I'm old enough to remember the Vietnam War, and the draft that went along with it. For about a year or so there was a time where I was eligible. By then they'd been showing the war every night on the evening news for several years.
It was gruesome but they showed it every night. As if it weren't bad enough to have to watch it every day, by the simple luck of the draw you could be drafted straight into that motherfucker.
By high school I was already well-established as a fairly fearless person, and yet the draft scared the shit out of me. I'd jumped the family Buick at well over 100mph over a famous jump on Brookwood Road that had previously killed not one but two people in failed attempts, and yet every night when the draft came on TV, I got all knotted-up.
It's a surreal memory, and one that my brain has kindly allowed me to almost forget, and I really don't know what made it pop into my head now...maybe it's the talk of war or whatever, but the sheer intensity of the experience was the thing. It was almost like if your numbers came up out of the barrel, they'd snatch you up right through the TV, throw on a uniform and hand you a gun and say "SHOOT!" It was Bullshit Bingo. Your ass was riding on the numbers in that barrel.
With a quick search I can't find a confirmed estimate of what someone's chances of being drafted were, but some say less than 5%. That's still high enough in my book for something like that. According to military.com, numbers between 1 and 366 were assigned depending on birthdate, and lowest numbers were called first.
That doesn't sound like a lot of numbers, and it doesn't explain the whole process, but it doesn't matter and I don't care to dig into it more. The point is that you very well could be called, depending on the roll of the barrel. Speaking of, it looks like a barrel full of potatoes, but they're capsules containing numbers. No matter what or whom we were doing, we high-school seniors stopped whatever it was when the draft came on.
Granted some of were gung-ho about it, and were planning to go into service anyway, and we thank them for their service. Some were in ROTC and were ready to go anyway. But for most of us it was a nightmare. We didn't want to go anywhere near Vietnam. It was bad enough seeing it on the tube. By then most people were tired of a war that they thought was bullshit to begin with, but it was still going.
This iconic poster came out as a result of the war, and back then it was everywhere. It certainly holds true today, except that it should read: "War is not healthy for children and other living things, except for the military-industrial complex, the arms manufacturers, the elite banking families and them." That's what it should say.
Of course we looked into the options of avoiding the draft, or if drafted, how to avoid actually going. There was the option of going to college, although I can't remember if that was really foolproof. I don't think so. Going into the priesthood or certain religious exemptions might've worked for some but I'm not sure what the stats were. If I'm not mistaken, Cassius Clay got out of it.
Preemptive-enlisting was an option, with the hope that you might see service elsewhere or at least not the front lines, but that was rolling the dice. Splitting to Canada was an option for many, and considered by everybody. I did love maple syrup but not enough to move to fucking Canada.
I don't remember what the penalties were for fleeing to Canada but they were pretty severe as I recall, and I've always wondered if there's still an aging community of draft-dodging ex-pats living somewhere up there. It certainly crossed my mind, but I'd think "FUCK...moving to fucking Canada?" Leaving friends and family didn't seem like an option. Back then it was still okay to love your country, and to most people it was a huge dishonor to run away.
We weren't a bunch of pussies either. We just didn't want to potentially die because someone told us we had some enemy we didn't know shit about a few years earlier, and who weren't directly fucking with us. My views on the matter were basically how difficult it'd be for me to have to shoot someone who wasn't my enemy personally, and someone I might otherwise have sat down and had a cup of tea with, and maybe discover a mutual interest in music or whatever. It just made no sense to most of us.
We'd seen people who'd fought in Vietnam and come back. Some of them seemed about the same as before they went, but lots of them were fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked-up. They were either totally "shell-shocked" as some still called it back then, or were addicted to dope, or both. It turns out they pretty much got all the drugs they wanted for free while they were there, but that wasn't the case back home, where drugs cost money. They were fucked, and treated badly by a good bit of the public. We didn't want any part of that shit.
Although I was a conscientious objector in the genuine sense of the term, in that it would be truly difficult for me to hurt anyone, there was also a big part of me that was resolved to just go, and put my faith in God, if I were drafted. My dad was in the Army and served in Korea although he didn't see any front-line action, and he'd have been disappointed if I'd split to Canada. It was considered a disgrace among many people, but the only option by some.
I played army as a kid and I learned to shoot a real gun at age five and I love to shoot targets, but people would be a different story. We knew they did all that shit to whip you up into a frenzy and convince you that these people were your enemy, not to mention all the free dope to get you all jacked and pain-free and to where you don't give a fuck and just want to blast some shit, and none of us had any desire to go through that either. It just didn't compute. People made posters, and chanted "HELL NO, WE WON'T GO!"
Although it's not a memory I'll cherish, I'll never forget the "five minutes of fear" every night, and the whole world stopping for it. I can't say what I'd have done, but I'm pretty sure I'd have gone if I'd been called. I'd have certainly told them about my feelings on the matter, and that I wouldn't want to put other lives at risk if I hesitated or whatever, and I'd just have to hope that'd do the trick.
If someone were coming down my street with the intent to shoot me then hell yeah I'd blast them in a heartbeat, but Vietnam wasn't that. Back then I had a mild case of flat feet, which was sometimes an exemption, but not always, if I'm not mistaken. We weighed all the options, and the best thing was to just hope and pray that you didn't get called.
"Please God...please God..." I prayed as hard as I've ever prayed in my life. I remember the barrel turning, and feeling my stomach tumble around in it. Look at that stoic-ass motherfucker cranking the handle...basically with our balls tumbling around inside that thing...there's no amount of money you could've paid me to have that job. I'm almost surprised he didn't wear a hood, but that would reveal the true nature of war.
Boy, the draft was surely a fork in the road I'm glad I didn't have to take. Maybe I could've gotten a gig in the military band or something. I'm glad my number never came up, possibly in more ways than one. I dodged a bullet as it were. Remember...war is not healthy for children and other living things. Have a nice day.
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