AUGUST 3, 1917 - FEIGNED DISABILITY WILL EXEMPT NO ONE.
If Man is Sick Examiner Will Go to His Home.
Uncle Sam's not going to take any chances on his first drafted soldier boys faking physical disability, and you will have to be a mighty poor speciman physically not to be called on. With the fateful lottery complete, the government today issued special warning to examining physicians to watch every drafted man for crooked tricks.Not a loophole is left for a man to escape by fraud. When the examining physician or the local board, or both, are in doubt as to a man's physical fitness the law is that he must be declared physically fit and well.
No drafted man will ever be given the benefit of the doubt. Even if two physicians declare him physically unfit, the local board may, at its own discretion, set aside both opinions and hold him.
No drafted man can escape by being sick in bed. The examiner will be sent to his home. If convalescent the board will hold him till he is well; then examine him.
NO PULL WITH DOCTOR
Every precaution is taken to prevent any drafted man having a "pull" with the doctor. No examiner can pass on his drafted relative. Also, representatives of surgeon general's office will slip in occasionally to see that neither board members nor physicians are defrauding the government of fighting men.
Because your feet are flat, don't think you can escape on that account. You may not have "flat foot" the disease at all. "A broad flat foot," said the surgeon general, "is common among laboring men and negroes, and is no way disabling. Flat foot disease is entirely different and the examiner can easily detect it.
A few of the things you might escape on are:Chronic rheumatism may let you out, as well as wobbled fingers, loss or serious mutilation of either thumb, total loss of index finger of right hand, total loss of any two fingers on the same hand, or loss of the second and third phalanges of either hand.
These conditions however must be acute and unfit you entirely for military service, or they won't bar you. Even if all local board members and all local examining physicians declare you physically unfit, the surgeon general may come in, re-examine you, and declare you fit for service and hold you anyway.
Somehow I have a vision of a lot of young fingerless men running around in 1917.
You'll have to excuse me tonite, my brain is BURNT TOAST...