Draft Day

It just occurred to me that I have not said anything about the events of February 2, 1972... You see - not only was it Ground Hog Day, it was also the day of the military draft lottery for males born in 1953.

Now - for those who are unaware, the lottery was a little bit of pageantry staged by the U.S. Government each year from 1969 to 1972. As it turns out, the Army didn't need all of the country's 18 year old males for "cannon fodder" during those years (baby boom?) so they to set up a lottery system to determine the order in which they would be drafted... Basically, there was a big drum full of red capsules and blue capsules - the red ones contained birth dates and the blue ones the numbers 1 through 365. They would spin the drum and pick out a capsule of each color. The blue capsule's number was the draft order for those born on the date contained in the red capsule. And if you ended up with a low draft number there was a very good chance you would end up dodging bullets in the lovely tropical jungles of Vietnam...

Here's a picture of the lottery setup:

Aside: It is truly unfortunate that the merits of the Vietnam War are still being argued among those who served there. Some hold that we accomplished every objective we set out to (including stopping the spread of communism), while others take the position that it was a colossal waste of money and life...
Now - I'm definitely not anti-war. That is because I have no doubt that there will always be insane ego-maniacs (aka politicians) who will try to take over the world by force, hence there will always be a need for military action. However, I also believe that the willingness of a country's citizens to sacrifice their lives in its defense is its most valuable and precious resource and needs to be treated as such...
Finally - I truly believe that no soldier ever dies in vain, because each sacrifice reminds us of the horrible cost of war - a cost that must be avoided except in the most dire circumstances...

But regardless of the merits of the "police action" in Vietnam (congress never declared war) the impact on my generation was undeniable and ever-present - and not just on the nightly news. Hardly a week went by when you didn't hear of someone losing a brother, a friend, or a neighbor... So it should come as no surprise that there was a certain degree of fatalism among young men of my generation. We tended to behave like there was no tomorrow because we felt like (once we finished high school) there was a good chance that there would be no tomorrow.

And it intensified in April of 1970 when (as a matter of fairness) Nixon ended draft deferments for those who were attending college or had a family or were working at a "defense critical" job. That meant that only young men whose parents had the power and influence to get them into the National Guard (which otherwise had a 3 or 4 year waiting list) could avoid the draft... Personally, I think Nixon's executive order had more to do with ending the war than anything else... Yeah - it's funny how quickly things wound down once parents could no longer shelter their sons simply by ponying up college tuition. But I digress slightly.

So it came to pass that I found myself "sleepwalking" through my classes at North Texas on 2/2/72... My thoughts were elsewhere... In addition to my mom having just been admitted to the hospital and eviction looming on the horizon, some old farts in Washington D.C. were in the process of picking my ass out of a barrel. And given everything that had happened recently the only way I wasn't going to end up in Vietnam (or back in Canada) was if my luck changed... Needless to say, my stomach was churning and my mind was racing as I drove home to make that fateful phone call to the "hotline" the local newspaper had set up for the draft lottery results.

Aside: Once again I feel compelled to point out that as of February 2nd of 1972 there was no such thing as a cell phone or the internet. The first "usable" microprocessor was still years away and the typical computer filled an entire room. As a matter of fact, the very first handheld calculator (the HP-35) had just been announced the prior day. (Goodbye slide-rules.) The point is that the only way to get "up to the minute" news was to have access to a teletype machine. But I digress...

I distinctly recall that the young lady who answered the phone could not understand why I got so excited when she told me that my draft number was 364 (about as safe as you could get). Yeah - clueless :-)

Of course, my fears turned out to have been unfounded. Nobody born in 1953 was ever drafted. We were supposed to be called up in 1973 but Nixon started the troop "drawdown" in late 1972 which effectively ended the draft...
I also would have never guessed that one year later I would be reporting to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio for basic training... Go figure...

Finally - I did not yet know that they take away your draft card when you enlist... I was so pissed off! ... I really wanted to keep that thing as a reminder of the times :-)