The doorbell to my apartment rang. I wondered who would walk up four floors to see me and opened the door. The man standing there, after confirming my name, handed me my conscription papers to join the Italian army. I returned to the kitchen thinking this must be a mistake, they don’t take hippies into the army, but two months later I was living in an army base.
When I first entered the base I said to the young Corporal who signed me in, "I don’t belong here!" to which he answered "Do you think I do?" For three weeks I went around the army base in my civilian clothes, my hair still long, attracting a lot of strange looks and loud comments like "Capellone!" (longhaired hippie).
I had never really touched alcohol in my life, maybe because my parents were drinking wine like water all day long but here in the cafeteria half a litre of wine was being served to every soldier with each meal, and you could go back for a second and third bottle. I gave it a try for a few days but it was not for me and I became a truck driver.
The first time I drove to a training camp I saw how old the artillery equipment was. The cannons were so ancient you could almost see the shells come out of the barrel and the whistling they made through the air reminded me of a cartoon. After we had driven hard for six hours we finally reached the shooting range, a beautiful pine forest alongside a wild beach. Me and the other three drivers were done with our duty and supposed to rest when I had a great idea. "Let’s go play in the sea while everyone else is training!"
We smoked the peace pipe and happily headed for the beach. We took off our stupid uniforms and completely naked we played like children, rolling in the sand as the cannons fired out over the sea. Occasionally I heard strange sounds, almost like bullets, zooming past my ears but we were all too stoned to care and anyway we were sure the shooting range was somewhere else. So there we were, naked, in the middle of a long jump competition in the sand when a loud noise started coming our way. We froze in terror as a small Italian tank with an army General half-sticking out of it, binoculars to his eyes, came streaking towards us at full speed.
We all jumped for our clothes but mine were in the direction of the oncoming tank. It was terrifying and hilarious at the same time. I did not reach them in time so when the tank stopped I was covering my balls with one hand whilst saluting the General with the other.
"Do you have a mother?!" he screamed, "Don’t you know you’re in the middle of a firing range? If you someone hadn’t spotted you, you could have all been killed!"
We were ordered on board the tank and naked we were driven at high speed to a safe place. For some reason the General never reported us so my life in the Italian army went on without punishment. This memory of standing stark naked and stoned in front of an Italian army General, covering my genitals with one hand and saluting him in the proper manner with the other, is the highlight of my army career.