Fine! If I can't go to Paris then I'd like to go to Chicago, please!

Lower enlisted soldiers did not get a pin-point assignment so much like in a cattle fashion, we all just got herded over to Germany with no specific place to go -- and hoped for the best. The process brings new meaning to "Military Intelligence". While in the holding barracks, I saw one soldier after another getting shipped out to their new assignment. Everyday I showed up with my packet, you know, pre-computer days paperwork, with great expectations that I'd be shipped out too. Everyday, much to my disappointment, I did not get an assignment. When asked to fill out my dream sheet, which is exactly that, just a dream that rarely comes to the fruition of reality, I put down Paris, France. One of the sergeants could hardly contain his laughter when he read my sheet and said, "Private, the Army doesn't really send soldiers to Paris. " Oh, well how was I supposed to know?

Fine! If I can't go to Paris, I want to go home. I told the kind sergeant, "Then I'd like to go to Chicago, please."

It was ever depressing in the holding barracks especially when everyone seemed to be leaving but me. The flip side to that was all the females were leaving, the barracks were getting more and more peaceful and I eventually had a room to myself. I also had a private bathroom, much like a hotel room, which was a glorious upgrade to basic training bathrooms; no stalls --just a row of toilets and no shower stalls --just a row of shower heads on a wall in a big open space that had a drain in the middle of the floor. Yeah, I might be all alone in Germany with no place to go but at least I had my own bathroom!