My daughter quietly said to me once, “I’m glad you didn’t have to go.” I don’t remember the conversation that generated that comment, but she was glad that I did not have to go to war in Vietnam. I think of her sentiment when I hear the term “draft dodger” being misapplied.
At the age of 18, as required by law, I reported to the Selective Service board for an examination to determine my fitness for induction into the armed forces of the United States. I’m not sure how I knew about the law that required my examination, but I was much like the unknown citizen of W.H. Auden’s poem, “(I) held the proper opinions for the time of year.” At the end of the physical, a physician told me, “We don’t think we can fit a combat boot on your left foot.” I was assigned the draft status of 1Y, which meant that marauding hordes must be pouring over the walls before I would be pressed into service. I was sent to a chapel-like room, where a counselor gave me a booklet: “Opportunities for the Handicapped.” I don’t remember what he said to me. I left the room, went to the locker where I’d left my shoes and laced up the combat boots I had worn to the examination. I rode the bus back home.
At my high school, I was derided by the jocks for my 1Y classification, for they were proud bearers of 1A status: fit and ready to fight. In the early months of 1965, news from Vietnam did not concern me and my classmates, and not even the November Battle of Ia Drang Valley — “the first major battle between US troops and the North Vietnamese Regulars” — was cause for alarm in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Penn. But by 1966, “stuff” had gotten real in the jungle, and the jocks were coming to me and asking how I’d become a 1Y. I told them what I’d been told. Then, and for more than 50 years afterward, I believed that I had broken my left foot, which is why the Armed Forces people thought they could not shove it into a combat boot. But last year, I had a comprehensive exam and x-ray of my foot, which found no sign of a break, but “a bit of a bone spur.”
An “American Military History” class taught me that the U.S. had been “involved” in Vietnam since about 1952, but the middle and late 60s saw the growth of disenchantment in the country for war in hot places and the commitment of our youth to a cause that had been poorly explained. There were those among us who cried “we won’t go,” and some who crossed borders to avoid being drafted into the armed forces. There were also some who took advantage of considerations offered by the state, which included medical deferments, and attendance at a college or university.
Had the examiners decided differently about my left foot, I would have answered the summons from Uncle Sam and gone wherever sent to do whatever job. But my drafting was deferred, forever, and unlike a dream deferred, nothing within me festered, nothing grew sore, and nothing exploded. I asked for no consideration, I received nothing except those things granted to every other male of my generation. As Auden wrote, “When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.” Except: I did not go to war. I did not decry my selector’s refusal of me, nor did I complain of bone spurs. But I dodged nothing.
I was not chosen.