Posted on 10/14/2025 5:52:45 AM PDT by LouAvul
I graduated high school in 1971, the same year student deferments ended. That summer I enrolled in a Bible college as a ministerial student. But divinity student deferments had also ended by then.
My question has to do with my lottery number. IIRC, my number was 88 and my district went to ~125 for the draft. Yet, I was never called up.
I wonder why? What condition was there that they would call up all numbers to 125, except mine? My best friend's number was lower than mine and he wasn't called up because he got a hardship deferment. But I didn't have any deferment.
“””””The Vietnam Era draft was not new, there was a draft in place during the 50s. Even Elvis Presley was drafted! One thing I do recall is that on my induction day, about a third of those processed were drafted into the Marines. I thought that was unusual.”””””
The draft was continuous from 1940-1973 and draftee Marines are normal during every major war.
1969
I graduated from high school in 1972. I don’t recall my number, but it didn’t matter. I took my Army ROTC scholarship to Gonzaga University. It’s one of the best decisions I ever made.
My draft board was considerate enough to let me graduate. I remember going through periodic reviews to determine if I was making satisfactory progress in college. I think my classification was II-S. I beat them to the punch on their lottery or call up by signing up in the MC during my last semester.
“””””I was standing in formation in basic combat training in 1974 and the senior drill sergeant announced that the last of the draftees had left the army. I think there may still have been a few draftees left at that point, but with the winding down of Vietnam, they were few and far between.”””””
Many stayed in.
Army’s Last Draftee to Retire After 39 Years
Published July 03, 2011 Associated Press
Mellinger told the draft board there was a mistake.
“I ... told them I don’t need to go into the Army, I’ve got a job,” said Mellinger, who hung drywall for a living. “They just kind of laughed.”
(snip)
He heard so many war stories in training that he was fired up about going, and was disappointed he was instead assigned to be an office clerk in Germany.
(snip)
Mellinger wasn’t long for clerking. He earned a spot in the Army Rangers, and would go on to do more than 3,700 parachute jumps. And despite the 1991 parachute accident that gave him the material for the wind chime, breaking his leg in several places, he went on to run nine marathons. He was made a command sergeant major in 1992.
Nearly a decade later, he was sent to ground zero in New York right after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as part of an advance party from the First Army. Then came his time in Iraq as the top enlisted soldier of the multi-national forces in Iraq, where he says he survived 27 roadside bombings during his deployment of nearly three years straight.
(snip)
“Draftees are pretty maligned over time,” he said, “but the fact is they are part of every branch of service up to 1973, and when you look at what those military branches accomplished over time, I’ll let the record speak for itself.”
My brother graduated in ‘72 and I believe his year was the final one for the lottery - I remember my family being very scared about this - he got a lottery number, then it was ended to my family’s great relief.
My uncle (we’re descended from Quakers)vowed to send his two sons, a little younger than my brother, to Canada. He was deadly serious.
In 1961 my husband took some tests to enter Officer Training School upon his graduation from college because he knew the draft was breathing down his neck.
We married right after graduation and went on a week long honeymoon.
As soon as we got back, husband went down to the draft board to report change of marital status but they couldn’t find his file.
As it turned out, the file was in the stack to go before the draft board on the next Monday when he would surely be drafted.
They did give him a two month deferment so that he could wait to see if he was accepted at OTS, and after a month he got an acception notice.
He shipped out to Medina AFB in San Antonio TX two months after the wedding. Stayed in the AF for 20 years.
Even though his career field (Avionics) was critically needed in Southeast Asia in 1968, we ended up at Hickam AFB Hawaii by the luck of the draw.
My 18th was 15 days before the end of registration. I got registered just before no longer required. Guess I got that going for me.
One of the big achievements of the Left was pinning Vietnam on Nixon, as if LBJ never existed
Yes. I learned that from the young people, less than age 30, that the public school teachers blame Nixon for the Vietnam war. Truthfully, based upon newer evidence, the real bad guys with the Vietnam war was the CIA that withheld letter from Ho Chi Minh to Truman
https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon2/hochiminh/
They wanted US help to build a Republic. They were never answered, so they went communist to get independence from the French.
I don’t buy it, because Ho Chi Minh was one of the founding members of the Comintern in 1917, and was also a member of the French Communist Party when he lived in Paris.
I know Trump had a high draft number, and was never called, despite his deferments. My brother enlisted in the US Army for 3 years. Did his Basic Training at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Was originally sent to Fairbanks, Alaska. The Army reactivated the 25th Infantry Division while he was up there, and he was sent to Hawaii for Advanced Jungle Training. He served in Vietnam 1966-67. He had a year left on his enlistment when he came home, and spent it at Fort Carson, Colorado. Never talked about his service time.
Two of my classmates I graduated with in 1965 in Rochester, NY were killed in Vietnam. One Army, the other Marines. God Rest your souls Tom and Chuck.
The CIA set up the assassination of President Diem, who was a practicing Catholic. Two weeks later JFK was assassinated. The war escalated after that. At the time I supported the war because my brother was there, but all these years later, it was nothing more than another proxy war with Russia and China...just like Korea. Proxy wars never end in complete victory.
I'm currently reading "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" by former Agent Tim Weiner. There was suppression and falsification of reporting on Vietnam for a long time prior to Diem's murder. LBJ's "new National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, constantly ordered the CIA to produce good news about the war for the White House." "Whose side are you on, anyway? Rostow growled." The same day, September 12, 1967, the CIA produced a report titled: "The Implications of an Unfavorable Outcome in Vietnam. Then CIA Director Richard Helms sent a letter with the report to LBJ that said:
"The attached paper is sensitive, particularly if its existence were to leak. It has not been given, to any other official of the Government."
The paper said..."that the U.S., acting within the constraints imposed by its traditions and public attitudes, cannot crush a revolutionary movement which is sufficiently large, dedicated, competent, and well-supported...The structure of U.S. Military power is ill-suited to cope with guerrilla warfare waged by a determined, resourceful, and politically astute opponent. This is not a novel discovery."
This report was hidden until 11/29/2005. Here is the link to that report:
The Implications of an Unfavorable Outcome in Vietnam
And so the government hid the truth from American citizens, and continued for years, to pour money and lives into a big, fat lie.
I had a good friend who joined the USAF as well, but he wasn’t so lucky. His airplane was the last one shot down over Vietnam. His name is on the last panel of the wall.
“We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”
Lyndon B. Johnson
Sure LBJ.
“””””One of the big achievements of the Left was pinning Vietnam on Nixon, as if LBJ never existed.”””””
A bigger accomplishment by the left was shifting not only Vietnam but just about everything leftist from JFK to LBJ.
LBJ took JFK’s stuff and kept it up.
“the Left was pinning Vietnam on Nixon, as if LBJ never existed.”
.
Just like every shot in the Middle East will be pinned on Trump...
And so the government hid the truth from American citizens, and continued for years, to pour money and lives into a big, fat lie.
The ‘lives’ part still bothers me.
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