The procedure, as I’ve already pointed out, was that you had to go to the local post office at some time prior to turning twenty and fill in a little pink card—just the basic personal details—name, address, religion, place of birth, date of birth. It was really only the last of these that mattered.
    The dates were put on little balls and rolled in a barrel, just like on TV game shows, and a government official drew them out. Roughly one date in each six was chosen—fifteen dates for the three month period.
    In later times, this drawing of dates was shown live on TV but initially it was all very hush-hush. Later the chosen dates were published in the newspapers, but at the time they kept it to themselves and the only information the draftee received was an invitation to a medical examination.

The Hills are alive, with the Sound of Music,
With songs they have sung, for a thousand years.
    There aren’t a lot of musicals I like, but The Sound of Music was really special. The epic treatment, the superb Austrian scenery and locations in Saltzburg, some unforgettable songs and a strong performance by Julie Andrews, all added up to a great film.
    It is that opening shot that is the winner, after a prelude drifting about the local scenery, the helicopter shot picks out Andrews wading through the grass along the ridge. As she goes into a pirouette, the angle jumps from fifty feet above her to a point on the ground below her waist, in what everyone I’ve asked was sure was a continuous shot.
    Then there is one of the great accidentally blindingly hilarious moments of all time, when the stern Mother Superior is giving Maria a dressing down, and suddenly raises her chin and bursts into song.
Climb every mountain, ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow, ‘til you find your dream.
    It’s a disastrous miscalculation by Robert Wise, who usually lived up to his name in matters of cinema judgement, but somehow the whole movie was so infectious that this too was all part of the fun. Similarly, Julie Andrews was not a great singer, her voice never really powerful enough for lyrics like these, but she more than made up for it with her energy and screen presence, such that most of the songs wouldn’t be right if sung by anyone else.
    Some might notice that I’ve overlooked Sixteen going on Seventeen, as you rightly should a love song sung by a Nazi. And it would certainly be churlish to point out that Von Trappe appears to be a Naval officer in a land-locked country. The whole damned thing is way too wonderful for anything like that to matter.