One point I think a lot of people are missing is that getting drafted and serving didn't neccessarily mean serving in VN. LOTS of people were drafted before VN got going,and lots of people were drafted while it was. The majority never went there or anywhere else there was any danger.
So true. OTOH, serving in Korea or Germany could have gotten real dangerous really quickly. Germany was pretty quiet during the Vietnam period, (a very good thing), but Korea heated up several times during that period, it just never quite boiled over. I'm thinking particularly of the Pueblo affair and the shootdown of an USAF EC-121 in the 68-69 time frame.