Posted on 01/01/2014 10:27:22 AM PST by 1raider1
Today is the day the Syfy channel has it's annual Twilight Zone marathon. I just watched the 1963 episode "In Praise Of Pip", which has the Vietnam war as its background. I got to thinking of those times (I was 13 then) and the fact that I knew several guys of draft age that got MARRIED pretty much to get out of going over there because they weren't taking married men then. I can't remember anyone who thought that getting married to avoid the draft was a particularly bad idea back then. Weird huh?
Different era, but dad was draft age during WWII and tried to enlist in the navy. He was deaf in one ear since childhood and was classified 4F. Come 1950 he got drafted into the army. Was married at the time. Ended up serving at Ft. Benning as both an MP and a chaplain’s assistant. I was born there in ‘51.
Your memory is pretty accurate. I checked the wiki article re: the draft and here is what it says “With the end of active U.S. ground participation in Vietnam, December 1972 saw the last men conscripted, who were born in 1952[61] and who reported for duty in June 1973. On February 2, 1972, a drawing was held to determine draft priority numbers for men born in 1953, but in early 1973 it was announced that no further draft orders would be issued. In March 1973, 1974, and 1975, the Selective Service assigned draft priority numbers for all men born in 1954, 1955, and 1956, in case the draft was extended, but it never was.[62] The last drafted soldier retired from active duty in 2011.[63]”
I graduated hs class of ‘74 and I can remember one of the senior boys (class of ‘72) telling the [male] librarian all about the physical exam he was subjected to. I remember the class above me we the first one not to have to sweat it. We were in “that window” where the boys had just missed being subject to the draft, but didn’t have to sign up with selective service either. Because Carter enacted the law in 1980 that said if you were born on or after Jan 1, 1960, then you had to sign up with selective service.
Everyone’s experiences certainly jibe with that of my male cousins. I had 8 who were of age to be potentially drafted or of service age in that era. 4 went to Vietnam, 4 did not. 3 Army, 1 Marine. Of the other 4 2 had college deferments, which as it turned out, they finished college after the war ended, or US ground troop involvement, and 2 just lucked out with high draft numbers. The 4 that went served in ‘Nam. Funny story about the Marine. Years after the War, I’d known that my cousin, Andy, had signed up for the Marines and hadn’t been drafted. so I said: “how come you picked the Marines” [thinking: you knowingly signed up for an outfit where you had the best chance of getting your a$$ blown off?] and he said “I liked the Marine Comic books when I was young and I liked the uniform.” Not. A. Scratch. 2 tours in country.
A LOT of guys got married right after college, during the era, because it did put you a bit further down in the pool, IIRC. It’s noticable, because for guys born about 1950, most of them got married not too long after high school and college. I was born in 56, and many of us didn’t get married until in our late 20s or 30s.
I smell a huge rat where Comrade Barry is concerned because he would have been subject to having to register for Selective service and I bet if he was claiming to be “foreign” he didn’t — which is WHY there is all the hoo-ha re: doctored postcard registration — another forgery.
I quite remember a lot of young men who knew they weren’t “academic” took their chances with signing up voluntarily with Navy or Coast guard thinking they’d have a better chance of surviving.
I was drafted and in Fort Dix on Dec.28,1965.
we fought the germans, Italians and Japanese.
our allies at the time included Russia. as far as that goes we fought it to the finish(as it was originally stated).
you and Patton were right though...we should have continued till Russia was taken out. we might have done that if we had a president more in the mold of England’s prime minister. Of course once the European theater was finished the Socialist Brits kicked Churchill out of office.
under the current regime, they would learn them how to be community organizers, choomgang huffing and bone smuggling.
I would send my kids to Canada before they could be drafted into an army that was under this commander and chief....
Of course I was insinuating that the service would be under a normal God fearing, American-loving president or comparable leader of a free country. I wasn’t implying this would be a good idea in the current situation that we’re in.
My dad had been a WWII enlistee, risen to Master Sgt., awarded a Bronze Star for service in Europe and left after war’s end even though he was offered a commission in the Judge Advocate’s corps.
I graduated high school in ‘66 and one day while working part time in college in 1968 my Dad stopped and had a cup of coffee with me. He knew my deferment was shakey and he wanted to tell me that the way the war and current military effort was being run by Johnson was wrong and treacherous for those being pulled into the military and told me that if I found that I wanted to do something to avoid the cannon fodder of the draft, he was okay with it.
I was to think on that and then in ‘69, I lost my deferment, got engaged to marry at years end and then found myself in the lottery that fall drawing number 66. A few weeks later I saw my second cousin before Christmas at a family dinner. He told me his Guard unit, activated about a year earlier, was returning from active duty where some had gone to Carson and some to Vietnam. He suggested if I wanted a slot in the Army Guard I show up at his company the following Tuesday as the Permanent Party staff was coming in two days before the general reserve members and setting up the manning board for the slots that would go fast.
I ended up going in and enlisting but wasn’t sworn in until February and was only a few days ahead of my call. They drafted up to 195 in that year. I got married and as I had slotted in the manning board a the next Mess Sgt, I sent my new cooks to basic training before I went so I could enjoy my first six months of married life before going off to basic and AIT. Served as a E-1 Mess Stewart who hadn’t even yet gone to Basic or AIT.
My dad told me that he was glad I chose enlistment but he didn’t trust what the Washington crowd was doing.
Wished you had never gotten out? Or wish you had never gotten married?
If I’d shot her when I first wanted to, I’d have been out of jail by now.
BTW, I don’t regret my time in the Army.
Yeah, and if you hadn’t told anyone before, it would have been manslaughter. Out in seven.
228,263 were drafted that year (1967).
86,000 more than in 1958.
WWII was fought overwhelmingly by draftees, while Vietnam was overwhelmingly volunteers, the WWII age group were the leadership during the Vietnam war.
Not even close.
Gingrich was just as his career soldier father said, physically unfit for military service. He was already married by 1962, already had children by 1963 and had his Bachelors degree by 1965 and his PHD by 1971. Even in 1971 he was diagnosed by the draft board as having flat feet and nearsightedness.
My family escaped Communist Czechoslovakia - a country that no longer exists - in ‘66. We emigrated to the U.S in ‘68
In 1974, my draft no. was 88. The draft was canceled.
Life is strange
Women were forbidden by law from exceeding 2% of the military, and they were all on main base at legal, medical, and finance, etc., you didn't see them mixing with the regular soldiers or in the field.
That homosexual thing wasn't easy to fake either, draft boards, shrinks and medical had decades of experience in dealing with examinations.
That draft notice may have sent you to the Marines, they drafted.
My father burned his draft card at a rally in San Francisco....right after he had finished up at the MEPS. He just wanted to be able to joke that he had done that.
Czechs are wonderful peop;e. My wife has cousins still living in the Czech Republic (city cousin) and Slovakia (country cousin). I was in Prague a few years ago after the big flood. It’s a beautiful city with really nice people. They were trampled by Hitler and then by the Soviets. They have truly earned their freedom.
Lost my college deferment when I had to drop a Physics class in 68 and fell below the minimum 12 course load and was promptly reclassified 1-A, first available.
Two weeks later I got a notice to report for my draft physical. I was going to join the Marines but my brother who had been through the battle of Hue City with the Ist Mar D warned me not to do it so I ended up going to Viet Nam but in the rear with the beer with supply and Army transportation.
Pretty weird - not so strange was the fact that many many of the noisy, disruptive “anti-war” rallies at the time suddenly disappeared when Nixon ended the draft and went to an all volunteer military in 1973 - turns out that all those morally superior, peace loving anti-war protesters were really interested only in saving themselves from the inconvenience of putting on a uniform and giving a few years to the defense of their country after all - a bad lie to build one’s life on.....
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