Those of you who served in Vietnam remember the draft. I remember when the draft was activated at the start of World War II. It has been around a long time. My two brothers, Rodney and Russell were 12 and 10 when the '40s war began. Rodney joined the Navy when he turned 17. With the war over, most of his two year tour of duty was spent in a good-will tour of Europe and North Africa, ending at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Russell joined the Navy, too, and was sent for training north of Chicago. I don't remember what happened, but he transferred to the Air Force and begin Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. It was a bad time. A freakish cold spell hit about the time he arrived. That, coupled with too many recruits, housed in tents without proper cold weather gear, caused them to suffer severely. Russ survived that. His waterloo came on the parade ground the day he passed out. Russ had an injured knee from an automobile accident that had gone unnoticed. The wire broke that was holding his knee cap together. Russ was discharged.

Do you get the picture? Russ came home, needing surgery to remove the broken wire. Since it wasn't a service related injury, the Air Force simply sent him home. It would be his problem getting it fixed. That's what I want to write about, removing the wire.

Health insurance was nonexistent. Russ looked around for the cheapest surgeon. He found one that ran a hospital/clinic in a nearby town and checked himself in. The wire was removed with no problem.

I remember visiting him that evening at suppertime. Russ was in a two bed room. The man in the other bed was friendly enough. He and Russ were getting on just fine. The supper meal was Russ's first one after surgery. Suddenly the man noticed something wrong. Russ had been given a knife to cut up his meat. He didn't have a knife. In fact, he hadn't had a knife at all during the entire week he had been there.

“Hey! They gave you a knife!” he screamed. “I didn't get a knife!”

We quickly learned that he was a mental patient waiting to be transferred to a mental hospital. Sedated most of the time, he had tried to kill someone. Suddenly, Russ decided he was well enough to go home. Getting dressed, he left with us immediately after supper.

That situation wouldn't happen today. First, his health insurance would have had to approve the surgical procedure. (That hospital/clinic certainly wouldn't have passed the grade either. There were other problems there.) He would be admitted and given a battery of tests before surgery, stuff like that. He wouldn't have been housed in a room with a violent mental patient, either So, no insurance, no problem. Russ was out of there.

The next time you are in the hospital, and wake up after surgery, look over at the person in the other bed. Why was he there? You had better hope it was for surgery.