I could have been an officer in the Army, but they never came around the guard house to see the good work I was doing.
I’ll never forget, I used to say, “Why do we have to get up at 5:00 in the morning?” The sergeant says, “To beat the enemy.” I says, “I don’t want to beat him. I’ll get up when they do.”
We had a wonderful outfit I was with. We had one guy that was an expert in gas. He was the cook.
When I was taking my basic training in Camp Roberts, we were on this bivouac. And I’m standing out in the middle of this field, and the lieutenant yells to me, “Skelton! Get out of the middle of the field! You want to get killed?” I says, “What?” He says, “We’re simulating that the enemy is on the top of that hill!” I says, “Oh, they’ll never get me, sir. I’m simulating I’m behind a big rock.”
did you notice the new TV shows are all about funny wars? I served 22 months in the military and I never realized how much fun I was having! (Hobo a Go-Go)
Women in the Army
But you know, when I look at some women, I think of great battles that have been fought. You know, didja ever stop to think of Gina Lollobrigida – Bunker Hill! Sophia Loren and Audry Hepburn – The Merrimack and The Monitor! Kate Smith – the Battle of the Bulge! Phyllis Diller …. Valley Forge. Barbara Streisand – the Little Bighorn!
Can you just see Phyllis Diller in the Army? Wouldn’t that be something? She’d scare the enemy to death! They’d think, “Look, they got a new deadly weapon! It’s charged with electricity — it must be, look at the hair standing on the end.”
And can you just see some of the guys up in the front line, and all of a sudden they hear, “Oh …. oh … oh!” And they guy says, “I’m gonna crawl over and see what that is.” He comes back, they says, “What was it?” He says, “An eight pound boy.”
Oh, they drafted some women, see, three women, and they took them in to give them crew haircuts. And they start screaming, “No, not my hair, not my beautiful hair! We just came back from the hair dresser, oh my hair …”. And on further examination, they found out they were three men … three men draft dodgers!
Hey, when I was in the Army, they had girl soldiers. I remember they had one beautiful blonde WAC. She came up to me, she said, “I just got a weekend pass, how about us doing something really exciting?” I said, “Okay, let’s go down on Main Street and watch the parking meters expire.” And she says, “They call me a whack!”
Hey, you know when I was in the Army, I was up at Camp Roberts doing my basic training, and one day there was an officer came out of the Red Cross field house there, see, I didn’t know who the guy was. So he walked right by me, he says, “Just a moment, private. I saw you didn’t salute me.” I says, “Well, I didn’t know I was supposed to. I saw you coming, thought you was a field worker.” He says, “A field worker! Do you see those three stars on my shoulder? You know what that means?” I said, “You got three boys in the service?”
I went into the Army for three reasons myself: I was patriotic, I love freedom, and they come and got me!
There was one guy I was gonna tell you about up in Camp Roberts. He would walk around all the time, and every time he sees a piece of paper he’d look at it, say “That ain’t it”, find another piece of paper, “that ain’t it”. Every time he sees a little piece of paper, “that ain’t it.” So one day, a general came by and saw this guy, says, “He’s nutty, he’s a fruitcake, they’ve got to get him out of here.” So they take him up, they give him his discharge papers. He looked at it, he said, “That’s it!”
Induction Center
Hey, but when you go down …. Anybody going to be drafted into the Army or the Navy? When you get to that induction center, boy, don’t clown around. I did, they gave me one of those little cards that you put over one eye, and I said, “Peekaboo!” He says, “No, 1-A.”
I walked into the Induction center, and they said, “Look what the wind blew in.” It’s not the wind, it’s the draft!
Psychiatrists in the Army
Did you hear the story about the two psychiatrists out play golf? And one of them missed the putt, about three feet, see, and he says, “Aw, nuts.” The other guy says, “Let’s not talk shop.”
And the questions they ask the little guys when they go into the service. Like, they said there’s one little fella going into the Navy, he says, “Do you know how to swim?” He says, “Why? Are they running out of boats?”
