Thursday morning Sept. 5, 1968, my mother, sister and brother
dropped me off at the Greyhound Bus station in Tacoma, my hometown. There were a few tears and shared worries
about my safety. The local draft board had ordered me to catch the bus to Seattle that day and prepare
for induction into the Army. The draft,
implemented at the beginning of World War II, was still going strong more than
25 years later to feed yet another war.
About 50 men boarded the bus.
I knew none of them; almost all were younger than I was. At 23 going on 24, I had run out of student
deferments. Draft calls had increased that fall because of the rather embarrassing reversal American forces had suffered in the Tet Offensive earlier that year. The bus took us to the Seattle
YMCA. They fed us a brown bag dinner and bedded down us for the night in a room full of
triple-decker bunk beds. This was long
before cell phones; there was a long line to use two pay phones. I sat by myself and read the Seattle Times.
The lights came on at 5:30 a.m.
Somebody bellowed a command that I soon came to hear frequently: “Gentlemen, you have 20 minutes to shit,
shower and shave.” We did what we were
told. They fed us some watery scrambled
eggs and bread, then herded us down to the induction center. A couple of hippies were outside handing out
draft resistance literature and urging us not to go in. We ignored them.
The 50 of us from Tacoma joined another 200 or so men from other
parts of Puget Sound. We sat on folding
metal chairs holding our precious paper work, waiting our turns. We were not allowed to have magazines or newspapers. That was a real hardship for a wonky aspiring journalist. A loud speaker called out names. Sometimes I could make out what was said,
other times I couldn’t. There was nothing to eat but Tootsie Rolls donated by
the Red Cross.
To fill the hours, there was lots of small talk among us. Some
were high school dropouts, others had failed to keep a C average in college and
therefore lost their deferments. Some
had no job. A few had children but weren’t
married — a small step that actually might have got them excused. Others had been ordered there by a
judge to avoid jail time. Only one other
guy had a college degree, as I did. Earlier in the summer, he tried frantically to join the Navy to avoid the Army, but Navy and Air Force
enlistments were closed at the time.
I was poor military material and I knew it; too old, too educated, too sedentary. I had no interest in volunteering for anything; I just wanted to get it over with. I opposed the Vietnam War but despite my anguish I did feel obliged to serve if called. Not for some big, flag-waving, love-it-or-leave-it reason but because I loved my family and wanted the chance to come home and do what I loved to do. Unlike some I knew, I didn’t go to Canada to avoid the draft and I
wasn’t rich enough or well connected enough to pull strings or buy my way out —
as so many did.
Finally, after about six hours, I was called into a small room
with five others. We stripped and were
examined. I was asked if I had ever been
convicted of a crime, was or ever had been a member of the communist party or had homosexual
tendencies. I answered no to the first
two and lied about the third. One medical
examiner thought the high arches on my feet ought to disqualify me, but I could
tell he was under a lot of pressure not to reject very many of us. In the end, I was deemed good enough for the Army.
Of the 50 of us from Tacoma, only seven were inducted that day. Quite a few were excused because of their outstanding warrants for
anything from unpaid child support to parking tickets. Others were excused after showing doctors’
letters mentioning everything from psoriasis to excessive ear wax. One man had a fever that day and was excused;
he later whispered that he caused the fever by holding bars of soap under his
armpits for several hours that morning. To this day I don’t know if that was possible.
That afternoon we few, healthy and without an excuse were
herded on a bus and taken to Fort Lewis to undergo basic training. And so my adventure as a reluctant soldier
began. In hindsight, I don’t regret it. Today, I'm proud I did it, came home and have lived a successful life.
But I wholeheartedly agree
with Sen. John McCain, a true war hero veteran, who recently said that if this nation ever again demands that everyone should serve, then everyone must serve.
No excuses.
