Draft and Recruitment (Military)

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    Turning a Page, Germans Try Celebrating Their Recent Veterans

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    In a changed world, Germany’s government is trying to recruit more soldiers. A first step? Getting citizens to appreciate their military again.Like many good Veterans Day celebrations, the one in central Berlin on Sunday featured feats of strength. A former Naval boatswain named Peter Christian Duszynski, 35, pulled on a heavy bulletproof vest and reeled off nine flawless chin-ups. When he got stuck on the 10th, the crowd laughed and cheered him on.For Mr. Duszynski, the reception was welcome. Unlike Americans, British and others, Germans rarely show warm public support for former or active service members. The nation remains deeply ashamed of its Nazi past. Until Sunday, it had not celebrated an official Veterans Day since it reunified at the end of the Cold War.That reticence has been an obstacle as German leaders try to rebuild military strength, in order to counter a hostile Russia and hedge against a shrinking American security umbrella. Officials are now trying to recruit 60,000 new soldiers on very short notice. They need more than money to do it.They need the country to start appreciating its armed forces again.Visitors listening to Julia Klöckner, president of the German Parliament, give the day’s opening speech.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesThat is why, in the shadow of Berlin’s Parliament building, officials staged a main-event veterans’ celebration on Sunday. Across Germany, there were hundreds of related festivities, including more street fairs, communal breakfasts, bicycle races, hiking treks and photo exhibitions.“The soldiers are there, but they are usually not seen,” said Mr. Duszynski, 35, who had missions in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. “I think it’s important that we take steps to become more visible.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Alice Brock, Restaurant Owner Made Famous by a Song, Dies at 83

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      Arlo Guthrie’s antiwar staple “Alice’s Restaurant” was inspired by a Thanksgiving Day visit to her diner in western Massachusetts.Alice Brock, whose eatery in western Massachusetts was immortalized as the place where “you can get anything you want” in Arlo Guthrie’s 1967 antiwar song “Alice’s Restaurant,” died on Thursday in Wellfleet, Mass. — just a week before Thanksgiving, the holiday during which the rambling story at the center of the song takes place. She was 83.Viki Merrick, her caregiver, said she died in a hospice from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.Ever since Mr. Guthrie released the song, officially called “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” in 1967, it has been a staple of classic-rock stations every late November, not to mention car trip singalongs on the way to visit family for Thanksgiving dinner.Ms. Brock’s restaurant, the Back Room, does not feature much in the song itself. Over the course of a little more than 18 minutes, Mr. Guthrie — doing more talking than singing — recounts a visit that he and a friend, Rick Robbins, paid to Ms. Brock and her husband, Ray Brock, for Thanksgiving dinner.A shaggy-dog story ensues: Mr. Guthrie and Mr. Robbins take some trash to the city dump, but, finding it closed, leave it in a ravine instead. The next morning the police arrest them for littering, and Ms. Brock has to bail them out.That night she cooks them all a big meal, and the following day they appear in court, where the judge fines them $50. Later, Mr. Guthrie is ordered to an Army induction center, where he is able to avoid the draft because of his criminal record.Ms. Brock helped write the first part of the song, up until the trial.“We were sitting around after dinner and wrote half the song,” she told the writer C.A. Sanders, “and the other half, the draft part, Arlo wrote.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jin of BTS Completes His Military Service

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      The K-pop group is still on hiatus until 2025, when the last of its members finish their mandatory enlistment in South Korea’s military. But the celebrating has begun.The K-pop juggernaut BTS is one step closer to a reunion.The first member of the boy band to enlist in South Korea’s army, Jin, 31, was discharged on Wednesday morning, BTS’s label said. Over the next year or so, his bandmates are expected to complete their military service, which is required of nearly all South Korean men.BTS shocked its own Army — as the seven-member group’s fervent following is collectively known — in June 2022 when they said they would go on hiatus to enlist. Jin, the group’s eldest member, whose birth name is Kim Seok-jin, began his 18-month stint in the military that December. His enlistment came after much public debate about whether BTS should get an exemption from the draft, as Olympic medalists and some classical musicians do.Still, the group was given some leeway. Most men in South Korea have to enlist before they turn 28. Days before Jin reached that milestone, lawmakers revised the conscription law to allow pop artists who have bolstered the nation’s reputation to postpone their enlistment for two years. Researchers say BTS’s global success has contributed billions of dollars to the South Korean economy.The group’s music also seems to have become a military asset. Earlier this week, South Korea blasted K-pop music, reportedly including the BTS hits “Dynamite” and “Butter,” into North Korea in retaliation for the hundreds of trash balloons that Pyongyang has been sending south.South Korean soldiers setting up propaganda loudspeakers near the border with North Korea this week, in an image released by South Korea’s defense ministry. The Defense Ministry, via ReutersIn recent days, the band’s label pleaded with fans to refrain from flocking to the military site outside Seoul where Jin was to be discharged. Fans weren’t the only ones who have been waiting for this day: Jin posted a “D-100” countdown on social media in March.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More