To: add1dda@aol.com <add1dda@aol.com>
Sent: Friday, December 5, 2025 at 12:33:19 PM EST
Subject: A Curious Fact Regarding U.S. Army Recruiting Standards in 1966
The Wikipedia entry on Frankie Lymon, boy soprano of the 1956 doo-wop song "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" by the Teenagers contains this nugget of information:
These two facts are juxtaposed casually and without comment, as if there was nothing wrong about their connection. Granted, the Vietnam War was ramping up by 1966, but even so, why on earth would this guy be considered appropriate recruiting material? Lyman was to die of a heroin overdose in February 1968, only a year and a half later.
In an earlier instance of sort of policy, Louis Till, father of Emmett, was given the choice during WWII of going to prison or being drafted--and ended his career as a soldier by murdering and raping two Italian woman, crimes which got him executed by court martial in 1944.
N.S.: It may sound perverse in the current day, but it used to be routine practice for many young criminals to get the option of Yale, er enlistment, or jail. I knew guys like that. And most of them washed out, too! I once had a guy (probation officer tell me, when I tried to get that deal for one of my foster kids in 1989, "You're dating yourself."
Giving a ni**er a rifle and a country full of WHITE women must have been Till's dream.come true. "Worth getting executed over," I'll bet,were his last words to the firing squad.
ReplyDeleteHe couldn't have been the only one,of course. If I was an Italian woman and I saw a black soldier running toward my house--POW--no questions. Drop him.
--GRA
This really jogged my memory- something I read not that long ago, and for the life of me I can't recall where. Supposedly drugs were being smuggled into isolated military bases in the 1950s, places where the troops were going crazy from having "nothing to do." I was appalled when I read that- if I can recall where this info came from, I'll report on it. Seems things were already spiraling out of control.
ReplyDelete-RM
The reason why so many then thought that this was a good idea is because this "offer" was actually made to young men in the past with good results. The younger of my two (and late) blood uncles was messing around on the wrong side of the tracks. The cops picked him and an older cousin of his up for a B&E. It was my uncle's first arrest and his cousin's multiple. The head patrol sergeant for the area where my maternal grandparents lived was on really good terms with them. So how did it turn out? The older cousin had to sit on on down in Jeff City for a little while. Meanwhile, implicitly with the deal that sarge made with my grandpa, sarge clammed up but contingent on my uncle having that "option." So away he, 17 years old at the time, went, to the Army. He, being 17 in 1947-48, which meant he was in the Army when Korea popped off. Luckily he never saw active combat, and never was in any serious danger; For him, most of what he did in Korea was drive high Es and low Os around. But once he got out, honorable discharge, he went straight to the fire academy, St. Louis Fire Department until he retired, never as much as a traffic or parking ticket for the rest of his life. And since the first ten years of his time on the FD was on the third closest rescue squad to the Pruitt-Igoes, he had some stories. Point being, I can understand why there are still some older people even to this day who think that the military can turn a wayward young man around. It's just that we know that what worked for my eldest uncle wouldn't have for Frankie Lymon. In fact, it didn't work for the McNamara's Morons of that era.
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