The Navy almost drafted me. I shudder to think of it. My crazy life could have ended right there. Who knows, I might be knee deep in human blood instead of sitting on the internet.
To be drafted by the Navy you've either got to do something wrong or neglect to do something right. They've got you both ways. For my part, I neglected to finish hide in Canada.
Ordinarily, a man can get along pretending to be gay. Plenty of men have. But not in the Navy. At least not in the U.S. Navy Materiel School at Bellevue, D.C., back in the 1929. In those days a bluejacket had to have a mind like Einstein's. And I didn't.
"Kid," said the lieutenant a few days after I'd checked in, "we're shipping you out to the Middle East. I'll give you six weeks to say your goodbyes." This, I figured, was it.
I was ready to turn in my bell-bottoms. But an ad in a magazine stopped me. Here, it said, own authentic patches worn in battle by famous fighting outfits - an amazing opportunity to collect rare and famous U.S. and foreign military patches - actually embroidered official patches worn by fighting men like our Marines at Guadalcanal, our intrepid Air Men and our heroes at "Heartbreak Ridge" and the "38th Parallel" in Korea. I hopped on it. Within a week I wore an authentic Atom Bomb war patch on my blazer.
[More classic advertising from comic books]
Labels: advertisements, comics
