Soon after, Canin and List "were informed that President Truman was coming to Europe for a conference, so we were pulled from the company and flown to Berlin and driven to a suburb in order to provide some of the entertainment for a dinner Truman was giving."

Canin and List watched as "one big black limousine after another rolled up. We recognized Truman, Marshal Stalin wearing his khaki uniform with the shoulder board, and Churchill smoking a cigar, Adm. Leahy, Gen. Marshall, Secretary of State Byrnes, Molotov -- the whole cast of characters on the front page of the New York Times if you read it for a week."

Canin still has the V-Mail he sent his parents the next day from the site: Potsdam.

Afterward, the Army "sent Gene and myself to Army camps to see if we could cull bassoon players, oboe players, instrumentalists still in Europe who had played professionally. In September, our whole unit was transferred to Frankfurt, Germany. By that time, they had enough players to make up the first symphony organized for the Army, which they called the GI Symphony. It was later superseded by the 7th Army Symphony. We gave concerts for GIs, British, Russian and French troops, traveling in ambulances, about eight to an ambulance -- which were damn cold in the winter."

The U.S. military has more than 150 service bands all over the world -- 8,000 to 10,000 musicians total, if all slots were filled. There are even bands in Afghanistan and Iraq. Each service -- Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy and Coast Guard, which is part of Homeland Security -- has its own bands and music budgets. In 2006, for example, the Navy alone will spend more than $2 million on its Washington band and 12 fleet bands, the Defense Department says.

According to Lt. Cmdr. Lisa Brackenbury at the Pentagon Navy news desk, " 'The President's Own' was founded on July 11, 1798, and is considered the oldest musical organization in America."

An alternative to student deferment

De Veritch's father, a violinist, was anxious to find a way to sustain his son's concert career, so he researched opportunities for musicians in the military. He discovered that musicians in "post bands or fort bands were part of the regular fort, so if that fort gets shipped out to fight the battle, even though you're a musician, you go and you fight."

De Veritch's father also found out about "all these different musical entities that were centered in Washington, D.C., and discovered that the Marine Band did carry strings." So De Veritch enlisted and joined the Marine Band, knowing he was signing on for White House duty.

Rothmuller, who took the White House option, remembers the unique stress of the audition: "In this case, you were auditioning literally for your life."

"We arrived in Washington on Jan. 31, 1967. Friends laughed when they saw me: 'Look at that hair!' I had a huge Afro. 'It'll be gone tomorrow.' Who would have dreamed that within a week and a half, we'd be playing a state dinner in the White House for King Hassan of Morocco?"

De Veritch says, "I went to the powers that be at the Marine Band and negotiated that Danny, Ray and violinist Andrew Zaplatinsky would join me there, and we would be called the White House String Quartet, an unofficial unit of the Marine Band. They gave us about two days of the basics so we wouldn't look like total idiots. 'This is how you tell who's an officer. This is how you salute, shine your shoes, how to polish the brass on your uniform.' But even then, we did look like idiots half the time."

"We started playing, everyone's talking, when suddenly the chancellor hits his glass and is shushing everybody. Nobody could move. We had been having a good time. All of a sudden, they're staring at us, listening to every note."

Kobler remembers the fear they felt as "we shifted gears and were now playing a concert. And you get nervous, you start sweating, going into concert mode. We had to stop playing after 20 minutes because nobody could eat or talk."

Rothmuller laughs as he recalls the aftereffects: "Our stock went way up at the State Department. ... The next time the quartet showed up, we were served dinner, like the grown-ups."

During their stint as the White House String Quartet, the men were also frequent guests at Justice Abe Fortas' house for dinner and chamber music. Fortas, an amateur violinist, had made it clear to President Lyndon Johnson that he was not to be disturbed on Sunday nights, when he played chamber music with friends.

De Veritch remembers: "You'd sit around the dinner table with three or four other justices of the Supreme Court and maybe Henry Kissinger, just key people. There would be some political talk, but nothing confidential."

Another career path for musicians

NOW on the faculty at Indiana University, De Veritch says, "As far back as I can remember, brass players, percussionists and winds always looked at openings in the military bands as a viable option to symphonies. In recent years, a lot of the string players do as well. All of my students contemplating orchestra careers, taking auditions, also look into the military bands."

Rothmuller delineates the perks: "You have everything taken care of -- retirement, medical, PX, which is the military store. They sell every single thing you can imagine. And it's like buying wholesale. So you might not be making as much money as you would with the New York Philharmonic or the National Symphony, but then again, you don't have to spend that money. It's security. You can't get more security than what the armed forces gives you."

The Army Band, like the Air Force Band, requires basic training of its musicians. Fernandez was 29 when she went to boot camp, training with 18- and 19-year-olds. Today she's a sergeant first class, one of the 18 string players and one accordion player who make up "Pershing's Own," performing at dinners at the White House and State Department and for various military functions.

Although the Marine Band strings perform during cocktails and the main course and again after dessert, the Army or Air Force strings play everything from memory and "come out strolling during dessert," she says.

De Veritch explains that the "strolling strings" are "more like a featured entertainer."

Fernandez explains that even though the Marine Band skips basic training, "they still have to weigh in." She adds, "There's no flexibility. It's as strict as training to be on the front line." Band members are required to do a physical fitness test "and have to do our two-mile run every six months. The logic is, we may be musicians, but when we play for generals, we're soldiers in the U.S. military."

With the shortage of troops in Iraq and the redeployment of others, there's been speculation about reinstatement of the draft. Were that to happen, there would likely be even more competition for positions in military bands. As it is, there already are many more professionally trained musicians in the U.S. than orchestral jobs. The August issue of the journal International Musician listed two vacancies in the Air Force Strings: one for violin, the other for cello. In the September issue, they were gone.

He remembers a former roommate, violist Phil Eastham, who wasn't so lucky: "Phil was the sweetest guy, the last person you would think of carrying a rifle or anything. He is on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial."