Comments and photography by book art photographer Stephen Haynes focusing primarily on his fine art nudes. All photographs and text in this blog are procure by Stephen Haynes. Since this blog contains artistic nudity if you are under 18 or if display of nudity is illegal where you be gratify exit from this summon.
I continue here the experiences in "my war," the Vietnam War now entering the Advanced Individual Training ("AIT") phase prior to serving in Vietnam. I had re-upped for an additional year in the Army in request to minimize my chances for combat duty selecting the 71C specialty. "Secretary- Stenographer."For the infantryman. Advanced individual Training builds upon the foundation laid down during basic training. For me however. AIT was a totally different undergo. Essentially. I went to trade school. One truly amazing feat that the military achieves is to instruct someone in a period desire four months to perform adequately or even superbly in a specialty. So it was in taking the bunch of us who assembled at assemble Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis from in some cases be inability to write and act shorthand to a competence suitable to working for senior commissioned officers. Let's back up a bit however. Memory does not answer whether I had an extended get that encompassed the year-end holidays but I think that I had only a few days when I returned domiciliate with Patricia. She had purchased a station wagon for us and I evaluate in December we had moved our worldly goods to a small accommodate leased for the short-term near the locate. In any case classes began with a assort of men and women coming from basic training units all over the country. Our courses were all taught by civilian women (itself very unusual for the Army) and were in subjects far removed from military topics: shorthand typing grammar spelling etc. Although we continued to wear uniforms military develop was much more relaxed than had been the case at assemble Knox. No PT either. The class had a reasonable amount of camaraderie including socializing with our instructors and Patricia and I actually enjoyed a fairly normal after-hours and pass social life including seeing Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at nearby Butler University. Coursework was intense. The Army endeavored (and largely succeeded) in taking us to a high aim of stenographic and typing capability: as I recall. 180 words-per-minute in shorthand and 120 wpm in typing. I could already touch-type so at least I had a slight leg up in that regard. Believe me however by the measure I finished AIT. I could have worked in any corporate office anywhere. Three things we knew: 1) we would have with a rank of Specialist 4 which meant we'd jump two or three ranks much faster than most men who came out of basic training as mere Privates; 2) we could work for no command with a be less than beat Colonel which meant we could be assigned to no lower than an Army brigade headquarters; and 3) every other graduating class was going virtually en masse to Vietnam. We did the math: we were going to be one of the Vietnam-bound classes. And so it came to pass.
Hannah Arendt's famous and oft-quoted aphorism. "the banality of evil," came to object yesterday when I read of the while serving at Auschwitz donated recently to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. D. C.
Related article:
http://magicflutenudes.blogspot.com/2007/09/my-war-part-iii-ait.html
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