail. I passed A1. Clearly the army was desperate. My friends warned me of the consequences of doing nothing.
One morning I went to the post box and received a personal letter (perhaps it wasn’t personal) ‘Greetings from the President of the United States. You will report for active duty …’ Whoops. Off I rushed to the Armory, 65th Street & Park Avenue, to register with the National Guard. In principle this involved six months active duty, followed by about six years in reserve. Thanks goodness for me and for the army that my active duty was deferred. All that was involved in principle was weekly attendance at the Armory when it seemed that the activity concentrated on moving rifles from point A to point B and then from point B to point A. Immensely educational.
Then came the denouement. It was a weekend session when the Gauleiter was a regularly army sergeant from Fort Bragg in north or south Carolina, I forget which. My girlfriend was invited to a dinner party. I was jealous. She wasn’t standing for my jealousy. I may say for good reason. Rapid end of relationship.
Meanwhile shades of the movie ‘Officer and a Gentleman’ which, by the way, I strongly recommend if you have never seen it. There was our regular sergeant ‘We have snakes at Fort Bragg. If your buddy gets bitten by a snake on his forearm, quickly put on a tourniquet (in his case pronounced with the ‘t’ at the end). If you haven’t time to make a tourniquet, chop his arm off.’
Was this a place for a nice, north-west London Jewish boy? Think of the movie and the recruit who admits that he comes from Nebraska. Comment by the sergeant ‘Only two things come from Nebraska. Steers or queers. Which one are you?’ Fortunately I followed the rules. My family wrote to say that I was need back at home and I was rewarded with an Honorable Discharge. I was lucky and why was the army lucky? Because when I was in the Cadet Corp at St Paul’s in London we had a visiting army officer to watch us shoot on the range. At the end he turned to me and said ‘Well, in your case, Newton, I wouldn’t mind if you were on the enemy’s side’.