4f club : dodging the bullet

by Art Chantry (art@artchantry.com)

you little kids born after 1955 probably won’t recognize this thing. i’d forgotten about it, too. but, when it fell out of an old file, it really took me back. this is my draft card! yeah, i’m old enough to have been sucked into the draft. originally i was ’4F’ (the general category). but this is my final draft card – for the the infamous ‘lottery’. the way it worked at the end of the vietnam era draft was that all your birthdays were thrown into a hat and pulled out at random. if you were turning 18 (just graduating from hi skool) and you’re birthday was pulled out (say) in the top 100 birthdays, you were drafted into the army. most of the draftees (as opposed to those who signed up voluntarily) just got sent to vietnam. basically you were ‘cannon-fodder’ – handy meat targets for ‘the enemy’. cool, huh?

there was an old corny saying back then – “never trust anybody over 30.” sounds really stupid now. but, back then it meant that if you were young (aka, under 30) everybody older than 30 was trying to KILL YOU through this institution. there was a lot of truth in that, too. vietnam was a war that specifically killed young poor people. if you were healthy wealthy and white, you could ‘buy’ a deferment (a doctor’s diagnosis of a debilitating ‘condition’ like high blood pressure or flat feet). or you could go into the college system and be deferred as well (again, buy an education). that old superhawk dick cheney got FIVE college deferments! he never spent a minute in uniform. if you were too poor or too dumb or too confused to find a way out, the ‘over 30′ crowd wanted to send you to die in the war (or survive two years in viet nam. then you were generally mustered out and dumped back on the streets with nothing.) if you ‘dodged’ the draft your fate was even worse. the stories i’ve heard from old friends who did that are incredibly grim.

try to imagine living under that system. it meant that high school kids all knew that they were going to die when they left school. if you were a girl, it meant your boyfriends, brothers, pals were all going to disappear and never come back. it was like living under the full knowledge that there was no tomorrow – “no future for you.” so, we were a really fucked up bunch of dumb kids. we lived life a lot harder and a lot faster back in those days – the ’1960′s’. ever wonder why so many crazy things happened so fast back then? why so many extreme fashions and styles and ideas and protests all changed in so short a stretch of a time? why that thing we all called ‘the revolution’ was happening in just a few years? it’s because we all knew it was going to be over fast if we didn’t do something – ANYthing. it was a very very dark time for young people.

we all now seemed to think that the 60′s was all about “sex, drugs and rock and roll.” nope. it was about having a life before it was taken from you. it wasn’t fun, it was desperate. we had to pack a shitload of living into a tiny time span. marriage? who has the time? see the world? you’d better hit the road NOW. adventure? get busy, kid. school? why bother? careers? make me laugh! we all look back in our little ‘retro’ nostalgia and get all squishy about the ‘togetherness’ and ‘community’ and all that. but, that’s like thinking the 1950′s actually was just like ‘happy days.’ it’s a myth be built to cover the miserable truth. we we’re all in a fox hole with live ammo flying over our heads. so we all ran like hell.

the war in vietnam lasted 9 years – it was the longest war in united states history. but the iraq ‘war’ (or whatever it was) lasted nine years, too – and that THING going on in afghanistan is hitting the 11 year mark. but, there is no draft. so we all can ignore it and whine about how we don’t have enough money to buy xmas presents this year. man, you kids have it so easy. after immanent death hanging over your head like a giant sword of damocles, you have no idea how easy you clowns have it. it’s all right there in front of you. you kids can literally do anything you want. we have so MUCH more power to control our lives in comparison, that (to my eye) we all look like spoiled babies. the only people of our generation that have a right to bitch are those poor bastards who spent all those rotations on front. man, the sacrifice they’ve made compared to us is so HUGE that we all need to kiss their feet. that’s from the mouth of a guy who hates the military worse than anything, too.

i never got drafted. i was a poor kid (but bright student) with no future no matter what happened. i was prime meat for the draft. back then, i figgered if i was lucky i’d end up working at a grocery store all my life, then go to vietnam and die. when i turned 18, they held the lottery and my birthday was pulled (as i recollect) around 81. that meant i was sure-fire draft bait, especially when even middle class kids could buy a deferment at that point (there were so many doctors willing to help.) but, i was too alone and screwed to even get that much assistance. i was supposed to report for my army physical in a month or so – when the draft was suddenly cancelled! i did not expect that at all. i was so ignorant, i just figgered i was going to die. i had NO plans beyond that.

after that, nobody knew what to do. we were all so fucked up and crazy living fast, that it was like running a marathon and being told that the race was over after ten measly laps. we just kept running even

gh we weren’t going anywhere at all – or AWAY from anything, either. but, the 1970′s were a different sort of story to tell.

ADDENDUM:

AC: …all of the ‘neo-cons’ were draft dodgers. never trust somebody who hides behind a gun. they’re all cowards….maybe i was “1A” as well. now that i think about it it, ’4F’ is a discharge. i forget now. it’s been a loooong time….