Military Draft -- part 1

Geezers are supposed to think about their Army days on some day in their military lives when something dramatic happened, or, lacking (as I did) much dramatic to think about, on nationally sanctioned days such as Memorial Day.

It's kind of interesting. Back in the 1960s, if you were a guy, your life decisions revolved around the draft. Concepts like finishing college on what my daughter refers to as the "five year plan" weren't viable unless you were physically infirm or psychologically deviant because taking a couple of semesters off would blow away your student deferment. So you started college the autumn after you finished high school, and with the exception of summers off, you marched right through and graduated in four years, ready or not.

Then a new set of issues arose. Grad school? Well, that meant the possibility of more student deferments. However, if you did get grad school deferments in something like business, nobody would hire you when you got out until you had "completed your active military obligation" as the corporate recruiters put it. Getting a graduate degree in the humanities was presumably even worse -- and I didn't even investigate that alternative as a consequence.

So, you got your MBA and watched the infirm and elderly among your classmates start work for the hot companies at what in those days passed for inflated salaries. A few got as much as $20,000 a year, I think! I was a little deviant politically (at business school I had done my master's essay on the decline of union singing, performing my presentation on the guitar, wearing a blue work shirt and red tie with my business suit) but was physically in good shape. With no more convenient deferments, I had anticipated that the draft would catch me instantly, so I went to stay in Woodstock, NY to wait with friends for the axe to fall.

I guess I need to put a month and year on this now so that the even-then fast-moving world situation can be correlated to what was happening to me, so this was June 1964.

Expecting the draft board to be in touch with me immediately, I pursued pleasure as my objective for a few weeks. At that point, someone suggested that I contact an Army Reserve unit about joining it "just in case something broke loose somewhere in the world" so I did. They told me that they would be glad to have me but that they didn't know when they would have a vacancy. Imagine that today: an Army Reserve or National Guard outfit at full strength that was actually turning away applicants!

Having done that, I returned to Woodstock and started working short-term jobs. Honestly, this was a real learning period in my life, and I don't begrudge a moment of it. Let's see. I was an expeditor in a machine shop for about a month. (That didn't last because I lacked subject matter knowledge of machine work -- last contact having been 8th grade shop, and business school does not equip you for work "on the floor".) Then I teamed up with a guy to paint a house. Then I washed some dishes at the Cafe Espresso on Tinker Street. Then I got a job assembling injury moulages (I'll write something separately about this experience. It was pretty esoteric) part time. Around the same time I got a night job operating a surface grinder in a small, non-union machine shop.

During my non-working hours I had as much fun as I was physically able to have. That fun would fill several blog articles, and a public discussion of it would likely make quite a number of ladies now in their late fifties and sixties upset. I guess it would anyway.

Around September, the summer crowd began to drift away from Woodstock. The college students went back (for the guys it was to keep their draft deferrments, and for the girls, I guess it was because the college guys were going back) and I found myself drinking with an older crowd.

Honestly, it was a good crew. The abstract expressionist movement had partially colonized Woodstock, and several of the luminaries of that movement were still there. Even if they were too prominent to display at the Woodstock Artists Assn anymore, they were still at the openings, and still participated in the social life of the town. Where there were painters and sculptors there always seemed to be poets, actors, and musicians as well, and frankly, that whole group knew how to raise hell. At some point we got a jug band together, called ourselves "VanWinkle's Rippers" and started playing wherever people might be willing to listen.

It was late September before it occurred to me that time was passing. The Reserve unit had called to say they had a vacancy for a truck driver, and I had declined the offer simply because some young lady whom I can barely remember now had my pretty much undivided attention at the moment and I would have had to leave within a week to do my required six months on active duty had I joined the Reserves. That was a sacrifice I was not prepared to make at the moment.

Finally, in October, more out of curiosity than anything else I called my draft board to see if they had forgotten about me. They said they had not, but that there were a couple of hundred guys ahead of me, and I wasn't likely to be called before March or April the following year. They mentioned as well that I could always volunteer for the draft and get taken within the month, but that sounded a bit, well, immediate. I thanked them, hung up, and decided to think about alternatives to the draft.

I discovered almost immediately that I could become some sort of priest candidate in a small denomination called the Old Catholic Church that had a diocese centered right in Woodstock. The Bishop was a good guy, I thought, and aside from the fact that I had no religious inclinations at all at the time, it sounded like a pretty good deal, especially since it would make the military go away as a prospect permanently. The Bishop noted that the military did not call on his denomination to provide Chaplains.

Around the same time there was talk of going to Canada to avoid the draft entirely. I guess I never pursued that option because I didn't know anybody in Canada, and as Summer ended in Woodstock, it occurred to me that Canada was likely considerably colder. I also was really having fun.

One evening in early October I was sitting with some of my acquaintances, mostly men in or on the periphery of the arts who had been in World War II, in Buckman's, one of Woodstock's two bars at the time, discussing what men who had been soldiers, sailors, and members of the Merchant Marine talked about in those days. (Interestingly, the conversation was no different from conversations I had been involved in at bars in American Legion posts with steamfitters, truck drivers, and house painters.)

The fact that the men in Buckman's were all on the extreme left end of the political spectrum did not distinguish either their recollections of their military days or the way they talked about them from the guys at the American Legion post, who generally fell at the other end of the spectrum is a coincidence I'll talk about later. (Actually, I'm still not sure I understand it.)

Anyway, there were some new faces at the table in Buckman's that night, and I didn't pay much attention to who they were. A girl I was occasionally seeing at the time came in, recognized one of the men, and spoke to him. Later, the girl and I and the man had another drink at the bar and I learned in that conversation that he had been romantically connected with the mother of another girl whom I had found fascinating, perhaps. And the mom definitely gave great parties!

A week or so later I had decided to stop by at Buckman's to see if anything was going on. The older guy from the preceding paragraph was sitting at the bar, and I recognized nobody else, so I sat down to have a drink with him.

It was a quiet evening, and we drank and talked for several hours. We talked about his experiences in World War II as a Marine in the South Pacific (I later was to learn that he had been very, very modest in recounting his own exploits) and the subject of my impending draft call came up. I told him that I was uncommitted and had been thinking about getting out of the draft.

We talked some more. I learned that he had spent a good part of his youth in Woodstock, and was an actor -- when he could find work. I learned that he had not been finding much work of late, and that he felt he was probably drinking a little too much. Maybe a lot too much.

He had plenty bad to say about the military. Most I had heard before. Yet there was a strange sense that as bad as it had been, it was not an experience he would have given up. I do remember asking him what he would do if he were in my situation.

"I'd go." he said. He didn't add any qualifications to the statement.

At some point later in the conversation, I realized that I had made the decision to call my draft board and ask to be drafted as soon as possible.

"I think I probably will." I had said.

Finally we both staggered out of the place and went our separate ways.

The next morning I called my draft board through my hangover and asked them to move me up in the draft. They were very obliging.

A month later I was the guest of honor at a great party hosted by the woman with whom the guy in the bar had been romantically involved. I have to say that for assorted pacifists, anarchists, fellow-travellers, and others on the left end of the political spectrum, they gave me a great send-off to go be a soldier.

The next time I saw the guy in the bar it was on a movie screen. Lee Marvin, decorated Marine war hero of WW II, had made an acting comeback, cut back on his drinking, and married the mother of the girl I had my eye on who was also the woman who had hosted my going away party. If I had ever seen him in person again, I would have had to tell him that he was absolutely right.

Dropping Lee Marvin's name was not the point of this post. What I wanted to do was suggest the place the institution called the draft held in America back before the Vietnam war heated up.
There is nothing like a misguided military adventure to discredit an institution that in itself probably on balance is a benefit to society. I am wondering what institution will suffer from the adventure in Iraq.