Re: Army Dodgers
I joined the MN, because it was the quickest escape from a miserable childhood.* I Left school at fifteen, tread water for a year and applied for MN admission at sixteen.*
It was about age seventeen that I realized that the draft was imminent if I came ashore*after I was 18, Never mind, I was doing things I liked, learning to cook and going places...And then I met a girl on a blind date and fell for her*and it changed my outlook.* Absence didn't make the heart*grow fonder; it made me miserable.
While I was home on leave, my girl and I went sightseeing. Long story short. I took a photo, entered it in The Evening Star newspaper photo*contest and won first prize a hundred pounds plus another 25, which was a ton of money in those days, when the average working man made 5 pounds a week.
We decided to save like*hell, get married and emigrate to Canada to both escape from our miserable homes, plus it was almost impossible in those days to find accommodations. What you could find you had to slip bribes; it was called "Key Money" plus there was the draft.
Now here's the kicker. I only have peripheral vision*in my left*eye, I'm legally*blind in that eye, but it never bothered me.* When I had my physical exam to join the MN.* The doctor told me to read the eye*exam chart and hold a card over my eye.* I cheated, and never gave it a thought.* It wasn't until years later when they came out with the eye testing machine, which ruled out any cheating that it dawned on me that if those machines were invented ten years earlier, I couldn't have gotten into the MN. with one eye. AND I COULDN"T HAVE BEEN DRAFTED not with one almost blind eye.
Strange thing fate, my whole life hung on a lazy doctor, who didn't want to get off his bum and examine my eyes properly.
Cheers, Rodney
Rodney David Richard Mills
R602188 Gravesend