I ended up at Fort Polk, La., back in 1965. I renamed it Lousy-ana because it was hot and muggy with drill instructors yelling at us and making us shave our faces in the hot sun without any shaving cream. Every day, we ran, did exercises and dug trenches. On Saturdays, I thought we would get a little break, but they had us digging more trenches. It never stopped. Finally, one Saturday, I noticed a bunch of my Jewish buddies from New York leaving the barracks with kippahs on their heads.

"What is that?" I said, and they told me it was a religious practice for Jewish people. They also told me they went to the synagogue on Saturdays, their Holy Day. I told them to get me one or to pick up a ladies bra and bring it back to me.

They brought back a bra—the biggest one I ever saw.

I cut it in half, cut the straps off and put black shoe polish all over it.

The next Saturday, I marched out of the barracks with that extra-large bra cup that came down to my ears on my head and went to town with my friends. I never had to work a Saturday in boot camp again. On Sundays, everyone went to church, so there was no digging to be done.

At the end of training, the drill instructors found out about it and checked my dog tags, and sure enough, my tags said Protestant.