During Army Advanced Training (the last half of training) in 1970 on Friday they would notify those that had any duties over the weekend. The rest of us would have most of the weekend off. So the Drill Sergeant said; “These men have guard duty this weekend.” “When I call your name; answer.” “Johnson!” He answers. “Smithfield!” He answers. “mumble!” No one answers. So the Drill Sergeant says again, “mumble!” Ashley answers.

Sunday afternoon someone says to me, “did you see that you had guard duty this weekend?” The Drill Sergeant had messed my name up so bad that poor Ashley ended up doing my guard duty. I apologized to Ashley but he said that he didn’t have any plans anyway and didn’t really care.

Army food was bad. Mostly it just didn’t have any taste. I found out why when I was on KP duty (Kitchen Police, ie. helping in the mess hall). I watched them take a huge piece of beef and put it in a large pot of water and boil it. They had to do that in order to cook it in just a few hours. That meal the sliced beef could have been been cardboard because that’s what it tasted like.

Whenever we had hamburgers they always mixed in rice with the ground beef.

One thing that was available for most of the meals were dishes of apricots. Apricots have lots of vitamin C so they are good for you. I wondered how the apricots growers were able to get such a good government contract. I haven’t had apricots for 50 years.

By the time I got home from my Army training in early August 1970 I had lost about 25 pounds. It was the only time in my life that I was skinny.