NEWARK
As I waited for the garbage to be emptied into a truck, I was with a group of young men waiting to be taken through the same entrance to learn our fate. Would we be serving in the armed forces of the United States? Why was a 23-year-old graduate student standing on this filthy loading dock? By 1968, the Vietnam War had escalated to the point that the country needed more and more recruits for military service. The war was an enormous source of anger in the country: protest songs, teach-ins, and marches everywhere. Technically, this was not even a war. The last official war was World War II; this conflict was considered a “military engagement.” Whatever the terminology, the consequences were staggering.
For many college-age males, including myself, it was a time of enormous anxiety. The proverbial (or perhaps literal) sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. The anxiety was well-founded. The United States had mandatory military service for men eighteen to twenty-six. While the government and many individuals saw military service as a patriotic obligation, others saw it as a dreadful existential experience. This was not World War II, fighting against a horrid enemy. South Vietnam was a small Asian country of little consequence to most Americans. Was it worth dying to prevent the communists from sweeping through Southeast Asia, the “Domino Theory?” I remember one protest march against the war in Washington quite vividly. As I was leaving the Lincoln Memorial to walk to the Pentagon, a black man held a sign on a bridge that read, “No Viet Cong ever called me a nigger.” The sign encapsulated some of the bitterness in the country. What were we fighting for?
Against this backdrop was the “draft.” The conscription process into the military was the responsibility of the United States Selective Service System. It was reflected in the hated and dreaded local “draft board.” A letter from your local draft board was equivalent to receiving a letter from prison authorities telling you that you have been selected for a two-year, all-expenses-paid trip to Folsom Prison. Don’t complain; it will be fun. You will meet some interesting people and make some lasting friends. At least in Folsom Prison, they did not have rice paddies, tropical heat, and the Viet Cong shooting at you.
For Gen Xers and Millennials, this is ancient history equivalent to telephones with rotary dials. It was the “Boomers War.” Young men, like myself, were required to register with the Selective Service System. Failure to register was a crime. As a gift for registering, you received a draft card that under federal law we were always required to carry. A classmate who burnt his card in protest against the war told me, “I don’t give a shit. . . I hate this damn war.” I could not disagree with his passion and anger. Despite the potential legal consequences of his actions, I frankly did not talk him out of his actions and never learned of what became of him. My failure to join him in his actions is something I have thought about over the decades, and still have no satisfactory answer.
In 1967, I had recently completed my undergrad studies and was waiting to start graduate school while teaching at Temple University. Under the Selective Service System’s rather arcane classification system, I had been deferred from military service when I was a college student. However, in 1967, educational deferments for military service were changed for graduate students. Those starting graduate studies in the fall of 1967 (such as myself) were given two semester deferments, becoming eligible for the draft in June 1968. That was me.
I loved Country Joe and the Fish, a San Francisco rock band, whose music reflected my own anxiety, anger, and fear toward the war and military service. In their song Vietnam they sang “ . . . What are we fighting for / Don’t ask me / I don’t give a damn / Next stop is Vietnam / Well there ain’t no time to wonder why / Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.” Yes, that was the fate that potentially awaited me.
By the summer of 1968, I was no longer sheltered by school. I was now at the mercy of my draft board and their need to meet a quota for bodies. I was “available for service” and required, at some point, to undergo pre-induction physical and mental tests to determine if I had any impairments that precluded me from military service. If you “passed the tests”, you were liable for induction and ordered to report for military service. Through high school and college, testing was intrinsic to our learning and the desire to score well. However, save your money on a Kaplan testing course. Passing these tests was, at best, problematic.
. Against the maelstrom of fear and anger surrounding the war, I received the dreaded but not unexpected letter in June 1968 from my local draft board informing me that I had to go for testing at a regional pre-induction center in Newark, New Jersey. I had grown up in nearby Hoboken, and my draft board serviced a slew of working-class cities in northern New Jersey. Prime fodder for the draft. The gristmill for the military.
Test results were a major concern to those facing potential military service. Unlike traditional tests where one sought an “A”, being classified 1-A, deemed you physically and mentally capable of serving in the military (kudos or condolences depending on your point of view). In contrast, those classified 4-F were not qualified for military service due to physical or mental infirmities. In the binary world of success or failure, 4-F classification was either the mark of a loser, or the successful reward for not being drafted into military service.
For many draft-age men, 4-F was the answer out of being drafted. A mini-industry sprung up to offer advice on achieving 4-F status. Books described the diseases or ailments that would keep you out of the military. Doctors were willing to write, sometimes for a fee, medical reports describing medical conditions that precluded someone from military service (à la Donald Trump and his heel spurs). An underground network of doctors would examine a person’s medical records to advise if they were adequate for exemption from military service. In addition to heel spurs, there was a plethora of other medical conditions that would keep you out of the military, such as gastritis, ulcers, hepatitis, anemia, and even diabetes. One hoped for, or even sought out, a “good” disease.
Following the orders of my draft notice, on a very early Wednesday morning that summer, I reported to my local draft board for transport to Newark. At 6 a.m. a group of approximately thirty young men waited on the sidewalk in front of the draft board for a bus to take us to Newark. We were white, black, and Latino. We had nothing in common except our gender and age. Many on the bus had long hair, beards, and bell bottoms in the style of the 60s (myself included). Others came nicely dressed in pressed chinos and a fresh shirt, for what reason I never understood. This was not a job interview that you wanted to make an engaging first impression. Some came empty handed, while others came carrying envelopes with the documentation that would hopefully keep them out of the draft. I was no different. The bus was quiet, and no one spoke, not surprising given the hour and reality of what was facing us. Newark was our destiny. We watched television and we knew the future that potentially awaited us—the jungle, the helicopters, the enemy, and of course, the fear of being a casualty.
I will never forget one guy on the bus who wore a dress, had on makeup, and high heels. His big red beads were a stunning accessory. It was a very smart outfit. The Klinger character on MASH would have been proud of him. I do not remember anyone on the bus harassing him. These were scary times and you did what you had to do. Get married to anyone, claim you were homosexual, join the National Guard. Pick your options: your life depended on it.
Eventually, the bus arrived in Newark and pulled behind a nondescript office building. The bus parked next to the building’s loading dock. It was 8 a.m. The Klinger ingenue was first off the bus, escorted by a couple of soldiers. We were told that he was being taken to see the Army shrinks. I never saw him again. I always wondered what happened to him. I hope he was able to keep the red beads; they did make the outfit. As for the rest of us, we started filing off the bus as the building’s maintenance crew was on the loading dock busily putting out the garbage. We were told to wait on the loading dock, and when the maintenance crew was done with its work, we entered the building through the same entrance that the garbage had been taken out. Nothing personal, young men. It was the military. The goal was efficiency, not dignity. We had the same importance as the garbage. We knew our place.
We were now in the hands of the military (probably the Army). We were sent to a large conference room. Given the number of men in the conference room, it was clear that other local draft boards had contributed their quota of bodies. We were given a paper form and a pencil to complete the form. At the front of the room, a soldier in uniform barked instructions on completing the form, “You will take your pencil and enter the information clearly in the boxes on the form. Do not leave any boxes empty. You have 15 minutes to complete the form.” I have no idea if the soldier was an officer or a noncommissioned officer—all I saw was someone in uniform and heard orders and instructions being shouted. Welcome to the military.
In a remarkable case of life imitating art imitating life, I found myself thinking of “Alice’s Restaurant.” The 1967 song by Arlo Guthrie talked of his experience during the draft registration process in Manhattan. Here I was living the Alice experience. Like Arlo, a soldier in the front of our conference room asked us if anyone had been arrested and/or convicted of a range of crimes that spanned the penal code. If yes, stand up and identify your transgressions in front of a large conference room of strangers. Based on the answers, you were told to gather at one end of the conference room. There suddenly arose across the room shouts of “armed robbery,” “assault,” “car theft,” “drugs,” and other offenses big and small. Even a nondescript, slightly built, clean shaven guy sitting in front of me stood up and answered “burglary.” Where the hell was I?
The sheer volume and variety of offenses were impressive. It was the prelude to the famous bar scene in Star Wars where the flotsam and jetsam of the universe gathered in Jabba the Hutt’s palace. It was right here in Newark. What was equally impressive and a bit surprising were the number of people I recognized from my bus trip that morning. I recalled Guthrie singing, “Sergeant…you want to know if I’m moral enough to join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug.” I do not remember if any of the men who gathered at the end of the conference room claimed to be a litterbug.
Failing to have anything to declare about my checkered past, I next had to see an army doctor to determine my fitness for military service. It would be a complex tale. As a twelve-year-old, I broke my ankle trying to climb a picket fence to retrieve a model plane. However, the ankle never healed properly, so my parents took me to a specialist in New York who performed several operations to help correct its growth. This was the experience that my mother insisted that I tell the doctors. I should take my medical records with me to show the army that I was a chronic klutz, never to be trusted in combat. Moreover, in her loving but rather thoughtless way, she remined me that, “Your father and I did not spend over a thousand dollars on doctors to have your ankle fixed and now you go into the army.” I followed her advice. Guilt and a broken ankle dictating my future military experience.
After the group experience of bending over and spreading your cheeks for a close examination for god knows what, I went, armed with my medical documents, to be examined by an army doctor. He (there were no shes) was a nondescript middle-aged man. “Show me your papers and tell me what happened,” he said with all the enthusiasm and interest of a toll collector on the New Jersey Turnpike. I was simply the next one in his lane. I gave him my papers, and summarized my injuries: “ankle always aches,” “cannot walk with any comfort,” “need to periodically take pills to manage the discomfort,” blah, blah, blah. He reviewed the material, examined my ankle and decided that I would not be a proper fit for immediate military service. As I left the examination room, his parting words were “next one.” However, I was now Classified I-Y, which in military speak meant that I was qualified for military service only in the time of war (a real one) or national emergency. Short of the Viet Cong marching down the main street in Hoboken or sailing up the Hudson River, I figured that I would not likely be called up for military service.
A year later, in 1969, the Selective Service System held a lottery for all the draft-eligible men to determine their order of call for possible induction. All men born in the years 1944 through 1950 were in a pool, which included me. I was still technically subject to the draft. Televised nationally, 366 numbers, each representing one calendar day of the year, were put in a tumbler and the numbers picked. I had 161 and was not called.
By the early 1970s, the Vietnam War was beginning to wind down. The draft was abolished in 1973 (although men of draft age are still required to register), and the all-volunteer military force was established. An era was over. The war had ended. The draft was no more, but its ramifications were staggering in numbers and lives. It had served as a catalyst for protest and action: symbolic burning of draft cards and refusals to register for the draft. More than 3,000 men were incarcerated for draft violations. It has been estimated that 100,000 men fled the United States during the war, of which an estimated 70,000 American men went to Canada to evade the draft or deserters.
I remember the lyrics from a song by Phil Ochs, a sixties folk singer: “It’s always the old to lead us to the war, it’s always the young to fall… Tell me is it worth it all.” Fifty years after the end of the war and the draft, the answer is tragically obvious. The horrific loss of 58,000 U.S. servicemen, veterans who struggle with their post-military lives, and the incredible toll of civilian casualties. If the draft was a means to an end, the task of supplying bodies, like mine, to a war of so little meaning today, it was not worth it all.
I have no great lessons I can recall from my experience with the draft. A frightening encounter with a massive institutional organism of death. It shaped many of our lives: go to school and stay there as long as you can, take a job that will defer you even if you hate it, get married to stay out of the army (love was secondary in many cases). Fifty years later, it becomes a tale I might tell my grandchildren. Standing on a loading dock in the early morning, waiting while they bring the garbage out and me and other men in. Who cares?
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Michael Silverman lives and writes in New York City and Vermont.
