April 2, 2013

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Its 1..2..3..What Are We Fighting For

The defining event of our generation was the Vietnam War.  Like World War II for the generation before us, World War I before that and the Civil War only a few years earlier, EVERYONE in the country had some friend or loved one involved in the war.  Between 1964 and 1975, more than 8.7 million Americans served on active duty in the military – nearly one of every 30 people in the entire country.  About 3.4 million of those were actually stationed in Southeast Asia, of whom more than 58,000 were killed, 75,000 disabled and hundreds of thousands more wounded.  Millions of civilians worked in “defense” industries.

The average age of those who were “in country,” doing the actual fighting, was 19.

Some of those young men – women, too, but at that time it was mostly men – willingly volunteered.  The number of volunteers, though, was insufficient, so more were brought to the military by conscription.  Only about a quarter of the military personnel were drafted, but many more enlisted solely to avoid the draft.   Enlistees had greater opportunity to choose a service specialty and thus greater control over whether they would see combat.

The so-called “Selective Service” system was not popular, and perhaps 50,000 young men, termed “draft dodgers,” received asylum in Canada to avoid conscription.

My 19^th birthday was in 1967, a time when troop deployment to Southeast Asia was increasing each month.  I was not concerned about the draft because, as a full-time college student, I was given a deferment.  About that time, a friend of mine – a girl who was merely curious because women could not be drafted – asked what I would do if I were drafted.  I told her that I intended to ignore the government and assumed the government would return the favor.  She called me naïve. Continue reading →