Henry Roach (b. 1947 - d. 2025) was drafted into the Army at the age of 21 in 1968. He spent 2 years as an MP (military police) with a MOS of 95B10. The following are his recollections of his service. US 51730076 - that was my US Army service number. Everything that I talk about will be about the Army. I don’t know if things were the same or similar in the other branches of service. Sometime in 1969, the army went from service numbers to Social Security numbers. Prior to that time, everyone who had been issued a US military service number kept it until discharge. After that time, anyone joining the service used their social security number. Among the enlisted members, service numbers began with either ‘US’ like my number, which designated that you were drafted into the service, or ‘RA’, which was used for members who enlisted in the Army. I imagine that officers probably had different designations, but I don’t know what they were. Sometime in 1969, the first draft lottery was held. The draft lottery was where numbers and birthdays were drawn, and you were assigned a number. If you got a high number, there was very little chance that you would be drafted. It came a little too late for me. I remember I got the number 306, so, I never would’ve been drafted had they started the lottery two years earlier. I served from April 16, 1968, until April 15, 1970. I remember April 16, 1968. My dad drove me to the draft board in Woburn, Massachusetts and his last words to me were “You’re a smart kid. Pay attention to what they teach you and you will be fine.” Two other guys from the Woburn office, one from Stoneham and one from Woburn, were drafted that same day. The three of us took a train into South Station, where we underwent a physical and then an induction ceremony. We all stood in a big room. They would call your name and branch of service. If you accepted induction, you would take a step forward. At that time, I did not have any strong feelings about the war, so I took a step forward. Another kid from Stoneham was called and he accepted induction into the Navy. I later learned he was killed in action. At the end of that day, we were put on a bus to Fort Dix, New Jersey for basic training. Basic training was eight weeks, and it was pretty basic. You learned how to shoot a rifle, how to march, how to address the officers and the noncommissioned officers and other members of your group, and you got physically fit. That was a big part of it. They controlled what you ate and what you did physically, so, everybody left in better shape than when they arrived. There were three exams you had to pass before you could get out of basic training. One was a physical test that consisted of five units. Another was a firearms test. We used M14 rifles at the time. The last was a proficiency park exam in which you had to pass the test on all the other skills they were trying to teach you. Our company was probably made up of 90+ % draftees. About 85% of our company was sent to Fort Polk, Louisiana for infantry - that was a direct ticket to Vietnam. I was sent to Fort Gordon, Georgia for MP school. I think I was one of five or six of the non-enlisted people who did not get Fort Polk, Louisiana. MP school was eight weeks. They graduated two classes every week. There was no leave given out while you were there, so, every weekend, we would have to attend the graduation ceremony of the two classes that were graduating that week. We were able to find out where all the graduates were going and, every class graduating during the seven weeks we attended, went to Vietnam. The week that we graduated, not a single guy was sent to Vietnam. I was sent to Fort Hood, Texas which is where I spent the remaining months of my service. I was at Fort Hood from August 1968 until April 1970. When I got to Fort Hood, I was assigned to Company C of the 518th MP Battalion. The 518th MP Battalion is the only MP unit of Fort Hood, the largest Fort in the entire Army. The MP unit’s duties included post patrol, prison control where we ran the stockade, and riot control. We traded off each month as did Companies A and B. When I arrived at Fort Hood, half of Company C was missing because they were in Chicago where they were sent because the Democratic party was holding its convention there, amidst threats of riots. The company was there in case things got out of hand, I guess. In fact, subsequently, there were riots. Although they were deployed to stop the riots, the company never left the armory. Although I had spent three semesters in college, one of the most eye-opening things I learned in the army was how people from around the country are so different! I had gone to college at UMass, so I was mostly around kids from Massachusetts. The army was the first time I met people from all over the country which included people from Appalachia, hippies from California, farmers from Nebraska, and more. My best friend in the army was from Alaska. His name was Chuck Courtright and he’s the guy that turned me on to reading. I had really never read anything other than the newspaper, occasional magazine articles, and the racing form. I never read any books at all during grade school or high school. Chuck read all the time and, obviously, loved it. I’d ask “What are you reading?” He’d say “You’ll love this book, I’ll let you read it when I’m done.” He had a sister who would send him a box of books every month and, it turns out, she had pretty good taste. I would say, in my two years in the army, I probably read 50 books. It was 50 more than I had read prior to that. Chuck and I read all the stuff that young kids are supposed to read. We read Hemingway and Catch 22. We read Slaughterhouse-Five, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1984. We read Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn, and Steinbeck. For about a year of my time at Fort Hood, I served as CQ, which stands for Charge of Quarters, for my company. The CQ is the person who’s in charge of the company when the Officers go home at 5 o’clock and on weekends and holidays. Even though I was only a Specialist E4 and it was a job for E5 and above, they trusted me to run the place. It was fine with me because I didn’t really like playing cop; I had enough of it in the few months that I had done it. As CQ, I was responsible for making sure people got to duty on time. When we had stockade duty, we had tower guards going on duty every 4 hours. If they were not there, then I would have to find a replacement. There was never really a time where you slept very much. I did have an assistant called the CQ runner to help me. It was a pretty involved job that included handing out weapons and making sure nobody burned down the mess hall which was open all night. The best part was that you got every other day off. I managed to complete my two years without any major incidents. I hadn’t planned on going to college right out of high school. I was going to take a gap year before that was a thing. I was pressured to go to college straight away and wasted 3 semesters there, but that is another story. It was nice to be able to get back to college after I had grown up. I would run into people I went to high school with. They had already finished college and they’d ask if I regretted my service. I didn’t regret the time I spent in the Army and, it turns out, it was a very lucrative period in my life. I didn’t make any money then, but I did later. I remember my first check in the Army was for $97 per month and that, my last check, after two years in the Army, was still only $228 per month. That summer, after my discharge, I collected unemployment and got $69 a week. Under the G.I. Bill, I went back to college where I got $220 a month and my tuition was waived; Massachusetts waived tuition for any veterans who went to state school. Even with that, it still took me a long time to finish. The time in the army also served me when I took a job with the federal government because things, including the vacation time you get after so many years of service, were all adjusted to include my two years of military service. When I retired, the two years in the army accounted for 4% of my pension. As I’ve been retired for 20 years, that has turned into a nice little sum of money. Financially, it was about the best two years of my life. All in all, I have very few regrets about my time in the Army.