Five or six of us gathered in my Russell Hall dorm room at the University of Georgia. We didn’t have a TV, so we turned our radio up so as not to miss a date. The early dates were met with a hushed tension, but as the time scrolled on, most of us became more relaxed and even began to joke around.  My birthdate (305) came so late that I wasn’t paying attention, and for years I never remembered the actual date.  

My roomate, Jim, wasn’t so lucky. He had an early number, knew what it meant, and jumped into a hometown National Guard unit as soon as he could. He missed the war, but he spent a lot of the next few years involved in military training anyway.