Viet Nam, A Confession

I’ve been watching a series on the Viet Nam war that provoked a memory of those days when I struggled to avoid the draft. I was not alone in this personal battle. My father was involved in the process. I remember those bone-chilling moments when I was to open various communications from the draft board, how difficult it was for me to imagine a uniform and a free ticket to Viet Nam. It was scary. I did not want to go. I am ashamed to write that I felt very little obligation or patriotism toward my country at the time. It never crossed my mind that I would volunteer for military service. I was prepped for a career as a minister. That was always the reality. And, with great family fanfare, I had been sent to bible school to save the world. The government had established a 4d Selective Service status for me and other potential ministers to avoid the draft while studying for the ministry. It was in my sophomore year when I first heard of Viet Nam. During my junior year the Viet Nam drumbeat became intense and so did my prospects for the draft. 

I had chosen to take a year off from school to travel in ministry with the Envoys, a gospel quartet. My status changed to 1a. I was declared a potential draftee. 

Viet Nam was a threat to me. We hired an attorney, Dad made visits to the Draft Board on my behalf to help turn their thinking away from my lottery number coming up to send me to the jungles of Viet Nam. I was “on the road” with the Envoys spreading the news that was good and fearing news from the draft board as not good. Somehow we got through it. I really don’t know if my number would have come up on the lottery, we thought it best, just in case the government dared, to defend me from the government before my ticket to the jungle war was printed. 

So now, many years later, I am of the mind that I should have volunteered. It was such a confusing time, and I, answering a call to ministry, was insulated from the very thing that should have involved my full attention. Several of my friends were sent to Viet Nam as draftees, two of them did not come back while I travelled the country spewing rhetoric in song no one really needed to hear. It was an excuse to distance one’s self from the chaos of war and politics. There must have been pain, big time pain, when the announcement was made to the parents of my friends that their son was not to come home alive. Why did I have reason to believe I could escape the draft? Who was I that could live a vagabond style, as if my sense of self-importance and ministry was justified? I have no answer to any of those questions, only a blank response, and no justification for escaping my responsibilities. I have lived a long life only to have come to regret my immature actions while a young man who may have lost his life in Viet Nam. The thought of that sends chills down my spineless spine.