I get drafted in 1969. But before that I’d had a great summer. I had been to the Atlantic City pop festival and had seen all the big acts: Jefferson Airplane, Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix.

When I got drafted I went into the army and did my basic training in fort Bragg. Then I did my advanced training in Texas. I went into medic school. I didn’t know anything about medicine. When they asked me what I wanted to be I told them I thought I would be a military cop.

But I took a battery of interest tests, and it showed that I liked medicine for some reason. I would have never thought that. They made me a medic and I loved it!

Then I went to Airborne school. My whole company got shipped off to Vietnam but I didn’t go because I was in Airborne school.


Mom Pulls Some Strings and Keeps Me Out of ‘Nam

I ended up in South Carolina working in an army hospital transfer center. I was ordered to go to Vietnam, but two days before I was scheduled to leave the order was canceled. Fifteen years later I found out that my mother knew our local congressman. She went to him and pleaded the story that I was the sole surviving Magen name. Obviously, he had some influence.

Surprisingly, I didn’t like that. To this day I have very mixed feelings about not going to Vietnam. I always have this underlying survivor’s guilt. I lost friends. During the Tet offensive, 369 guys from my company went. I was a combat medic, and my life expectancy wasn’t very good. I’ve always felt a sense of it emotional loss that I never went, never experienced Vietnam

But while I was in the military and actually serve time in jail… a couple of months for being AWOL. However, I got out with an Honorable Discharge.


I go AWOL for Three Months, and then Serve time in the Brig

When I didn’t go to Vietnam, I hope that with my friends who were against the war. They showed me how to get out of the military. They hooked me up with a shrink. I went AWOL and lived on the road for three months. They didn’t come looking for me but if they found me they would’ve shipped me back.

The FBI came out to my house once. I stayed on the run for about three or four months and then I turned myself in and served three or four months in the brig. It was minimum security though, and it was pretty cool.

I was in the brig with guys who had committed war atrocities and everything else you can imagine. We were in the brig In fort Meade Maryland which nowadays is one of the most secure places in the country. We escaped out of the break; we went under the wire and we went to the May Day protests for six hours. Then we crawled back under the wire. There were about four of us who went under the wire wearing our military garb; it was a riot!

There were a few hundred thousand people at this protest; it was a party.


I Do a Little International Drug Smuggling

So I got out of the military with an honorable discharge. I had been going with the same gal since she was fourteen years old, and I was eighteen. We met at a dance. Now I’m 21 and she is eighteen, and the drug scene was full – on in those days. We were selling drugs, partying on and on. But it got scary. I ended up getting involved in heroin and shooting. I shot speed.

Plus we went to Columbia three times and brought back 6 lbs. of cocaine each time. Back in those days 6lbs. was a lot of Coke.

When I got out of the army I had hair down to the middle of my back.

When I got out of the service I move to Canada for about six months. It was my own little personal protest. I lived up there with a buddy and we goofed around. They were selling drugs, panhandling, anything we could think of to get through. We made it for six months.