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"Greetings.
---You are hereby ordered for induction into the services of the armed forces of the United States.....etc..etc.. and you are to report at the induction center at..(and they gave me an address at Whitehall street in down town NY somewhere). They specified that "I was only allowed to bring along with me, my shaving gear toothbrush and toothpaste"...that was it! I mean......I liked travelling light, ..but this was ..ridiculous! How about a.. comb? (I still had a mop of hair then)!! After arriving at Whitehall street, ..we had to fill out and sign some forms, ..then lined up for some ..physical examinations,--some of which...were quite explicit and embarrassing, ...then they gave us the.. "cattle style.. injection shots for yellow fever, and malaria...and I'm thinking...am I going to war somewhere, and I gotta be in a jungle? ...hey!.. I'm not ready for this yet!...(funny how one zeroes in on his comfort zone in situations of adversity). My initial escape into my comfort zone was the simultaneous thought..."now what?...Is it too late to get out of this"?
By the time I had completed the concept of this thought, I found myself being shoved into a waiting bus.. together with 30-40 other young guys,...from all over the US, and we were on our way to Fort Dix, New Jersey for basic training and final assignment.
---The "welcoming committee" at Fort Dix was a crude experience. As soon as the bus reached it's destination and it stopped ,...waiting there to greet us, were half a dozen sergeants wearing red and blue helmets, looking ..quite upset and displeased with the bus load, and they started screaming profanities and other "unkind" things ..with their veins sticking out on their necks from screaming. cursing us out and saying nasty things about our mothers and sisters...."move it...move it...this ain't a day camp you candy asses...this is a boot camp in the United States Army, and we wanna make soldiers out of you and get you out of your bad habits....move it ...shake it ...shake it... move it...we wanna make real men out of you...hey you there with the hollywood specs.. (me) ...what are you ..some kind of a mama's boy? ..where the "f" do you think you are? Get those goddam shades off of your ugly face.. n o w !!...and I'm like....these guys have no manners? Manners? No such thing in basic training from the "red tops". They insisted in making your life as miserable as possible...kicking your butt--when you weren't running fast enough, ..cursing you out....and you never saw anyone walk while in basic training. It was up for reveille in the crack of dawn...run to the Mess Hall for breakfast...run back to the barracks to load up with the back pack and rifle...line up...right face...and start running--in step--for miles...run back to "base"...20-30 push-ups if your performance was considered inferior,...it was "pull-ups" on a steel bar before you entered the Mess Hall, ..to work out an.. appetite! (One thing I must say...they fed you well. The only thing I couldn't get used to, was that.."sh.. on the shingle--which was creamed chopped beef, and that's probably how it got it's name from because it tasted like it). Then it was that... "infiltration course", where you had to crawl with an "M1" rifle from one side of a big football field to the other...with live bullets flying 5 feet from the top of your head from a line of manned 50 caliber machine guns being fired from the "red tops" across
the field...and you crawl and crawl, ..go under barbed wire, hearing explosions all around you eating dust, and ...choking from the smoke, and if you decided you've had enough and you can't hack it any more, and attempt to sit up or if you are crazy enough to stand up....you know ..you're dead!! There were "dummy graves" with a cross and the name of "supposedly some guy that couldn't take the heat and stood up" ..just to remind you to ..keep your head down and keep on crawling!! Then the "bivouac", where you run out to a field 5 miles away from the barracks, ..put up your little 3x5 tent and you sleep in there with your "buddy" silently cursing out the "sarge" under your breath....If it's winter you freeze your butt, and you shave with ice cold water, ..if it's summer you are virtually eaten up by mosquitoes! In my case it was the beginning of Summer, and although it was not quite like taking a
vacation, ..at least my butt was spared from freezing!. Then, ..the "survival" course, where they teach you methods of how to eat grass or tree leaves to keep yourself alive-if you run out of "C rations "..and also how to give yourself malaria injections--without even thinking about it first-! Mail call was at the end of the day, ..and I was looking forward to getting mail from my family and friends in Cyprus, and from my sponsors in New York, so I can at least be in touch with "sanity" on the outside world!.
---During the "hand grenade course" ..the sergeant instructor who's name tag on his "fatigues showed,.. "J.Joseph" ..approached me after the course, and the following conversation took place.
"Hey..Georghakis...you Greek?
Me....yes sarge I am.
Sarge...where are you from?...I'm Greek too!
Me...Cyprus sarge...you?
Sarge: You gotta be kidding me!! ..what part of Cyprus?...I'm from Cyprus too.
Me....No kidding...how about that!!...I'm from Nicosia...you?.....and then he gets excited and he releases his fluent Cypriot dialect ...while the other guys are watching..probably wondering what the hell was going on...and he is telling me that he came from Nicosia also and left with his parents to the US as a teenager, ..and he wound up being a close friend of my best friend "Freddie Eleftheriades"and he hung out at the "Concordia Club" where Freddie and I did some years later.
Talk about ..a small world!!
Jimmy Joseph was married with young children, and he was living on base with his family. We became close friends, and I used to go to his house pretty often, his wife would cook a nice Greek dinner, and I would give the kids piggy back rides. He was raising those kids in strict military style, and now one of his daughters is an Officer in the US Navy.
Jimmy got an assignment to serve in Viet Nam (when the "Nam" conflict took place a few years later,..I lost trace of him, but
I'm trying to locate him via the internet.
--Basic training came finally to an end 6 weeks later, and we were waiting to get our orders for our "assignments". Mine was... "Fulda West Germany". A small town 45 miles south of Frankfurt, on the border with the Russians. I was in the 14th armored cavalry 7th US Army--24hr combat environment...blackouts. the works...and the saga continues!

 -----------I arrived in Frankfurt airport base on a US Airforce C30 cargo plane with 14 other guys -most of them from New York State and we all had to wear parachutes. The C30 was carrying Airforce spare parts for our base in Rhein Main, and the flight wasn't
exactly a...first class Concord style with pretty stewardesses, ..delicious dinners and cocktails. We had side seats and there was a huge crate tight down with chains in the center of the plane,-(the spare parts)-,and we were more afraid of those chains breaking loose and the crate crushing us to death rather than jumping with the parachute in case of an emergency!.
--Upon arrival we took a special train to Fulda, and we arrived there in the middle of the night, and couldn't figure out why all the lights were dim and scarce in the barracks,-but we were told that the Russians were pretty close across the border, ..and at that time
they were considered to be the "potential enemy", so I guess it made sense. We were debriefed, and briefed about what the Company rules" were, and were issued with, our underwear, new "fatigues" and uniforms, got to meet the Company Commander, captain "Shehab" an American born Arab from Brooklyn NY, and the first sergeant, and the new life in Germany started to take shape.
We were patrolling the border with M48A2 tanks, and the Russians didn't seem like the "potential enemy"- we were expecting one day to confront with- at all to me. On the contrary, they seemed very friendly and on occasion, we would stop the tank, and wave
hi to each other, and throw them cigarettes and chocolate, and they would act very happy and appreciative, and although we couldn't very well invite them over to the Mess Hall for dinner, the rules were rules, and we kept our distance.
--We had plenty of extra time on base, and plenty of benefits to upgrade one's educational and cultural levels so I took advantage of all of the above. I had three favorite places that I constantly hung out at. One was the Library, where I got into books of.. anything from Freud and Carl C Jung, to Shamanism, mysticism, Buddhism, and the religious disciplines of the East, and merged them with my own Christian Orthodox beliefs, and began to come to the conclusion that.. "if there's only one God...why all the different religions"? I got a better glimpse of the "Big Picture" and began to widen the spectrum of my entire religious belief system in general, in a more opened minded way, without compromising it with my own of Christian Orthodoxy-which I was inherited with.
--Another place I hung out was the "music room", where I learned how to blow the horn, and pound on the piano, and listen to "Sinatra" records, who at the time- besides "Elvis-"(who happened to be stationed 20 miles further up from where we were), was
the favorite crooner of the troops. For fun, I had enrolled in an Army Glider Club, where I learned how to fly a glider
with an instructor first, and finally solo, and it was one of the best experiences of my life in Germany. A glider, ..has no engines to roar in your ears, ..and all you hear is the whish of the wind, and you get a feeling of exhilaration as if you have a pair of your own wings and you could maneuver yourself in every which way with a lot of ease. The landing was equally just as exciting!.
This hobby surely beat, going down town and getting drunk, like some of the other GI's in my platoon were doing. The glider experience was my "baby steps" in acquiring my private pilot license some years later, after attending the "McIntyre School of
Flying, at McArthur Airport on Long Island. I was flying "Caessnas 150" as well as "Grumman low wing" in the early
seventies, until my mother heard of an incident when I developed ice in the carburetor when flying over Connecticut, and almost had to have an emergency landing on somebody's sod farm, and she put out a dramatic "faint-like show, and made me promise to give it all up, and stick to surface travelling, and very reluctantly I just did follow her wish.
(Cypriot mothers are sometimes hard to...deal with)"!!

---------My first 30 day leave I spent taking a hop to London on a US Airforce plane with a "buddy" of mine. I had some personal business to take care of, and although- due to circumstances beyond my control- I couldn't accomplish what I went there for, I got to meet a very good friend of mine "Akis Papadopoulos" and his wife Virginia. "Akis" and I were close during our high school days in Nicosia, and at the time, he was attending College in London. We met at the Douglas House where I was staying at, at Piccadilly Circus in Central London, which was ("The Home Away From Home)" for GI's serving in the European theater.
--I rented a car and had a pretty funny episode. I parked the car outside the Douglas House, went in to have a cup of coffee and pick up my camera, and when I came out to get in the car,...it was just pulling away with someone in it, so I started running after it,...waved to a cabbie along the way, got in the cab and asked the driver to "follow that car, because it was being stolen"...we followed for about 10 minutes, and finally saw the "stolen" car being parked by a uniformed "bobby" (Policeman), right outside the Police precinct. I went in like a madman demanding explanations, only to find out that I was illegally parked, and the "bobby" had duplicate keys of all cars, ..got in ..and drove it away. (This is a slightly better system than in NY City, where the cops call a tow truck to impound the no parking zone offender's car)!. I was given a lecture by the Officer in-charge and I was let go.! .."phew".
The 30 day leave was over, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay in London, and now it was back to duty. Soon after, I started taking a course on "Basic Army Administration" to upgrade my MOS (Military Occupational Specialty), and became the "Company Clerk". I got to work with the First sergeant, and the Company Commander in the Orderly Room, typing the Company strength morning reports, got a promotion to a corporal, and had my own room next to the OR where it was just like having a civilian job. I would still "fall in" for reveille but now I had extracurricular liberties, which I could take advantage of. I could paint in my own room, and I could listen to my own stereo, and also through the Chaplain--being that there was no Greek church within the vicinity of Fulda-, I had permission to use my own jeep, so I can go to church in Frankfurt--where the closest Greek Orthodox church was at.
The Sunday trips to Frankfurt in my own jeep gave me additional fun after church. I got to know "Bersorgen Strasse"quite well.(That's where the "freuleins" hung out with the GI's. We used to teach them how to..say "I love you" in English,..and they taught us how to say "Ich libitich" in German.

---------My second 30 day leave I had spent in Cyprus, flying via Athens- again taking a hop from Frankfurt with an Air force plane- then, Athens-Nicosia via Cyprus Airways.
--I was having such a good time with family and friends, that when my leave time ran out, I thought of having it extended for a week by sending my Company Commander a telegram, requesting for the extension.. "because my father was very ill"--a concocted lie which didn't quite work too well. I got a telegram back with 5 words. "Report to your Unit Immediately" Capt. Shehab.
--I got my "duffel bag", in a hurry, said good bye to family and friends, and headed back to Germany being a little nervous, because by this time I was 3 days "AWOL" (absent without leave),and I had a hunch I wasn't going to get away with it that easy. Upon arrival I went in the orderly room to report to "the old man". The first sergeant ..somber faced, ushered me in the CC's office,...I snapped him a salute...he looks at me for a minute-- which I thought was the longest minute in my life -- and then he says: "Georghakis...now...what do you want me to do? Bust you?....or court martial you"?....without hesitation and still in the mode of attention I said: "Sir.. bust me Sir"!!...so I was busted back to being a pfc again,.. but I was happy I didn't end up in the brick. I was also lucky I worked in the orderly room,.. and.. had.. connections!
--As tough as the old man was, I knew he liked me. We often talked about how to make "hummus" and he liked Greek salad complete with olives and sardines, so one day when I was down town Fulda, I bought the ingredients and made it for him. He in turn gave the first sergeant and myself some real Lebanese baklava he received from home. The rest of my time in the service I had concentrated on preparing for returning to civilian life again,.. so I started spending more time at the library reading more about the American history so I could pass my citizenship test upon my discharge from the service,...which was on June 13th 1960.
My time in the service was very beneficial to me in more ways than one. First, besides being very proud of serving my new country, I was given a chance to upgrade my education as well as my personality. Any wimpy inclinations that I may have had, prior to my induction, the Army made sure I was rid of them all. In my estimation, I think all our young people should have an experience
in the service. They promise to make a man out of you and nine times out of ten they do.

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