I was the one that referred to the Draft during Vietnam as a death sentence. Now we can quibble about the semantics of exactly what a death sentence is. Certainly, being drafted was not an absolute guarantee of death. But knowing the odds were astronomically higher than normal that a draftee would be killed, it FELT like a death sentence. Especially with the Johnson administration’s stated goal of a War by Attrition. To stand back and analyze it, isolated from any effect of it, is one thing. To live in it, it becomes another.
We can hypothesize that if I point a gun at you, there is only a 50% chance that you’ll die. (Either I shoot or I don’t.) That means there is also an equal 50% chance that you’ll live without any harm. Sounds real good in hypotheticals. Now let’s see you analyze it in person with that muzzle in your face. Sure seems like a death sentence, even if the trigger hasn’t been pulled yet.
According to the ‘secret’ family story, my brother’s soon-to-be-father-in-law managed to pull strings to get him into the National Guard in order to avoid the draft. He wound up in Vancouver, BC. His number was 192.
I wasn’t born until 1967, but I would have been 145.
Are we nit-picking semantics or even drama? If it felt like a death sentence, real or only perceived, what’s wrong with it feeling like a miracle of the lottery to be alive today, real or only perceived? I’ve been shot, stabbed, sliced, taken prisoner, held hostage, tortured, and beaten up on numerous occasions, and even suffered two separate heart attacks. So if I feel it’s a miracle to be alive because the house I sold a couple months ago got flattened by a tornado last night, I still feel lucky.
All those circumstances work in a peculiar way called Fate and no one can say that one incident in a long chain was NOT responsible.
A lot of us tried to join the Guard, for the express purpose of avoiding the draft. For that reason, they always made their quota, so a lot of guys got rejected just for being too late. Others joined the Air Force. Same story, and same for Coast Guard, as well. Navy, too, for that matter. Toward the end, there was the student or college deferral. I had one teacher who openly admitted that his primary reason for becoming a teacher was to keep from being drafted.
I really didn’t, nor don’t, care what someone reasons were for avoiding the draft or how they chose to do it. Clinton took the college deferment. Bush was able to get into the Guard. Hell, if MY number had been lower, I’d have just enlisted in the Navy earlier. I don’t even fault the guys who ran to Canada. Everyone has to make his own decision. I did disagree with the amnesty for them to come back. They made a conscious decision to reject their citizenship, which I respect. For them to renege on it shows a lack of integrity, but hey, it was out of my hands.
There was no “dishonor” in joining the National Guard, for whatever personal reasons it may have been.
My lottery number was 107. Fortunately for me, my draft board had a large population of men who either volunteered or couldn’t get a deferment, so I was never called. Three of my friends had lottery numbers below 25 – two of them made it through with student deferments; the other one lost his deferment, had some relatives pull strings to get him into the National Guard, and ended up still pulling Guard duty two years after the Paris Peace Accord had been signed. Nevertheless, he was convinced he got the better end of the deal.
First year of eligibility, if I were of age, I was toast. My number was under 50.
I took a look at all of the years they ran the draft, and I would have been taken in half of them. Life is truly a random event.
I remember listening to the radio that December 1st when they announced the numbers one by one. Being a 14 y/o girl at the time I wasn’t fazed by being #109. I was fazed about having 2 of my favorite teachers getting pulled out of class to be drafted.
I’ve lived in Israel for 29 of my 36 years, so yeah, I was here when I was 18.
I went. It’s a different experience than the U.S. draft was - you have years to prepare, and all your friends are also going in, so it feels like the normal thing to do.
And I was number 123 for that year. I was a freshman in college and had a deferment but dropped out after my sophomore year. I was then given a 1-H classification (holding) but the war and draft were winding down by then.
By the time the lottery came around, people my age had already mostly been drafted, unless they were exempted. Not me, I was in Canada. In 1970, my number wold have been in the 300s, but I never bothered to find out.