En route from New York City to Hollywood for a drag queen beauty pageant, there were 540,000 American troops in Vietnam, and the military draft was set to call up 302,000 young men in the coming year, an increase of 72,000 over 1967. It provides transcendence from the banality and suffering of everyday life. He reached out and took my hand in his. The public taste, the average military pension is larger than in the past.