What Is A Draft Dodger?

Author’s note: In the 2016 presidential campaign… and beyond… detractors criticized Donald Trump for avoiding military service because he had a heel spur. The implication is a tiny heel spur shouldn’t have been enough to keep him out of the service in the Vietnam era. People have charged that hiding behind such a “minor” injury made him a “draft dodger,” a negative term implying cowardice and disloyalty to the United States, and the issue brought the old 60s-70s term “draft dodger” back into vogue. I will say, I have had a heel spur and it is no minor injury, especially for someone who would be going into combat. Still, the question remains, was Donald Trump a “draft dodger?”

President Bill Clinton had a student deferment, which would run out upon graduation. When that happened, his deferment continued when he agreed to join the Reserve Officers Training Corps. He later rescinded that decision and did not report for service, technically making him AWOL. Later he received a number in the draft lottery high enough that ensured he would not be drafted and a quirk in the corresponding legislation technically made him ineligible for the draft beyond that point. Was Bill Clinton a “draft dodger?”

Two silver bracelets sit on the desk in my office. They have been there for nearly a half century. At the end of the Vietnam War, people began to realize a cloud hung over the relief of having our soldiers finally coming home. The North Vietnamese government, now about to take over the entire country, had never been at all open or forthcoming about their prisoners of war. It seemed likely that government would continue to withhold information about prisoners of war (POWs) and those missing in action (MIAs). The issue was the genesis of a movement designed to ensure those soldiers would be remembered and brought home. As a part of that movement, many of us wore a metal bracelet engraved with the name of a missing or captive soldier. We vowed not to remove the bracelet until that soldier came home. My bracelet was in honor and support of Colonel Kenneth Fleenor; my wife Carolyn’s bore the name of Major Terry Uyeyama. I wrote this article about their full story: https://tinyurl.com/POW-Bracelets.

Happily, both men came home shortly after the end of the war. Carolyn and I were able to remove our bracelets. That’s when I put them on my desk, and they have been there ever since. They serve as a reminder of what my resistance to the Vietnam War was all about: the soldiers.

I was a college student in the turbulent late ’60s and early ’70s — the peak of the Vietnam War. Supporters of that war perceived those protesting against the war were against the soldiers. That was true for some, but usually it was the other way around. Ending the war would bring the soldiers home. I attended more than one rally where the crowd chanted, “We’re not against the soldiers… we’re against the war.” We needed to get that point across but it was difficult when it seemed the government was not listening. Actually, I think it was, but the country was sucked so deep in the quagmire that was Vietnam there was no easy way out without a lot of politicians losing face.

Ironically, it really wasn’t even our war. The French had ruled Vietnam as a colony for decades. The Vietnamese resisted France’s authoritarian government and rose up against it. The US eventually supported France and when France got tired of the whole mess and pulled out, it left us holding the bag. Americans thought the US had only offered support in the form of money and material. However, John Kennedy’s assurance, “There are no United States ground troops in Vietnam,” turned out to be the first of a long list of lies.

No one who did not live through that era could ever fully understand the damage that war did to our psyches, especially to the country’s youth. For some insight, watch Ken Burns’ masterpiece Vietnam. Read the Pentagon Papers. Watch tonight’s news: every time you hear the word “Coronavirus” substitute the word “Vietnam” and multiply that by a decade. Hidden under a very thin veneer of lies mounted on lies, we sent 58,000 young men and women to their deaths in a war we knew we could not win. We had the firepower to win it, but had the US escalated the war to the point it guaranteed a win, Red China would have stepped in — probably along with the USSR — and it would have been World War III — an act of nuclear suicide. While other war memorials are noble reminders of our victories, it is for good reason Washington’s Vietnam memorial is a simple, somber reminder of the empty loss of those lives. It is not a tribute to American victory, because there was no victory.

In college I wrote exactly one editorial about the Vietnam War. Not my greatest journalistic effort, its theme boiled down to, “as long as we’re over there, I’m on our side.” What a bold statement… next I’ll come out in favor of the flag, mother, apple pie, and puppies. But even when I wrote that piece the fact was I was against the war — not against the US, not against the soldiers, but against the war. Morally, I knew I could not be a part of it. Unfortunately, there was a problem:

The draft.

I and thousands upon thousands like me would have almost eagerly signed up to defend our country; but not to defend a political quagmire where the guys that started it had run like scared dogs and politicians just wanted to save their jobs. The soldiers over there thought they were fighting for our country, freedom, and liberty. All well and good. In reality, what they were fighting for was to save a bunch of politician’s asses.

Guys (and the draft was only for men) reacted to the draft in different ways. Some left the country. Some faked illness or injury. Some simply “forgot” to register. Others openly resisted and burned their draft cards. They were, and still are, labeled “draft dodgers.”

I and most of my friends did none of those things; but not many wanted to go to ‘Nam. So, what is a “draft dodger?” Is it someone who ran off to Canada or openly challenged the draft? Or, is it also someone who develops a strategy to avoid the draft legally? Here’s what some of my friends did:

I met Barry G. my freshman year and wound up sharing an apartment with him my senior year. He joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and was a member all four years. To me, he was Mr. Military. He talked in military terms (studying for finals was “the big push”). He took military classes. The more time he spent in ROTC, the more he liked it; but his main goal was to stay out of Vietnam. After graduation, because of his service and education, the Army sent him to Germany, and he made a career of the military. He did all of this so he would not get drafted and go to Vietnam. Was Barry — “Mr. Military” — a “draft dodger?”

Craig H. was a free spirit… a borderline hippie. He owned an old Renault Dauphine as unreliable as any car ever built. A standard accessory with that old junker was a hand crank he actually had to use to start the thing on many occasions. He was a gifted photographer and didn’t have a military bone in his body. Toward the end of our junior year, however, he realized if he didn’t do something, he was going to get drafted and wind up in Vietnam. So he joined the army and signed up for the tactical weapons program. They guaranteed if he completed the program he’d stay in the US, and that was the clincher for Craig. He, like Barry, joined up so he would not get drafted and go to Vietnam. Was Craig — who became a tactical weapons expert — a “draft dodger?”

I had my own strategy. Like Craig, as my college career with its draft deferment began to wrap up, the writing was on the wall — do something or get drafted and go wading in rice paddies. One of my friends advised me to join the National Guard. It sounded like a great program, After training, it allowed you to stay at home, work, and between deployments go back for limited service, earning National Guardsmen the title of “Weekend Warriors.” I was ready to sign up. The problem — so was everyone else. The program was so popular I probably had a better chance of getting into Harvard Law School. I talked to my dad about it. Dad was a flag-waving, red-white-and-blue World War II veteran who didn’t want me to go to Vietnam any more than I did. Dad was also a well-connected businessman who knew a lot of important people.

One of his contacts was a powerful Indianapolis banker who had been the Chairman of the National Democratic party during the Truman administration. He was also the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Indiana University; and probably most importantly, he was Dad’s fishing buddy. Dad asked him if he could help and help he did. Next thing I knew, I was bound for the National Guard. Problem solved: Like Craig and Barry I would shed my floppy long hair and bell bottoms and become a Weekend Warrior so I wouldn’t get drafted and go to Vietnam. Was I a “draft dodger?”

The stage was set. Late in the spring of my senior year I was prepared to head for my military career. I can’t say I was excited about it, but I really thought I had a pretty sweet deal. Within weeks of graduation, I went home for a weekend. My brother Jim and I grabbed a basketball and went outside to play a game of one-on-one in the driveway. At one point I got the ball and dribbled back out toward the edge of the drive. As I started to turn toward the basket I made a misstep and went down hard, dislocating my knee. It was the worst injury and most pain I have ever known. The injury was devastating and permanent. Even today I still walk with a strange gate.

A few weeks later I graduated from college. Just days after that I went for my military physical. They took one look at that knee and rejected me outright. The Weekend Warrior’s military career was over. Instead, I got a job as a high school math teacher; ironically a position that was considered in service to the country and would have earned a draft deferment, even though I didn’t need it.

Vietnam was the devastating underlying current that defined the youth of my generation. Every day was Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam, a black hole of human misery and, as history bears out, a political folly. The years have dulled the pain for some, and that’s not a good thing. Today, many see Vietnam as yet another American triumph — a triumph where our enemy ran us out and took over the whole country. The price was 58,000 precious young American lives along with countless Vietnamese casualties.

Barry, Craig, I, and a multitude of others were willing to serve, but not jump on that bandwagon to perdition. We didn’t wait around to be drafted. So were we “draft dodgers?” You judge, but we were not service-dodgers. We did the two most American things we could under the circumstances: we signed up to serve and we spoke out against a government that was wrong.

Over the years I have found it somewhat ironic that many — probably a majority — of those who labeled Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and others as “draft dodgers” never faced the draft and never joined the military. Unlike us, they had a choice. Were they simply “military service dodgers?” And I always wonder, how did they serve our country?