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Life shaping events and the Vietnam draft
Jan. 24th, 2011 08:15 pmI graduated from high school in June of 1972. I was 17.
Vietnam had been a reality from amongst my earliest memories. I grew up watching Walter Cronkite on the evening news, recounting how many people had died that day in Vietnam. Actually, recounting how many American soldiers had died that day. There were estimates on the civilian casualties, as well as how many North Vietnamese had been killed. The numbers of American dead though were always a precise number, whether they were real or not. Those numbers made the war real for me. The war may have been on the other side of the world, but boys from my neighborhood had been called up and some of them had come home in boxes.
What triggered these memories was reading a piece my husband wrote recently, on how he had avoided the draft. LJ was born in February of 1952. We went to the same high school and should have overlapped one year, but he pushed to graduate early in order to leave both the country and the hemisphere, to register for the draft. Turns out the ploy elected officials and the scions of industry used to keep their sons out of the draft was to have them living outside the Western Hemisphere. Anyone who was domiciled outside of this hemisphere when they registered, wound up permanently assigned to draft board #100, a board that had no call. It didn't matter what number a young man registered with board #100 had in the lottery. That draft board had no call.
It's a damned good thing LJ did that. The year he was eligible to be drafted his lottery number was 15. He would have been called. Only failing the physical would have kept him out of the service.
April 1, 1973 I turned 18, and dutifully registered for the draft. I figured I would leave for Canada if it came to it. It never did. On it's second time through Congress, the Case-Church amendment passed, ending the draft in the summer of 1973. Unless the administration succeeded in getting Congressional approval to continue the draft, no one else would be called.
The lotteries however continued until 1975. Men with low numbers found themselves summoned to present for physicals, in preparation for a resumption of the draft. I breathed a major sigh of relief March 20, 1974. The lottery gave my birth date #328. After years of seeing April 1 assigned low numbers, I finally felt home free. No matter what happened, I was free to get on with my life.
It's been decades since I thought about this. The war in Vietnam in many ways shaped my childhood, shaped the way I looked at the world, shaped the choices I made, and shaped the man I have become. When I registered for the draft, the war was still going on, and men were still being drafted. There was no guarantee I wouldn't be forced to leave school, to abandon my plans for my future, to face very difficult decisions. Frankly, I had forgotten that no one from my year actually got called. Case-Church failed its first time through Congress. The sense of dread and foreboding never dissipated for me until the afternoon I saw my lottery number. That no one had gotten called up in 9 months was not material. They were still making ready to do so, and could on short notice.
Vietnam had been a reality from amongst my earliest memories. I grew up watching Walter Cronkite on the evening news, recounting how many people had died that day in Vietnam. Actually, recounting how many American soldiers had died that day. There were estimates on the civilian casualties, as well as how many North Vietnamese had been killed. The numbers of American dead though were always a precise number, whether they were real or not. Those numbers made the war real for me. The war may have been on the other side of the world, but boys from my neighborhood had been called up and some of them had come home in boxes.
What triggered these memories was reading a piece my husband wrote recently, on how he had avoided the draft. LJ was born in February of 1952. We went to the same high school and should have overlapped one year, but he pushed to graduate early in order to leave both the country and the hemisphere, to register for the draft. Turns out the ploy elected officials and the scions of industry used to keep their sons out of the draft was to have them living outside the Western Hemisphere. Anyone who was domiciled outside of this hemisphere when they registered, wound up permanently assigned to draft board #100, a board that had no call. It didn't matter what number a young man registered with board #100 had in the lottery. That draft board had no call.
It's a damned good thing LJ did that. The year he was eligible to be drafted his lottery number was 15. He would have been called. Only failing the physical would have kept him out of the service.
April 1, 1973 I turned 18, and dutifully registered for the draft. I figured I would leave for Canada if it came to it. It never did. On it's second time through Congress, the Case-Church amendment passed, ending the draft in the summer of 1973. Unless the administration succeeded in getting Congressional approval to continue the draft, no one else would be called.
The lotteries however continued until 1975. Men with low numbers found themselves summoned to present for physicals, in preparation for a resumption of the draft. I breathed a major sigh of relief March 20, 1974. The lottery gave my birth date #328. After years of seeing April 1 assigned low numbers, I finally felt home free. No matter what happened, I was free to get on with my life.
It's been decades since I thought about this. The war in Vietnam in many ways shaped my childhood, shaped the way I looked at the world, shaped the choices I made, and shaped the man I have become. When I registered for the draft, the war was still going on, and men were still being drafted. There was no guarantee I wouldn't be forced to leave school, to abandon my plans for my future, to face very difficult decisions. Frankly, I had forgotten that no one from my year actually got called. Case-Church failed its first time through Congress. The sense of dread and foreboding never dissipated for me until the afternoon I saw my lottery number. That no one had gotten called up in 9 months was not material. They were still making ready to do so, and could on short notice.
