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BOOK DESCRIPTION
:
Bugging
Out: An Army Memoir (1954)
Locations: Fort Dix, New Jersey and Camp Gordon, Georgia (100,000 words)
Tom O'Connell, Author-Educator-Lecturer
Health Columnist, The Cape Codder
Publisher, "Lifestyle Journal" at sanctuary777.com
When
the fighting of the so-called “Korean Conflict” was over,
and the Vietnam era was only an embryo, there was a time of relative peace
that was called “The Eisenhower Years.” But the draft was
still a fact of life for young men like me.
This didn’t bother me because I saw compulsory military service
as an opportunity, not a problem. I was financially strapped at the time
after working my way through three years of college, and the idea came
to me that it might be good to drop out after my junior year, get married
to Mary, and then offer myself up to the draft process.
This plan would make me eligible for the G.I. Bill of Rights after completing
my two years in the Army. Then I would go back to Boston College for my
senior year with Uncle Sam paying my tuition plus some money for basic
living expenses. Mary and I agreed on the plan, and it sounded very logical
to us.
As this memoir opens, I was about to become a draftee and there was a
slight complication. Not only was I married, but Mary was already expecting
our first child and I was just starting to adjust to the idea of being
a father so soon after tying the marital knot.
Also, I was completely oblivious about how Army life might affect me.
My thinking was that since countless thousands of guys had served in the
military, why couldn’t I? The problem was that I was not other guys;
I was a character whose name should have been Thomas Freedom O’Connell
instead of Thomas Frederick.
How could I remain free in the regimentation of Army life? I had no idea.
After all, I lived in a world of fantasy in those days. Dreams of glory!
So the reality of Army life completely escaped me until I was on my way
to becoming a citizen soldier.
If some expert had done a personality profile on me to see if I was cut
out for Army life I would have been disqualified after answering the first
few questions. But how was I to know this about myself? After all, I had
been raised on John Wayne movies and immersed in patriotic themes during
all of my early years. How could I think otherwise?
I was in for a very rude awakening. Almost instantly I realized that just
about every aspect of the military training was an assault on my independent
personality, not to mention my sensitive body. And this posed a serious
conflict between the need to do my duty and the necessity of trying to
avoid losing my sense of self.
“Bugging out” soon became an option for me, yet I had never
even heard the phrase as a civilian. I knew what “goofing off”
was but not “bugging out.”
This is the story of what I learned about “bugging out” soon
after being inducted into the Army, and how I became a confirmed “bug-out”
without ever planning to do so.
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