After 23-year-old Al McNeely graduated from Furman University in his hometown of Greenville, S.C., he had visions of continuing as a sports writer for The Greenville Piedmont. His dreams disappeared when the draft caught up with him in 1958. He had gone from being a fairly important senior in college to being an army private, from "Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities" to cleaning toilets. On his first full day in the army, he sat on the back steps of a mess hall at Fort Jackson, S.C., and said aloud, "How am I going to get through two years of this?" He thought it was possible that he wouldn't. The day had started at 2 a.m., giving him two hours of sleep. He had cleaned toilets followed by KP and on the worst KP job, washing pots and pans in scalding water all morning. He had cleaned a grease trap, maybe the worst single job in the army. He had been shoved and cursed. His first break had come in early afternoon and now he was sitting numb on the steps, looking out over the notorious Tank Hill at Fort Jackson in Columbia, S.C. He had thought it might be bad. But not this bad and from everything he'd heard, it was going to get worse. It was the lowest point of his life. Twenty-three months later, just before leaving Germany, he made this entry in his journal: "In all honesty, I have to admit to myself that I really haven't minded being in the army at all. In many ways, these two years have been rich, full and beneficial from any standpoint, probably the happiest years of my life." What happened? These are some of the memories of what happened.
