In early 1944 I was 17 years old, in my senior year at Eastern District High School in Brooklyn, New York, and, after several summers spent working as a comic at Catskills resorts, knew that I wanted to go into show business. But Hitler had started a war.
One day a U.S. Army recruiting officer came around and said that if anybody in the class scored high enough on an aptitude test, they could join the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program, the ASTP Reserve. If you were accepted, you would graduate early from high school and be sent to a college paid for by the government. Then when you turned 18 and joined the army, you would be in a better position to choose your field of service. This sounded great to me. I knew I was destined to be drafted anyway. So I took the test. I think they really wanted everybody they could get. Some of the questions were not too difficult, like “2 + 2 = what?” Needless to say, I passed. I was sent to college at VMI, the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, for special training.
Life there was wonderful and terrible. The terrible part was getting up at 6 a.m. to shave, shower, and have breakfast. And having to make my own bed with hospital corners. The wonderful part was that the VMI cadets were so welcoming to us ASTP Reserve trainees. They never resented our sharing the school with them. VMI was not just an academic college. Founded in 1839, it was known as “the West Point of the South.” In addition to my academic studies of electrical engineering and learning all about cosines, tangents, slide rules, and such, they also trained you to be a cavalry officer. So I learned to ride a horse and wield a saber—something I had never seen any kid from Brooklyn do.
When I turned 18, I was officially in the army. They sent me to Fort Dix in New Jersey, which
