I registered in 1974. There was no chance of being called up by then. I registered as a CO. Others told me they would find non-combat positions for COs if possible, but there were a lot of people claiming that status then. If you weren’t a Quaker or Amish, there wasn’t much chance of maintaining CO status. There were plenty of non-combat assignments available, but draftees went to the front of the line for combat duty. A friend who enlisted with the Navy claimed that he would volunteer for duty in Vietnam every year, and that it was the best way to avoid being sent there.
I got drafted in 1960 or 61. I was 18 and got lucky because it was between wars. . They found I had rheumatic fever twice and had 2 punctured eardrums. I was rated !Y. When Nam came up I never got called up or re-rated.
So why do they still do Selective Service now, and why don’t they make women sign up for it now if it’s so all-fired important?
My lottery number was in the 200’s . . . fairly safe, but I still had to show up for the physical. I knew they were going to ask us about sexual orientation, so I wore a tight wide-striped t-shirt, skin-tight white jeans and penny loafers. This was the stereotypical gay outfit at that time. I also made an effort to act as “femme” as possible. I had to fill out a questionnaire, and there was the gay question. I remember my hand shaking as I checked the little box. Though I had been out for a few years, there was a feeling of anxiety about coming out to the government (homosexual activity was still illegal in most states). When they looked at my questionnaire, I got sent to a little room that contained a middle-aged man behind a large desk. He asked me a lot of questions about my sexual behavior (How often did I have sex, where did I meet guys, did I go to bars, did I have any feelings toward women, etc.) I answered all the questions truthfully . . . except that I exaggerated how often I had sex. I must have looked and sounded very convincing, because I was classified 1Y, which meant I’d get drafted only if everyone else had been killed.
I know there were a lot of straight guys who claimed to be gay, but they flunked the interview.
just in case. life is not fair.
Thanks for the refresher on the facts. In my case I went straight from high school to college & ROTC, so the SSS or the then-nonexistent draft weren’t much on my mind.
Because the law says they have to do it. Now as to why Congress hasn’t updated the laws …
“which meant I’d get drafted only if everyone else had been killed.”
A lot were.
The (mostly male) head honchos in the military don’t WANT a lot of women in the military. They’d prefer to keep women out of the military altogether, except in traditionally female roles, such as secretaries, nurses, etc.
I was 17 when Registration was reinstated. Reagan would soon be elected and we were all scared that he was going to start some shit and we’d go to war. I just went down to the post office on my 18th birthday and filled out a little post card and that was the last that I ever heard about it.
I work with a guy who was born in the year and a half window that didn’t have to register. He went to school later in life and had a hell of a time trying to convince the financial aid people that he didn’t have a registration number and didn’t need one.
BTW, it wasn’t just people with connections who got into the Guard during the Viet Nam era although that rumor was prevalent even then. A good friend of mine was drafted late in the Viet Nam era. He drew a low lottery number and, due to a misunderstanding, didn’t have enough college units to put off Induction. Everyone told him that he wouldn’t possibly be able to get into the Guard in town and that he might have to drive hundreds of miles to find a spot. He went into the Santa Barbara Guard station anyway and asked if he could join. Five minutes later he signed his papers. The Guard is a six year commitment. He was still in the Army for years after the War was over.
My Dad avoided Korea because he worked as an engineer for a defense contractor.
Shortly after I signed up for the draft, I received a letter saying that if I thought there was any physical reason that I would be turned down, I should get a doctor to send in a form that was enclosed with the reason. I went to my family doctor and had him measure my height. He sent in the form saying that I was under 5’. I soon got a letter from the draft board classifying me as 1Y. Later I got a letter reclassifying me as 4F.
Perhaps the most famous article about the inequity in the draft for different social classes is “What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?” by James Fallows:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0911.fallows.html
(Full disclosure: I know Jim a little.)
Fallows talks about how the college students that he knew (and especially the ones at elite colleges) had been prepped beforehand by other students on the most likely things that would get you a medical deferment. Fallows was thin anyway, so before his physical he starved himself down to below the minimum weight for his height and thus got his deferment. The high school graduates (who were from less well off families) who were reporting for their physicals at the same time didn’t know of these techniques for avoiding the draft, so many more of them got drafted.
I recall reading in Ramparts magazine in the early 1970’s about someone who did his CO service in the Marines. He thinks that he may be the only one ever to do that. The rule was that CO’s did their service elsewhere, but some mistake was made that sent him to the Marines.
I have a rough hypothesis here that many of those who saw combat in 1942-1945 had a sense of the madness of war & a willingness to support draft evasion in a case where the USA was after all not under attack itself. Or perhaps it was a sense even in the USA that the war was one of US aggression.
It seems like the generation that came out of that split into anti-war draft avoiders (some of whom paid a high price & second-guessed themselves), hardline jingoists, & then jingoist draft dodgers (“chicken hawks”) like Gingrich, W Bush, etc.
What am I missing in this picture?
While that statement has “conspiracy theory” all over it, I suspect there is some truth to it.
I was drafted before the lottery plan was implemented. At that time, you were subject to a local board that was given a quota, then they decided which names to call in their district. It was common knowledge (but may not have been correct) that some boards had more pressure on them to cough up names; boards that had higher-income neighborhoods were thought to be more liberal with deferments.
I will never forget the local businessman who signed my draft notice, Scott Player, an insurance man. AFAIK, he never served in the service, but sent many of his junior neighbors to their deaths for no earthly purpose whatsoever.
That quote was mine, by the way; SanDiegoTim just quoted it using quotation marks instead of quote tags.
This was, at any rate, the common wisdom at the time, and one of the planks of the anti-war movement, i.e. that the draft was unfairly applied to the poor and non-white (two overlapping groups, need I add). Nothing conspiratorial about it, just the way the system was said to work.
Roddy
Why is that? Did they just want a lot of young men to use as cannon fodder? I’ve read somewhere that women make up about 15% of all military personnel. If women weren’t in, then the draft would still be present. Is this true?
How were local draft boards selected? Was it like jury duty with additional criteria for selection? What a huge responsibility! Are there accounts out there, true-to-life or fictional but close to accurate, that could provide a reasonable depiction of how things played out behind the scenes on a draft board, like “12 Angry Men” did for juries?
Congress reinstituted Selective Service registration in mid-1980 at President Carter’s request, in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan eight months earlier. It was part of the overall cooling of U.S.-Soviet relations, relations that got positively arctic with the election of Reagan later that year. The law at the time only required males to register. Although Carter had recommended that the draft be extended to include women, Congress didn’t go along, and the Supreme Court said that was cool: Rostker v. Goldberg - Wikipedia
I was in high school at the time and was one of those who filled out a postcard to register; I didn’t lose any sleep over the prospect of actually being drafted. I knew even then that it was very, very unlikely.
Some have mentioned the various classifications. Here’s a partial list:
I = Available for service
I-A - Available for combat service
I-A-O - Available for noncombatant service
I-B - Available; fit only for limited military service
I-B-O - Conscientious objectors available for limited service
I-C - Members of the active armed forces, or commissioned officers in Environmental Science Service Administration or Public Health Service
I-D - Students fit for general military service
I-E - Students fit for limited military service
I-H - Men deferred by reason of age
I-O - Available for civilian work assignment
I-S - Deferment for students
I-W - “At Work” conscientious objectors (these were I-O classifications who had a work assignment)
I-Y - Unqualified for duty except in time of declared war or national emergency
II = Deferred because of occupational status
II-A - Occupational deferment because of essential employment, or deferred to full-time study in a trade school, community or junior college, or approved apprenticeship program
II-B - Men necessary to national defense
II-C - Agricultural deferment
II-D - Deferment for members of military reserve units, or students taking advanced ROTC
II-S - Deferment for college students
III = Deferred because of dependents
III-A - Men with dependents, not engaged in work essential to national defense
III-B - Men with dependents, engaged in work essential to national defense
IV = Deferred specifically by law or because unfit for military service
IV-A - Men who had completed service. Also sole survivng sons in a family where the father and/or other brothers in the family who died in military service.
IV-B - Officials deferred by law
IV-C - Nondeclarant aliens
IV-D - Ministers of religion or divinity students
IV-E - Conscientious objectors available only for civilian work of national importance
IV-E-LS - Conscientious objectors available for limited civilian work of national importance
IV-E-H - Men formerly classified in IV-E or IV-E-LS, since deferred by reason of age
IV-F - Men physically, mentally or morally unfit
other various classifications
V-A - Over-age
1-A - Available immediately for military service
1-O - Conscientious objectors opposed to both combatant & noncombatant military training & service
1-A-O - Conscientious objectors opposed to training & military service requiring the use of arms
2-D - Ministerial students
3-A - Hardship deferment
4-C - Alien or dual national
4-D - Ministers of religion
These classifications are range from 1917 to 2002.
If you want you can play Vietnam War Draft: The Home Version
Here’s a list of what the numbers were for the draft lotteries of 1969 to 1972. You can look up your birthdate and see what your numbers would have been.