I turned 20 in 1968. I wasn’t very politically aware and I didn’t get involved in demonstrations or anything. I didn’t really understand much about what was going on. The country was not inundated with news and punditry 24/7 the way we are now. That really started with CNN during the first Gulf War around 1990. Not that one couldn’t be well-informed, but one had to make a point of it. I didn’t.
The boys I knew who were eligible for the draft were scrambling like heck to avoid it-- a lot of them entered the seminary. Only one that I know of actually became a priest. I had friends who were active protesters. I knew a woman who had gone to Canada to help draft avoiders. My father was career military and thought draft “dodgers” were criminals. He thought the Kent State killings were justified. Obviously the country became polarized over this-- it led to Lyndon Johnson’s resignation from a job he had wanted all his life.
My late husband was nine years older than I, so he was still part of the generation that felt it was honorable to serve in the military. He was in ROTC and then went to Vietnam as an officer and a Medivac helicopter pilot ("Dustoff’) in 1966-67. Back then, they just served one tour. While there he was exposed to Agent Orange and developed type 1 diabetes, which eventually led to a kidney transplant and a host of other things that eventually killed him 30 years later. And yeah, when he came back he was indeed called a “baby killer,” even though he was never a combatant, and in fact, performed over 1,000 rescues of soldiers, Americans, and Vietnamese (even the enemy if injured).
Trying to avoid the draft legitimately was not condemned by most people. Clinton’s Rhodes Scholar venture and G.W. Bush’s National Guard service would have been seen as definitely okay and not as something shameful.
It was only after the country shifted back to valuing military service in the early 1990s that in retrospect, avoiding the draft was seen as cowardly and shirking duty. It wasn’t in the 1960s and 70s. You can argue with me if you want to, but I was there, and this is what it looked like from my corner of the world.
It was in the early 1990s that the Vietnam vets started crawling out from the shadows and accepting the thanks and recognition that had been denied them for 30+ years. It was only then that my husband started talking about some of his experiences.
FTR, I do not feel slighted because the original poll did not make a point of including women. The draftees were men. We girls (and I WAS a girl then) did not have to sweat bullets, as it were, over our draft numbers like our boyfriends did. <ThelmaLou hands out chill pills.>
I’m feeling quite emotional as I write this post, and may not be expressing myself well. Apologies.