The military draft served its purpose
It’s been two generations since the United States ended the draft. Not since 1973 have young men been conscripted into the military.
And John Murtha aside, no one has seriously suggested we bring the draft back, even during times like this and the crisis with Russia over Ukraine.
Things were different during the Vietnam War. If you were young like me, the draft was a very big thing. A lot of us felt it was a veritable sword of Damocles hanging over our collective heads, capable of snatching us from our cozy civilian lives and sending us off to fight that awful war in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia.
Of course, I had the advantage of being enrolled in college. In the late sixties, this meant I was exempt from the the draft as long as I was in school.
Not my friend. A year older and a year ahead of me at North Union High School, he was a quirky man-child with a toothy, demonic chortle and a rude shock of spiked hair.
He was an athlete, a pitcher with a sharp curve and hard fastball. Once, before a game at Bailey Park he announced he was to going to plunk me a good one. And when he did he grinned. “Hey, Dick, did that hurt?” he wanted to know later.
One summer night in 1965 he somehow got the keys to my snug Renault and stole off with it. We were at the now long-abandoned miniature golf course between Coolspring and Connellsville streets in Uniontown, near the Dairy Queen. He didn’t come back, and he didn’t come back. It was just like him to cause me this sort of aggravation. An hour or so passed; finally, he drove into sight. Then he had the nerve to ask for a ride home.
My pal didn’t go to college. And he soon felt the long, cold arm of the government on his sturdy shoulders. He was eventually sent to Vietnam.
The night before leaving he invited me to his house. I’m sure his dad was there, but I don’t exactly recall. His mother was a looming presence. She was hard to miss. My friend and I were in the living room when his mother popped in from the kitchen.
Training her eyes on me, she practically bellowed, “Why is my son going to Vietnam, and you’re not?”
With that, she retreated once again into her private anguish. Looking back, it is clear she couldn’t believe what was happening to her beloved only child. I was proof-positive that it didn’t have to be so. She probably thought of me as privileged, which I was — privileged to be sheltered from the draft and from service in Vietnam.
My friend returned from the war. He was wounded when a land mine exploded near him. He was OK, though. He was alive. I haven’t seen him in a good many years, though I spoke with him on the phone not too long ago. It was just like before. Like it had always been between us.
The draft is never coming back, despite any number of foreign provocations. The military wants no part of it. Neither does the public.
The draft was a bracing experience, a sobering presence in millions of young lives. It focused your attention. A conscripted Army won World War II. The draft saw us through Korea, Vietnam and most of the Cold War.
It also served as a political tripwire for politicians eager to unleash the rat-tat-tat of live fire on an enemy. It galvanized opposition to the Vietnam War. No one wanted to be the last conscript to die in that bloody, distant conflict.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books of local history: “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com