My
War Story: Following Up What's So
Special About Veterans?
Posted By Ariel & Dave Lindorff
July 2, 2008
I’m certainly no hero, but since some readers of my last post
have reacted by attacking my courage and integrity on the
grounds that I “never served,” I want to at least set the record
straight on my youthful response to war.
In 1967, when I was a senior in high school in Storrs, CT., I
faced a momentous decision. In April, I would turn 18, and would
have to register for the draft. The Vietnam War was by then in
full swing. A year or two earlier, I’d been an avid fan of
military aviation magazines, and bought into the whole
anti-Communist Cold War thing. But by ’67, I had seen enough of
the violence being done in Vietnam against a desperately poor
peasant population—the napalm attacks on civilians, the burned
babies, etc.—that I had done a 180-degree turn. I wanted nothing
to do with war and killing. So I made a decision: I would fill
out my registration at the draft board, and I’d get my draft
card, but I would not let myself be inducted.
When I told my parents, who still supported the war, of my
plan, they were of course upset. My dad was an engineer and a
former Marine; my mother had been a Navy WAVE in WWII. My
paternal grandfather had earned a silver star in WWI and my
maternal grandfather had had his lungs scarred by mustard gas in
the same conflict. One teacher, my history teacher, Bernie
Marlin, referred me to a junior high teacher in the school who
had been a conscientious objector during the Korean War. I
talked with him, a Mr. Dick Storrs, at length, and was very
impressed with his story, but I soon realized that I didn’t
really think I was CO material. I did feel war could be
justified sometimes—for example if America were attacked. At any
rate, in early April of ’67, I went ahead and filled out my
draft registration form.
That fall, I began college at Wesleyan University. By then, I
had been working as a foot soldier in the anti-war movement a
bit, and had already been to one anti-war demonstration and
march in New York City. At college registration, there was a
table for registering for a student deferment. I decided on the
spur of the moment to pass that up. It seemed unfair to me that
friends of mine in high school, who were not college bound, were
going to get drafted, but I wouldn’t because I was lucky enough
to be going to college. So unlike Vice President and
Warmonger-in-Chief Dick Cheney, I just skipped it. I figured
when my time came and I got an induction notice, I would just
refuse, and they’d jail me.
In October, there was a huge demonstration and march in
Washington against the war—the famous “Mobe” about which Norman
Mailer wrote in “Armies of the Night.” I went down to DC with a
few other students. We ended up near the front of the march, and
then up on the Mall of the Pentagon. Through the night, federal
marshals were arresting people up there on the Mall. I made it
until morning, when I was finally grabbed by the legs, yanked
through a line of bayonet-armed soldiers, beaten with clubs and
carried off to a paddy wagon, which took me to a federal
minimum-security prison in Occoquan, VA. I spent a couple days
there in the company of a hundred or so other demonstrators in a
prison dormitory. It was an education. Veteran anti-war
activists ran workshops about the war and about a strategy of
resistance, and about how we could build a better world. I
soaked it all up avidly.
When I was released, with a small fine and a 10-day suspended
sentence for “trespassing” on the Pentagon, I hitchhiked back to
school, all fired up to challenge the war. The night before, I
had joined hundreds of other protesters in burning my draft
card. I had kept the ashes in my shirt pocket, and when I got
home, I put them in an envelope and mailed them to my draft
board, with a note saying I would never carry that card again (a
federal crime). My draft board responded by sending me a new I-A
card. I tucked it in my wallet, saving it for the next
card-burning opportunity.
Over the next two years, during which time I participated
actively in student radical activism, building sit-ins, and
draft-resistance actions, such as informational picketing of
inductees at the induction center in New Haven, CT, I had
occasion to burn my card and tear up my card several
times—including once at a communion at the Yale chapel, where we
turned our cards in to Rev. William Sloane Coffin. Each time,
I’d send the ashes or the pieces of card to my draft board, and
each time, they’d send me a new one. Along the way, the infamous
draft lottery was established. I was number 81—a certainty to be
called up.
At one point, back in the summer of 1968, I filed a CO
application, but I made it clear that I was not religious, and
that I was not opposed to all wars. When I had my CO hearing at
the draft board, the board members were sitting at a table, with
all my destroyed draft cards set in a pile in front of them. I
explained to the men before me that while I opposed the war in
Vietnam, if I were Vietnamese, I would surely be fighting for my
country against the US. That didn’t go over very well. My
application was unanimously rejected.
My day came in the spring of 1969. At the time, I was in a
full leg cast, having broken both bones in my lower leg just
above the ankle in a ski accident. I notified the induction
center that I was on crutches and in a cast and suggested they
postpone my pre-induction physical until I was out of the cast
and all better—a delay of about four months according to my
doctor. They said no. They wanted to see me to make sure I was
genuinely injured.
So on a cold late-winter day, I found myself on a bus riding
from the draft board in Rockville, CT to New Haven with a bunch
of frightened young men. I handed out informational packets to
everyone, telling them their rights, how to apply for CO status,
etc., and talked about what was wrong with the war.
When we arrived, I joined everyone in taking the so-called
intelligence test. Then we went for our physicals. I was pulled
from the line and told I needed to go to see a consulting
physician at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Since the address was a
mile or so away, and the sidewalks were icy, I said I’d need cab
fare. I was told by the head of the medical unit that the center
didn’t pay for transportation. He told me there was a bus that
stopped outside that would take me there.
I said that I was on crutches, and that I hadn’t asked to be
sent to a consultation—in fact I had asked for a postponement
until my leg was healed—and that if they wanted to send me
anywhere they could fucking well pay for the transportation.
That didn’t make the guy very happy. He had a screaming fit, and
called the head of the center, who came down. “What’s the
problem?” he asked. I explained the situation, and said that if
they wanted me to go all the way to a hospital because they
didn’t trust that my leg was truly broken, they could pay my
fucking cab fare. The guy got angry, called me a “little prick,”
but then took out his wallet and threw some bills at me. I
picked the money up off the floor and went down to the street.
Seeing no cab, I went over to the bus stop. I looked up and saw
the Induction Center commander looking out of a window, so as
the bus pulled up, I flipped him a one-finger salute and got on.
At the hospital, I discovered that the office of the doctor
in question was closed for the day. Angry that I’d wasted all
this time for nothing, I got back on the bus and returned to the
Induction Center. This time, I went directly to the office of
the head of the center, and tossed an envelope of X-Rays from my
doctor on his desk. “It’s no wonder you’re losing the fucking
war!” I said. “You guys can’t even arrange a doctor’s
appointment. The office was closed.” I told him that he could
check my X-Rays, and added, “But I’ve come down here once
already, and it’s the last time I’m coming. If you want me back,
you can send the FBI to bring me.” I hung around until the end
of the day and rode home on the bus to my draft board.
When I got there, I went into the office, where the office
secretary, an older woman with a neat grey perm, was still at
her desk. “Excuse me,” I said. “But I’m really pissed off.” She
started at my coarse language. I recounted my experience and she
said, “Well, I think they owe you an apology.” To my
astonishment, she picked up the phone, called the Induction
Center, and asked to speak to the head of the operation—the guy
who’d thrown the money at me. “I have a young man here who is
very angry,” she said into the phone. “And I think you owe him
an apology.”
She handed me the phone.
“All right, you little prick,” he said, sounding like he was
gritting his teeth. “I’m sorry.”
“You fuckin’ oughta be,” I said, again shocking the
secretary.
I put down the phone, thanked the secretary and left.
A month later, to my astonishment, instead of FBI agents at
my door, I got a letter from my draft board. It was a card
declaring me to be IV-F—“unfit for military service.”
Clearly, there was no medical justification for my rejection.
My leg bones healed up just fine a few months later, and I spent
part of the next year loading heavy boxes in a warehouse and
driving semi-trailer trucks. I suspect that, it being 1969, and
the army in Nam being by then in a state of near insurrection,
the Army had concluded it didn’t want people like me anymore.
Perhaps a year earlier, before Tet, I might instead have been
sent into infantry.
I tell this story because while it may not be heroic, I think
it contrasts well with the likes of a Dick Cheney, who hid
through the war years behind student deferments and his wife’s
skirt, or of a George Bush, who joined the Air National Guard
and made care to check a box saying he would be “unavailable for
overseas duty”—something the poor guys in the Guard now doing
multiple tours in the Iraqi desert didn’t have the option of
doing.
I don’t apologize for my opposition to the Vietnam War. And
while being prepared to go to jail for a principle may not rank
on the courage meter anywhere near to standing one’s ground
under fire during an enemy assault, or jumping on top of a live
grenade, I’m proud that I did my best to oppose it, and that I
never once tried to duck responsibility for my own actions.
Furthermore, I’ll stand my actions up against any of those in
the Bush administration or in Congress who are so quick to
support wars, but who hid behind student deferments or used
powerful connections to avoid military service or combat duty
themselves when it was their turn to “serve.”
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