It always came in the same form, but never in the same way.
In my case, it was hidden in a pile of mail on top of a rolled-up rug in an apartment that was soon to be vacated: a move to a new job in a new town, a rung up the ladder.
The letter rested two or three layers down, below the Life magazine. White envelope, little window showing name and address. My name.
The message started with the word: Greetings.
Fast-forward: back to my old home town, where the draft board has “selected” me to help win President Johnson’s war. I’m packed onto an old bus; my wife on the other side of the dirty glass, crying, just like in the movies of other men in other times being “shipped” (a word we’ll soon hear often) to what awaits them.
The trip, silent, ends at Fort Wayne, in Detroit (it was a nice town back then). Gloomy brick buildings and inside what seems like a factory is a line of boys in skivvies, snaking past a table where a doctor sits. I have a letter, hastily procured from a sympathetic doctor, stating that I have bone spurs in my knees. The letter is tossed aside.
“Next!”
Then, back in our civvies, we wait in what seems like a theater; there’s a stage in front, and a big flag. A Marine officer, creases in his uniform like razors, passes up and down the rows, nodding occasionally. The Marines are now drafting. The angel of death passes by; in another year or so I’ll understand something about my luck when I observe the Jarheads, who think digging-in is for cowards, in a place called Khe Sanh.
Now we receive the first of thousands of commands that await us. The Army officer tells us to take a step forward—but don’t worry; you’re in whether you do it or not. So be a man.
We’re packed into a rickety old train; next stop Louisville, Kentucky.
Another bus ride. Another big room, full of cots. It’s the middle of the night. We’re at Fort Knox—where’s the gold?
Lights on. More starched uniforms, smoky bear hats. Three or four of them; they’re all screaming. Their spit flies in the naked-bulb light. We’re worthless pukes—and worse. We’re herded like confused sheep, another line, old clothes off, green uniforms on; you’re lucky if they fit.
And then the haircut; no, the scalping, piles of hair of every color around the barber-chairs, clippers buzzing like insects. Then—more screams from the sergeants: big men, skin-tight khakis, those hats! We sit on the floor and receive the sacrament of cans of shoe polish for our brand-new boots. Those who malinger—the leather is like sandpaper—are screamed into “front leaning rest position.” The hardest case soon cries for his mama.
Within 24 hours we have been disassembled, cracked up, dominated, emptied, taken apart, reassembled; vacuums waiting to be filled.
We haven’t even met our rifle yet—calling it your “gun” gets a drop-and-ten—but we are on our way to becoming killers.
And killed.
What ended at Fort Knox were illusions, which the US Army has long and successful experience dispelling. Forget that civis-book piffle about “freedom.” “Liberty?” Who you kidding? You will crack, sooner or later; go along and get along. Resist and pay the price. Power is a serious business—and you ain’t got it. You do not win wars by consent.
That last conscript (what a wonderfully neutral term!) Army gave thousands of young men—and only men, who were assumed to be fighting to protect the women back home—a lesson in ultimate vulnerability. Of fragility, and not the white kind.
Of humans. And nations.
Of illusions. And truth.
The Army that I was commanded to join was marched off to defeat in the rice paddies and rainforests. There would be other expeditions into strange, alien cultures—and into oblivion—down the road. Other cop-outs and bug-outs. Other retreats that seemed more like defeats.
The draft? Because a losing army tends to fall apart—as did ours after Nixon got through with it—we bought our way out of the dilemma. Now it’s for the “pros.” Rome learned that lesson the hard way.
So here’s one other Memorial day thought: if a society is willing to break and reassemble young men (and now women) into killers-on-command, then it owes them only one thing…
Victory.
I can contain my admiration for Tom Ricks but he is on to something here:
https://www.amazon.com/Generals-American-Military-Command-World-ebook/dp/B007V65TAM
https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1253&context=nwc-review
Wow.
This is fabulous. I wanted it to be longer. I could never write like this. Not only because clearly I don’t have your life experience, I just don’t have your skills as a writer.
This packs a punch. Concise in a way I’ll never be concise. Creative, on point and thought provoking. Well done!!!