The Draft

I’m in the middle of writing a narrative story about my brother. One of the many things I need to get down on paper before I/we forget.

As I research this narrative I find that three lives were interwoven and shaped by a mutual love of flying and the impact of a war half a world away. Ralph and I grew up building, flying and crashing model airplanes of all sorts. I remember Roger planning to be an airline pilot since early high school. He was always the sensible one. I had a woodie and surfed every possible moment. Roger had a Ford Falcon (a very sensible car) and worked to earn money for flight lessons. Ralph was going to be a rich contractor and be able to afford his own plane. I was going to fly for the Navy.

We all flew as professional pilots; our paths to that end was hardly anything we could have imagined. All because of a little war on the other side of the world that we would learn to call “The Southeast Asia War Games”.

The draft loomed over all young men of that age. If you didn’t stay in school you had maybe two years after high school before you could count on getting drafted. As the war progressed you had to be married and have a kid to avoid the draft after college. As he was five years older than me, Ralph got to deal with the draft first. Roger and I caught up with him though and we all were in Vietnam flying for the military at the same time.

Ralph graduated high school in 1959 and began college working on a business degree. He married his high school sweetheart, Karen in 1962. The draft board kept a close eye on those with student deferments and Ralph received his draft notice while he was still in college and married. As you might imagine, this development was somewhat disconcerting. The only way he could get a deferment was to be in grad school, have a child or be signed up with a military program. Like all of us he went shopping for the best deal he could enlist for.

The Navy and Marines offered the same program of direct enlistment into OCS and flight school afterwards. Both recruiters said, “Oh, you’ll be able to fly whatever you want after flight school”. Turns out he was only slightly less naive than I. After you get into the military and talk to those around you in the same boat, you learn one simple fact; recruiters are lying bastards.

Worse than used car salesmen who only cost you money, they at best rob you of years of your life, at worst they get you killed. And people wonder why some of us think that they shouldn’t be allowed to recruit on high school campuses. Most of the kids they sign up really believe that a responsible person in a position of authority wouldn’t lie to them.

This may sound a bit anti military but it is not. The military can be a great experience, providing structure and maturity like no other institution. But it is not for everyone. We inflict a horrible injustice on young people with incomplete brain development by lying to them and coercing them into what could be a disastrous decision. This still holds with an all volunteer military; very few 17 year olds are mature enough to deal with military indoctrination. This has been the basis of military training since we invented war. Consider the challenge facing the military; they must develop the best possible fighting unit to prevail on the battlefield. How do you get to that goal given the raw material available?

The US Marines have perfected the process. First take away their identity. That’s easy; remove any individuality by shaving their heads and putting them in identical clothing with no markings but who they belong to (the US Marines) and their last name. Then add in physical abuse, exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Then teach them that the only way they will survive is to support the team above all else and give them a new family, the Marines. “Leave no one behind” and “once a Marine, always a Marine” replaces the recruit’s family and gives them the confidence and security that was so recently stripped away. It is a form of brain washing and it doesn’t work very well on older, more mature recruits unless they are highly motivated in the first place.

The best way to provide a highly motivated pool of recruits is to have a very scary enemy threatening to destroy our way of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Once you have them they are very valuable, replacing them is costly and takes time. So our military invented an even more insidious method of solving the staffing problem, “Stop Loss” or more accurately,  the back door draft.

Simply tell them that our national security depends on maintaining their unit at peak readiness. We’re sorry, but we simply cannot honor the government’s contractual agreement because of your importance to the war effort. As you have undoubtedly heard, we are at war.

It’s another betrayal in the long list of injustices they are are just beginning to experience. The real fun will begin after they finally get out and have to deal with the VA.

And that is another whole rant. Mercifully, I’ll save that for later. If you are still here, thanks for listening.

Clear and cold here but that is relative.

Stay warm.