Even Dear Abby . . .

. . . Is Blogging TIES!

I opened this morning's newspaper and lo - there was Dear Abby in the process of blogging, her daily column being on family TIES . Not a column like we bloggers would be writing, however; just a concidental blurb concerning disrupted family groups.

But that's not the topic of this blog tonight, it's the family of the United States Army.

This morning at five, although asleep, I celebrated the 67th aniversary of my entry into the army in World War II. That entity even then had discovered I had weak eyes and turned me down as a draftee about three weeks before on the basis I could not see well enough to be a soldier.

But on the 3rd of February in 1943, after having protested the earlier army decision, I became an enlisted man as compared to a draftee, although my status was still draftee officially.

That morning with dozens of other guys, I entrained to Boston where in short order I was a soldier, was de-frocked, de-haired by a less than cautious barber, and then paraded naked through a convention hall - even in front of grinning nurses - to visit a series of doctors to be pronounced fit to stand in front of an enemy's guns in some far off land to help America be free.

Enough flag-waving. This is where the TIES topic comes into play. It was in Boston that I and the many others with me that day in Beantown became family.

Shipped off to Camp Devens on another train, arriving about midnight and just in time to get stacks of unpeeled potatoes ready for morning breakfast - actually de-nuding them of their skins for hours, we guys then became guys wih TIES that would last several years - and for some much longer.

There you have it - tonight's essay on TIES,

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