A famous article about how one person avoided being drafted during the Vietnam War is “What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?” by James Fallows (who I know slightly):
He was thin anyway, so he starved himself down to a weight just below the minimum weight for his height. Incidentally, the point of the article is that the people who got deferred for things like this were almost entirely guys who were from at least moderately well-off homes (or possibly guys from somewhat poorer homes who went to top colleges). The guys from poorer families didn’t understand how to use these tricks and got drafted.
i think that one standard didn’t exist across all the services or specialties.
a doctor told me that if you were a doctor that you could be drafted if you were blind in one eye and had a disease in the other. i have not verified of followed up on that claim.
For the second time, let’s not sidetrack this into a discussion of whether or not people who avoided the draft during the Vietnam War were or were not justified/cowards/etc. If you wish to comment on this, open a thread in GD.
Let me begin by pointing out that being openly gay in that era was a huge stigma. If you got rated 4F for beng gay, that could follow you for the rest of your life. Employers in those days often inquired aobut draft status and if you said you were 4f, they wanted to know why and (I assume) it was on some official paper that they might ask to see. (Just for the record, I avoided being called, first by a student deferment and then by an employment one, so I can’t provide any details.)
But I had two friends who, independently of each other, showed up for the physical not wearing underpants and failed the physical on that account. I don’t know what official reason was given, but in the late 50s, early 60s, there was no great demand for soldiers. One of them did it on purpose, while the other one claimed it was inadvertent. (Can you really forget to put on underpants?) The former didn’t say much except that he got deferred, but the second one described the scene. When they were told to strip to their underpants, he said he didn’t have any on and was told then to strip to his pants. So he was in this large hall, with hundreds of men stripped to underpants, while he was wearing pants. He stood out like such a sore thumb that they finally told him to leave.
This could not have been common or word would have spread, but there were two people whom I would describe as friends that it happened to. Whatever was on their 4F report couldn’t have been very complimentary.
Something I’ve never know about that era of the Draft is how men ended up in front line combat units; while the Army ratio nowadays is (I believe) somewhere between 4 and 5: 1 in terms of personel required to keep one combat soldier in the field, even if you were Drafted during Vietnam you presumably still had choices like cook or driver rather than rifleman?
I walk like a duck, my feet going out at impossible angles. Marching in formation, I would likely step on the toes of the man to my right and to my left. It got better, but it was bad. Bad in the sense of people pointing and laughing. When you’re 18, that’s bad.
Anyway, went through the physical, got to the very last part, where one guy walks along behind the line and checks for the presence of assholes, another walks along and looks at your feet. He stopped in front of me, gave me a look that said “Well, that’s a nice try but…”
So he told me to walk to the far wall and back, figuring that this would expose my ruse. So I did. He busted out laughing. He called a few of his buddies over and told me to do it again, and they all busted out laughing. After consultation, they all agreed it was the worse they’d ever seen, and marked in down as “moderate”. Meaning not “severe”. Meaning close, but no cigar.
Anyway, they consulted with the guy who gave me some mental therapy and he wrote them a letter to the effect that I was not good material for the adventures they had in mind. Something along the lines of “Sure, train him and he’ll shoot somebody, but I won’t guarantee who…”
Wherever you are, Dr. Weiss, may the Goddess hold you close to Her bountiful bosom all the days of your life, amen.
My cousin J.W. (for John Wesley, not to be confused with my cousin John W., for John Wesley…you’d have to be a Texas Methodist, pretty much…) wanted nothing more than to join the Army and get a license to shoot somebody. He was right out of the *Alices’ Restaraunt *lyric about "blood and gore and veins in my teeth. Volunteered for combat duty, several times, thinking that redundancy was a plus.
Anyway, he got straight A’s in high school typing class, totally a whiz, banging out 80 words a minute. (Never understood that, couldn’t read, could type. Go figger…)
They wouldn’t let him. Sure, they sent him to Viet Nam, and he spent the whole tour typing requisitions in Saigon.
I was classified as 1-Y for being gay, not 4-F, and as far as I know no employer ever snooped into my draft record. But I was out anyway, so it wouldn’t have mattered.
if you were drafted you had no choices i understand.
some people did enlist to avoid the draft. you could enlist in a branch that had less combat risk. if you enlisted you would be able to give nonbinding choices as to location of service or specialty and often get one choice honored.
A guy that I was dating had to go in for his physical. He had a bad back that needed to be a little worse than it was. So he spent some time carrying me around over his shoulder and down his back like a sack of potatoes. Worked like a charm.
He took me out for Chateaubriand that night. Those were the days!
I knew a guy who was drafted so he went right down and joined the Air Force. He spent his tour working on the radios of underground missile silos in the US.
He had an officer pull a gun on him because he wasn’t following the standard test procedure one day - it was normal to skip a few steps. They quickly transferred that officer out. They didn’t want unstable guys in a silo.
These boards are already set up. generally one in every county. They exist, have appointed members & a chair, and whenever a vacancy occurs, a replacement member is appointed by the governor of the state.
They are not actively doing anything right now, and don’t even meet very often. But they are set up, and ready to go. They would have to be *activated * by the national Selective Service board, which would happen after Congress passes & the President signs a bill authorizing an actual draft.
My dad did it as a volunteer for a few years, there was either no pay or the honorarium was very insignificant. I would hazard a guess that it turns into a paying job if they go active. They played poker when they met.
