Spring 1969. America in another of what has become, in the last seventy years, one of its never ending, never winnable wars. The social divisions, the racial divisions, the political divisions even greater then than today.
Spring 1969. America in another of what has become, in the last seventy years, one of its never ending, never winnable wars. The social divisions, the racial divisions, the political divisions even greater then than today.
Chicago MEPS 1969
Spring 1969. America in another of what has become, in the last seventy years, one of its never ending, never winnable wars. The social divisions, the racial divisions, the political divisions even greater then than today. Did the social divisions of today begin with the 60’s? I think not. The racial divisions, the political divisions, clearly not.
The Viet Nam-era military draft served as one of the boldly demarcated lines of society’s divisions. Working class young men got drafted. Middle and upper class largely didn’t. The draft deferment system contained more than enough loopholes for those with money to escape. College, medical, marriage, joining the National Guard or reserves all served as escape routes to avoid the meatgrinder of Viet Nam.
After the experiences of the high school graduating classes of 1964, 1965 and 1966, those of us in the class of ’67 knew damned well that with the draft, we’d wind up in the “poor bloody infantry” as the Brits say. Oh, a few might wind up in a different career field but with over 540,000 American military members in Viet Nam in 1969 the Army needed infantrymen. Groundpounders. Cannonfodder. Nearly 12,000 died that year.
One other way to escape conscription existed. Enlist. That, after all, is one of the purposes of conscription, to inspire young men to join and have the option of selecting a branch and career field, rather than face the random chance of induction.
So, here’s the way the system worked. If you don’t have a draft deferment, in your 19th year you get a notice to report for a physical examination at the nearest MEPS, or Military Entrance Processing System. In my case, Chicago. Downtown Chicago. If you passed the physical, and damn near everyone did, so long as you had a heartbeat and could walk, you were called back four to six weeks later for a second physical to make sure you could still walk and chew bubble gum then induction.
April 1969. Roughly 40,000 men drafted that month. I get my notice to report for a physical. A handful of us meet in the pre-dawn chill of Northern Illinois spring at the Dekalb, Illinois, Selective Service System office. Selective Service system, the innocuous government name for what we all called the draft board, the bureaucracy which selected those of us exposed to the draft. Eighteen to twenty-five-year old males without an exemption or deferment.
Handed a roundtrip train ticket to downtown Chicago, sixty miles away, we were escorted to the train station for the 6 am milk-run by a middle-aged, faceless government employee. I supposed the escort’s presence existed to insure we didn’t waste the government’s ticket by fleeing to Canada. Little chance of that for me. Dad a veteran. Every uncle a veteran. You did what you had to do.
Every would-be service member goes in through a MEPS, whether enlistee, draftee or Academy wannabe. It wasn’t my first trip to MEPS. I’d been there three years earlier as a prospective Merchant Marine Academy midshipman. With Congressional nomination letter in hand and Dad in tow the treatment then far different from that I was about to receive. Failing the eye exam due to my nearsightedness, my precious slot at the Academy went to the next guy on the wait list.
While my eyesight prevented me from commissioning through the Academy, it certainly wasn’t bad enough to bar me from the draft. My devotion to beer, girls and pinochle and concurrent dereliction of academics while on a full-ride scholarship to the University of Illinois had now caught up to me.
Exam done, finished with the indignity of “bend over and smile”, I pondered my future as the Burlington Northern whistled westward past the suburbs and picked up speed through the still bare corn fields. Not one to trust my fate to the vagaries of the induction system I decided it was time to start visiting military recruiters.
My best friend from high school, Bob Neal, dead at eighteen since February ’68. Stepped on a land mine outside Hue. Marine. Although I’d considered the Marines in fall ’67, once Bob told me, while on leave before shipping to Viet Nam, “Oh you feel some pride getting though boot camp, otherwise the Marine Corps is bullshit,” was enough to convince me.
Ok, let’s talk to the Navy and the Army. The Air Force, not a consideration, it required a four-year commitment, although four of my closest friends from the football team had already departed for basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas. Four years when you’re nineteen seems a lifetime, especially when weighed against the two years extracted by the draft.
My boss, less than enthusiastic at me missing yet more work due to approaching military service, grumbled as I left the retail store that next day to visit the recruiting office a half hour away. I walked in to the Navy storefront. An overweight, blotchy faced, blurry eyed old chief petty officer needed a drink more than to answer my questions. Wandered next door to inquire of the Army recruiter, “Hey, I hear you’ve got a two-year enlistment program now.”
In contrast to the Navy chief, these two guys looked sharp. Trim, young, mid-twenties, tailored khakis. Crisp and intelligent.
“No, that rumor’s been going around. We only have four-year enlistments,” the taller recruiter responded.
“Wait a minute,” I replied, “I know the Army’s got three-year enlistments.”
He responded, “Can’t you read?” Pointing to the three-inch round badge on his breast pocket. “We’re Air Force.”
Peering at the quarter-inch print on blue background, I still couldn’t quite make it out but I took his word for it. “So, tell me about the Air Force,” I replied. With the encouragement of the draft and the lack of competition from the less than stellar Navy representative, the Air Force sergeant knew he didn‘t need to make a hard sell.
“Let’s see what you qualify for,” he responded. Forty-five minutes later, after taking the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, he told me, ‘Your scores are high enough you can have any career field you want.”
For some reason getting out well before my 24th birthday seemed incredibly important to my then, still teen-aged brain. “Ok, if you can get me in before the end of May, I’ll go.”
“Let me check,” he said. A few minutes later, “Yeah, you can ship on May 21.” “Great,” I thought, “my birthday’s September 22nd, so I’ll get out four months before I’ll be 24.” Now, fifty years later, I have no clue why that was so important to me. I signed on the dotted line.
May 21, 1969, back to the train station. This time in Aurora, Illinois, to catch the commuter train the twenty-five miles downtown. My parents drove me down with my plastic Plano Reapers high school gym bag with a change of underwear, shave kit and toothbrush. “Don’t bring a bunch of stuff with you,” the recruiter cautioned. “They’ll issue you everything you need and you won’t have anywhere to store anything.”
The lines at MEPS were just as long, just as impersonal, suffering the same indignities in skivvies and t-shirts and, for the draftees, just as nerve-wracking. Me? Smug in my knowledge that I knew where I was going and what I’d be doing. And just as it had been three years earlier, as an enlistee, a volunteer, my treatment at the hands of the station staff seemed far superior to that of the draftees. I, after all, stepped forward, volunteered, while they were dragging their feet, forced to enter.
I’d already taken the oath and thus impervious to the pokes and prods of the staff as I stood in that bare, puke green, ugly room. Eighteen young men ordered into line for induction to the military service of a grateful nation as I watched, when a grim-faced fellow in what I now know to be a Marine uniform marched in, walked down the line, counted to ten and ordered the tenth man, “You come with me. You’re a Marine now.” The look on the draftee’s face that of a man who’s just been ordered to face the firing squad. We all stared silently at him as he followed those crisp blue trousers with the red stripe. “Poor bastard,” we all thought. Thus, the vagaries of random selection.
Three years, nine months and two days later I left active duty of the United States Air Force having risen from E-1, airman basic, lowest of the low, only slightly better than maggot civilian to that of a buck sergeant, having hated damn near every minute of it. DD 214, an honorable discharge, in hand. Status as a veteran. Entitlement to the GI Bill. Still broke. Still working class. But maybe, just maybe with a ladder up.
PS. A week after I reported for duty, my dad opened the letter I’d avoided. It read: “The President of the United States, To William L. Enyart, Greetings. You are hereby ordered for induction into the armed forces of the United States and to report on June 6, 1969.”
He went to the white, rotary dial wall phone to call the Selective Service System. “My son, William L. Enyart, won’t be reporting,” he told the faceless, anonymous, unknown friend and neighbor. “What do you mean?” the response. “He’s already in basic training,” Dad’s reply. “Oh, okay, we’ll take him off the list.”
Name lined out. On to the next nineteen-year-old.
PPS. June 6, 2012, forty-three years, three weeks and one day later, Major General William L. Enyart hung up his uniform for the last time, buttons facing right, just as the drill instructors taught him to do.