Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 19:01:36 EDT
From: freemanaz@aol.com
Subject: [azpeace] My Draft-Dodging Days
To: progressive-libertarians@yahoogroups.com
Cc: azpeace@yahoogroups.com
Reply-To: azpeace@yahoogroups.com


http:www.strike-the-root.com/columns/deLaubenfels/delaubenfels16.html

My Draft-Dodging Days

by John deLaubenfels 


Ah, the Vietnam war!  I landed at the University of California, Berkeley, in 
the fall of 1965, one year after Mario Savio had ignited the "Free Speech 
Movement," but just in time to witness some of the earliest, and, as time 
went on, some of the later, anti-war protests.  

I had been an avid photographer since the age of six.  By the time I arrived 
in Berkeley, a skinny 16-year-old kid, I had a fair collection of 
photographic equipment.  In the fall of 1965, a hot new B&W film had just 
come onto the market with an astonishing ASA of 500.  And so, one fall 
evening, I loaded up my camera and went out to photograph one of the first 
anti-war marches, on Telegraph Avenue, just two blocks from Barrington Hall, 
the dorm where I lived.  I will never forget that night. 

Actually, it only became particularly memorable in light of the terrible 
antipathy that developed between students and police just a few years later.  
But in 1965, the cops were much more baffled than angry. 

I had my camera, complete with strobe (quite high-tech then, extremely heavy 
and slow by today's standards) in hand, and was capturing pix of the 
marchers.  Standing in the middle of the treet, with my back turned to an 
advancing line of police, the first thing I knew, I was completely surrounded 
by cops, at night, during an anti-war march organized by radical college 
students.  Dare I admit that I was scared?  I was. 

What happened?  One of the cops, holding his stick between his hands, hustled 
me off the street and onto the sidewalk.  There was no violence, toward me or 
anybody else, in the fall of 1965.  

By 1968, all that had changed, and I saw cops, sticks raised, chasing people 
as fast as they could across Sproul Plaza.  Also, by 1968, I walked to class 
beneath groves of trees that still held yesterday's tear gas, and wept 
whether I grieved or not. 

But I digress.  Besides staying clear of cops with raised sticks, I stayed 
the heck out of Vietnam, thank God!  And though, as it unfolded, I did not 
have to take any extreme measures to do so, I make no apology today for 
having resolved that I would pursue, first a medical exemption, then, if 
necessary, a move to Canada, in oder to give the finger to the U.S. war 
machine. 

My claim to a medical deferment was based upon a near-fatal encounter with a 
bee at age 10.  I'd always had bad swelling after stings, lasting for weeks, 
but this time I also started going into shock within a few minutes of being 
stung.  By the time the doctor in the emergency room saw me, he elected to 
inject adrenaline directly into a vein, a risky procedure (one's blood 
pressure peaks dangerously when the drug reaches the heart).  As it happened, 
I got a nasty headache but didn't suffer a stroke, and the symptoms of shock 
receded within minutes.  The swelling ran its usual course. 

However, my regular doctor, whom I contacted years later for verification of 
the allergy, did not agree that I had a life-threatening condition.  He was 
contemptuous of my frank admission of wanting to avoid the draft, and said 
that he could offer no support.  He had, you see, administered a series of 
shots which might possibly have dealt with the allergy.  The shots consisted 
of a gradually increasing dose of bee venom, and I had indeed worked up to 
the equivalent of almost an entire real sting before the series was through.  
However, it was well known that the effectiveness of the shots varies widely 
among subjects, many of whom continue to have life-threatening reactions to 
insect stings months or years later. 

(I did have to visit an emergency room in 1991, after I accidentally pinched 
a wasp in the door and got stung on the neck.  Again, a shot of adrenaline 
saved my bacon.  I carry the stuff whenever I'm far from home.  I've also had 
several stings since my treatment that did not require medical intervention.) 

I was "bummed."  I took a bus to San Francisco and met with a doctor who was 
sympathetic to avoiding the draft.  He told me that my allergy was almost 
certainly bad enough to stay out, and gave me the names of several East Bay 
doctors I might visit. 

Did I mention that I had dropped out of college?  I went back, and finished, 
a year later, but during that hiatus, was classified 1A.  For those 
unfamiliar with the draft, that means "prime meat, ready to be cooked, 
served, and eaten."  I was required to take an official Physical Examination 
in Oakland, where, like Arlo Guthrie, I was instructed to prance about in my 
underwear for several hours.  I was pronounced fit to play the role of Uncle 
Sam's Sacrificial Lamb. 

This was the first year of the draft lottery.  Does anybody remember that 
lottery today?  Each member of the year's crop of potential harvestees got a 
random number, from one to 365 (or 366 in a leap year), assigned to his 
birthday.  The number for my birth date, October 29, was 229, luckier than 
average.  But, in the first half of that year, numbers through 195 were 
called for Vietnam "duty."  

Then, for reasons that are still not clear to me, the second half of the 
year's draftees were taken from the same pool, one through 195.  My 229 was 
never called, and once that year had gone by, was unlikely ever to be called. 
 A couple of years later, my younger brother got a 365, the best possible 
number, for his birthday, Christmas 1951, and he also was not drafted. 

So we both escaped without firing a shot.  Many others were called, served, 
and died, all for . . . all for . . . uhhh . . . was there ANYTHING that the 
United States accomplished in Vietnam?  Other than spraying so many tons of 
Agent Orange that birth defects still abound after 35 years?  Other than 
destroying one village after another "in order to save it"?  Other than 
coining cute phrases like "Napalm sticks to kids"? 

No.  We accomplished less than nothing, at huge cost.  And we treated the 
boys who DID go, and who DID survive, as pariahs.  It was a shameful 
government cluster-f*** in every way.  JFK, LBJ, and RMN, wherever you are, 
you may all hang your heads in shame NOW. 

I worked with a guy in the late '70's who had been a gunner on a helicopter 
in 'Nam.  He spoke very briefly of the nightmares that still haunted him, of 
people's bodies turning into red pulp, exactly as he had witnessed (and it 
was his machine gun, you understand, that had turned those men and women from 
human beings into red pulp).  Beyond the nightmares, he carried dozens of 
pieces of shrapnel in his legs, and went to the doctor every few months to 
have the bits that had migrated to near the surface removed.  His limp was 
barely noticeable by 1980. 

How quickly any of us can acquire wounds!  It takes but a fraction of a 
second for shrapnel to penetrate the skin and embed itself into our bones.  
Quick in, slow out: To be healed takes much longer, even if our friends can 
no longer see any limp in our step.  The nightmare of red pulp lingers, 
possibly forever. 

I am very sorry for my brothers and sisters who chose to go, and who either 
died or were badly scarred by the war.  But I make no apology for having 
decided to stay the hell out.  None.  Nada.  Zero.  Zilch.  The United States 
were not being invaded, and any other reason for war is strictly illegitimate 
(see a small document called the Constitution). 

Let those individuals, like the bloodthirsty Rich Lowry of the NRO, volunteer 
for whatever wars they'd like to fight around the globe.  I'll stay home, 
thank you.  If this nation is ever truly in danger, I'll be glad to 
participate in its defense, with whatever weapons and strength I have. 

Those were my draft-dodging days, long gone in years but vivid in memory.  
Experiences like that have accumulated to make me the "radical" that I am 
today, contemptuous of any attmpt on the part of government to enslave young 
men (or young women, or . . . .). 

To those who advocate reinstating the draft, I would urge every one to 
volunteer yourselves, rather than asking someone else to go out and get shot 
for whatever cause you have in mind.  There is a word for anybody who would 
compel another to die on his behalf: murderer.  The penalties for murder are, 
I believe, quite severe, and rightly so. 


 July 5, 2002


John deLaubenfels is a 53-year old native born citizen of the United States, 
a programmer by profession and music lover by avocation, who is passionate 
about preserving (and restoring) the basic freedoms of this country, and, if 
possible, the world

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