I can speak about this from first-hand experience. With the draft breathing down my neck, I enlisted, was guaranteed service in the band, which I was qualified for, but I had to sign on for an extra year to get it (draftees got 2 years, enlistees signed for 3).
Then, in basic, they asked if anyone played an instrument, fall out and report to the band compound, but for me it was too late. If I had known all you had to do to get easy band duty was answer yes to this question, I wouldn’t have wasted a whole year of sign-up.
And whether the duty was constant marching up and down or not depended entirely on the particular unit you served in. Example: There were two army bands in the San Francisco area, the 6th Army Band and the lesser 22nd. the 6th Band practiced every day and was considered the spit & polish unit, used whenever the Army wanted to show off at parades or official functions.
In contrast, the 22nd got the leftover gigs like boy scout jamborees, was much more lax in the spit & polish department, and practiced marching only when the Old Man got drunk and wanted to punish us. Most of the time it was such light duty that many of us had second jobs even while on duty, or took frequent 3-day passes.
First of all you would be a criminal fugitive at that point, the only place you could run would be the cities where you could try to scrape by under the table.
Also it was a different time and the stigma of drug use or being gay or mentally ill were WAY different than today, if someone heard through the grapevine you got out for any of those reasons you’re going to be shunned a lot. *I don’t even know if it is a proper equivalent but imagine if you are a straight male that the first hit for your name on google leads to a video that indisputably shows you in a gay porn, everyone in your circle of friends and family knows about its existence and seen it. Everyone you meet shortly sees it and no woman finds it intriguing like now:eek:
Good points. However, I see it as inevitable that you are going to be in a war at that point- your only choice is whether to fight for your oppressors (the army, the employer generation), or against them. I wonder if bringing back the draft today could backfire to the extent of causing another civil war?
Because most people grew with parents from the WWII generation and you did your duty when you were called. Few had a clue in 1960-1970 or so that Vietnam was going to turn into the giant political clusterfuck and bloodbath that it became. When we either joined or were drafted, we went under the notion that while it was inconvenient, it was what our country was asking of us. Admittedly, by joining the Navy, I was trying to stay off the ground in Vietnam. As a Seabee, I ended up there anyway. :smack: But it didn’t occur to me to try to avoid service or to try to get out under some pretense.
Back then, who woulda thunk that the entire population would soon turn gay, be mentally ill with neurotic bipolar and generalized anxiety disorder, strung out on meth and require anti-depressants to live ??!!
That is exactly what I said, not that attitudes have changed over half a century and softened considerably. On second thought my humor detector might be on the fritz.
I doubt my attitude toward those who fled to Canada, or otherwise dodged the draft, will ever change. Can’t be proven one way or another, but my personal opinion is that the overwhelming majority that ran did it out of selfishness or cowardice rather than some deep personal philosophical conflict with the concept of war.
The Viet Nam War, or perhaps the way it was prosecuted, didn’t do anyone any good. Far from it. This is apparent in hindsight. However, at the time it felt different. I wasn’t thrilled about being drafted, but the thought of running away never once crossed my mnd.
I anticipate this perspective will be met with something less than 100% agreement.
In the military sf satire Bill, the Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison, the drill sergeant asks on the first day of boot camp, “Is there anyone here who can fly an air car?” When two guys raise their hands, hoping for light duty, they’re immediately assigned to scrub the latrines.
I served as a judge advocate officer at a large Midwestern basic and advanced individual training base for 18 months in 1968 and 1969, pretty much the height of the war in Vietnam. One of my duties was to review administrative discharges. I suppose two or three of them came across my desk every day. The unfitness cases were almost always involved severe psychological problems or enuresis (bed wetting). The unsuitability cases, without exception, featured two or three incidents of non-judicial punishment for disobedience of or disrespect to an NCO or multiple AWOLs, a psychological diagnoses as passive aggressive and entry under the 100,000 program (which meant below standard intelligence) and a recycling. In short, when Uncle Sam wanted bodies he wasn’t going to let any go for petty reasons. The only slack Uncle cut was that the unfitness people usually got a general discharge, the unsuitability people almost always got an undesirable (not the same thing as a dishonorable discharge – that can only come from a general court martial).
My father tried to enlist the day after Pearl Harbor. He was rejected because of a heart murmur (which he didn’t know he had.) He figured that since he’d been rejected, he certainly wouldn’t be drafted, so he got married. Nine months later his heart murmur had magically disappeared and he went off to the Army leaving his now-pregnant wife to fend for herself for the duration.
When I went through basic during the Vietnam war, guys who couldn’t meet the physical standards weren’t just recycled, they were put in a special unit that had a restricted diet and did all kinds of extra physical exercise.
And this relates to pre-induction rather than basic, but there’s a chapter in “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman” about how one of the smartest men in the country was ruled psychologically unfit for service during WW II. He wasn’t crazy and he wasn’t trying to get out of serving, he just gave honest answers to the questions they asked him.
I looked at it like that for many years. On reflection, not wanting to die or to have to kill anybody falls more into the category of common sense, rather than cowardice. If people were being called up to defend our homeland, and ran away, I would maybe be more apt to refer to them as cowards. Not everyone can buck up, knowing that the next bullet may have his name on it. In fact, I’d say most people fall into that category when the shit starts flying. But some can’t even deal with the notion on a conceptual level, let alone the reality. I’m afraid of drowning, and I don’t go on the water, but I don’t consider myself a coward.
My grandfather, who was a Korean War veteran, always said that when it came time to learn shooting he would deliberately shoot at the target one over. He got sent to the Army Corps of Engineers and spent the whole war building air fields in Korea.
My dad was 4-f due to full-blown polio as a child. He was the perfect age for Korea and might well have ended up there. But he told me how he had to report to some doctor to confirm hs status. He looked perfectly fit apart from being skinny. But he’s never been able to raise his left arm higher than shoulder height which is a double hit since he’s left handed.
So he got on the army bus with the other 4-fs and he said it was like stepping into the freak show. Guys with all sorts of disabilities, mental and physical were in there and I think he was embarassed to be on the bus. I wonder if that was done intentionally by the army, a sort of parade of shame for any potential dodgers. He told me The 4-fs were chilling in the bar next to the exam station while they waited for the load to be processed and their turn to come. There was one guy in his mid-20’s who looked exactly like a 13 year old boy, but even smaller. The bartender carded him every single time.