This just in. Film at eleven.
Could you really get out of the draft with just a note from your own doctor? That seems like it would make draft-dodging trivial, surely there were enough anti-war doctors that you could just find one to give you a note, rather than have to go hide out in Canada or cut off a toe or whatever.
Well, I had a note from my doctor saying I had asthma (and some other stuff that they weren’t interested in). When I went to the SSS physical I gave the note to a doctor, who asked me for more details (how bad was it, when was my last attack, and so on). He took my word for those details and I ended up 1-Y (one step above 4-F) until that designation was discontinued and I was switched to 4-F. My physical was in 1967.
So he presumably had to go to a physical with that note, but the doctor may have just taken his word for how bad it was.
“Hey Paul, you’re on the draft board, right? Good. Listen, I got this friend named Trump, his son Donnie’s going to appear before you next Wednesday. He has a doctor’s note, something with his leg. Give him a deferral, will you? Smart kid like that shouldn’t go to Vietnam. Can you do that? Great. I owe you one.”
“I’m the real war hero! They’re just considered war heroes because they went to war! I like people who weren’t drafted!”
Yeah, so far as memory goes, his story is plausible. He’s seventy? So, he turned 18 and a half late '64? The shitpot hadn’t come to a full boil by that time, they didn’t need so many yet. Kinda what the 1-Y designation was about: set aside for now, call when they really have to.
I walk like a duck, marching in formation, I step on the toes of the guys to my right and left. So, 1-Y.
So, yeah, I can buy it.
And that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. That’s also how connect young men joined champagne units.
Wow! Didn’t know or had forgotten about the other guys in GeeDubs Air Guard unit.
He sure wasn’t ever drafted, but the guy just got him self a Purple Heart. He said he always wanted one. I don’t know. I kind of wish he had a real one too.
Sure, maybe him being drafted might have been more just. But who wants to be the guy has Donald Trump watching his back?
I think there may have been some friendly fire in that case.
Dispatch: Lt. Milo Minderbinder was killed in action today in Italy. An autopsy revealed wounds from a .50 caliber machine gun, a .30 caliber machine gun, a .45 caliber submachine gun, a .45 caliber pistol, a .30 caliber rifle and a bayonet. Citations for bravery under fire are pending…"
I went to my local draft board office when I turned 18 and registered (in 1970). At some point after that I got a letter from them with a form that said that if I had a medical reason for being deferred I should get a doctor to attest to it. I went to my family doctor and had him measure my height. He put down (correctly) that I’m just under 4’11" and mailed the form to the draft board. Soon I got a letter from them saying that I had been rated 1-Y (which meant that for the moment they didn’t want me). A year or so later they changed the rating to 4-F, so I was permanently deferred.
While waiting to see the doctor, the note allowed him to study what the problem was, and in which heel.
Me too. And who the hell would expect him to remember the name of the doctor after all these years? Or be able to produce a copy of the letter?
There are a million and one legitimate and hopefully effective ways to attack Trump’s suitability for the presidency. This particular issue ranks extremely low on the list.
Well, first he got 4 deferments for college and his 5th and final deferment in 1968 was for the bone spurs. The shitpot was pretty steaming by then.
But if the draft issue didn’t really put a dent in Bill Clinton (or Dubya’s choice of Dick Cheney as VP in 2000), it almost certainly won’t with Trump, even if he is the most militaristic person that he knows. Just as in '92, the biggest issue for a significant number of Trump supporters and undecideds will be the economy.
I assume the letter was provided by his trusted family physician, Dr. John Miller.
It’s not like Donald didn’t experience his own Viet Nam:
I don’t particularly care that he avoided the draft. But “a very strong letter on the heels”? The hell? He has to shoehorn the word “strong” into every goddamned thing he says. A strong letter about how badly hobbled he was? He fetishizes “strength” so thoroughly that in his mind a letter telling the draft board he’s too unwell to fight is somehow “strong”.
FTR, here’s the letter a 23 year old Bill Clinton wrote from Oxford, UK about his draft deferment to Col. Eugene Holmes, director of the Reserve Officers Training Corps program at the University of Arkansas.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/clinton/etc/draftletter.html
An interview with ABC News’ Ted Koppel follows in the link. Koppel: [INDENT][INDENT]Before this broadcast is over tonight, I will have read to you the entire text of a 22 - year - old letter which was written by a 23 - year - old Bill Clinton. It is, as Governor Clinton himself described it today, the account of a conflicted and thoughtful young man. It is quite a remarkable letter, actually, eloquent and revealing. Many of you will hear it and find in it a reaffirmation of everything you like and admire about Bill Clinton. Others among you will be angered by what you hear. It is safe to assume that those who leaked the letter to us at Nightline and to our colleagues at World News Tonight did not do so in the expectation, however, that this letter would help the Clinton campaign. As the governor noted earlier in the day, presidential politics is a contact sport. Having said that, it is also clear that the Clinton campaign feels that the leaking of the letter just days before the New Hampshire primary is a low blow. [/INDENT][/INDENT]