FATE

We never know what the next day or hour or minute will bring to our lives. In an instant, the trajectory of our very existence can be altered forever by health, accidents, or hopefully good fortune. I’ve been thinking lately about the service members killed in the Iran conflict, war, incursion or whatever you choose to call it. Yes, they were volunteers but nevertheless they are gone and I’m not sure it was necessary.  Like most Americans, I applaud the sacrifice our men and women in uniform make to ensure our nation remains “land of the free and home of the brave.”

This whole situation got me to thinking about the Baby Boom Generation and Vietnam.  I’ll go out on a limb and say the almost 59,000 lives lost neither proved the validity or lack thereof of the Domino Theory of Geopolitics in which scholars surmised that if one nation fell to the Communists, most certainly an adjacent nation would fall and then another and another.  I was 22 years old at the height of the conflict in 1968 and here is my story.

When a senior at Western Illinois University, I had been awarded a NDEA Title 4 Fellowship at the University of Florida to begin in the Fall of 1968. This was a big deal and Diane and I, who had recently been married, were excited about the grand academic adventure that lay ahead. It would not be so easy.  I had received my 1A draft classification upon graduation, thus canceling the certainty of continued academic pursuits.

On November 6, 1968, I got on a yellow school bus at 5 a.m. with 70 other, mostly graduate students at the University of Florida. The outcome of the Nixon/Humphrey Presidential election had not yet been decided and wouldn’t be until later in the day. We headed for Jacksonville, Florida, to take our pre induction physicals. The bus was eerily quiet as we knew where we were going and how fate would potentially alter our lives over the next twelve hours.

We arrived at the location where physicals were to be administered and the odyssey began.  Taking your Army physical is not at all like visiting your friendly local practioner who treats you kindly and with compassion. The folks who had planned our day lacked all skills related to human dignity and decency. If you weren’t apprehensive when you arrived, you clearly were within five minutes as order after order was barked out and any sense of decorum or civility was “out the window.”  

Our first stop was something simulating an ACT or SAT exam designed to weed out the intellectually infirm.  They netted three lucky souls. We then had the visual exam. Asked if we could see the wall in front of us, an answer of yes, moved you along. An answer of no subjected those poor souls to a brutal cross examination as there was to be no funny business; they needed soldiers and General Westmoreland was impatient.  Then the ultimate indignity, the lots of fun, urine specimen to be provided in a small plastic cup in front of 70 of your closet friends who you have never seen before today. For me, this was cruel and unusual punishment. I admit, I have a nervous bladder and don’t find it easy to urinate in a public setting. I stood there thinking about how badly I had to “go” while simultaneously giving myself karate chops to my bladder area in hopes of generating what they desired but to no avail. I was desperate and with time ticking slyly asked the fine fellow next to me if he could spare a little. He looked at me as if I were crazy but thankfully, he complied.  What made this completely idiotic, was this fellow was African American and what would “they” have done to me if I were diagnosed with sickle cell anemia, a disease generally suffered by that segment of the species.

I was at the last stop and moving along in flying colors. I would soon get my opportunity to serve my country in what was the most unpopular of wars. There we were, 70 of us, standing in a line in our underpants and t-shirts. The call was barked out clearly and definitively, “Gentlemen, spread your cheeks.”  Now, I’m a nice, polite suburban boy so I complied with what I thought was a rather genteel command. I placed my index fingers in my mouth and “spread them.” Oops, not exactly what they were looking for. I glanced both ways down the line and there were scores of men bent over, hands separating buttocks. Oh, good God, this couldn’t be happening.  I quickly made an executive, leadership decision and jumped out of line finding myself standing meekly in front of the seated officer in charge of this descent into hell.

“Yes, what do you want recruit?” I handed him THE ENVELOPE.” You need a little backstory here. I had a severe overbite as a child and my parents couldn’t afford orthodontic treatment so when I got to the University of Florda, I sought out Dr. Jack Giles, a local orthodontist. He looked in my mouth and immediately prescribed a course of dental removals to be followed by full application of appliances but only the former had been accomplished by November 6^th.  Good old Jack did write a letter stating what a mess I was and that I needed treatment.  I handed the letter to the gestapo agent in charge who felt he was too important to deal with such trivial matters. He glanced at it, not paying close attention to what the letter actually said and he looked at me and said, “Braces?” I kept my overbite mouth closed as best I could, and muttered, “Yes.” He then quickly uttered the sweet words “1Y” and passed me on to the final bureaucrat I would encounter that day who handed me my new draft status giving me a six-month deferment.  By that time, I had braces on and got a high number in the national draft lottery. I would remain a Fellowship student at the University of Florida.  I found a pay phone and gave Diane the good news.

The bus ride home was as quiet as the ride there. Probably five or six of us were spared. Most of the remainder would be losing their student deferments and moving along in the drafting process. They were sitting there lamenting what was to come. I was not.

In a single day, the trajectory of my life, at least in the short term, had been assured. I would remain a student not a soldier. Fate had assured me the opportunity to matriculate, get an advanced degree, and with a little luck, get a teaching job. I did all three and have never looked back. My journey in life was determined by fate and the lack of attention one Army officer paid to a one paragraph letter. And so it goes…