Recruiting stations are, like, so Vietnam-era

[KamaAina]

:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/nyregion/17recruit.html

The dedication ceremony, with a general and commanders and invited guests, is not until Thursday. One of the invitations went to Brian Williams, the NBC News anchor. Sergeant Castillo handed it to him last week at the annual Armed Forces Gala and Gold Medal dinner in Manhattan, where Mr. Williams was the host and Sergeant Castillo was in charge of the color guard.

But even before the ribbon cutting on Thursday, walk-ins are already trickling in, if only because they notice the awning over the front windows. Sergeant Castillo expects some to come from the Borough of Manhattan Community College, just down the street.

Inside the recruiting station, they find soft lighting, tone-on-tone carpeting and comfortable chairs. There is not a single “Uncle Sam wants you” poster in the place. It is almost unimaginably different from an Army ancestor, the induction center on Whitehall Street where draft boards sent young men, in the words of the Arlo Guthrie song “Alice’s Restaurant,” to be “injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected.”

The Whitehall Street center processed inductees from 1884 until it was bombed by protesters in 1969, during the Vietnam War. Those recruited by Sergeant Castillo do not get their physicals in his recruiting station — there is no Army doctor on duty waiting to tell them to turn and cough. Nowadays, recruits are sent to Fort Hamilton, in Brooklyn, for their checkups.

[HopeHoops]

1. "Excuse me, but I don't think this is the Army I signed up for." - Private Benjamin

"Where are the condos? Where's the swimming pool?"