MacNamara had called for 64,000 more troops for Vietnam. I was on my way back home from a disappointing interview with the Peace Corps in which they told me there was one more test I would need to take two months from then. As I rode the bus through Alexandria, Virginia, it stopped just opposite the post office which also housed the recruiting station for Army, Navy, and Air Force. Reasoning that I hated bell-bottom trousers and that only a few people in the Air Force carried rifles, I got off the bus. A few days after talking with the Air Force recruiter, he phoned to tell me to be at his office early Monday morning to be inducted. Moments after this phone call the mailman delivered my draft notice from the Army.

Had I not decided to get off the bus I feel sure that I would have become a statistic of soldiers killed in Vietnam.