Young Americans and the Draft

Abstract

men were of draft age, but only 8.7 million men served in the military. Of those, about 2.2 million men served in Vietnam, while 6.5 million served elsewhere in the world. As the historian Michael S. Foley has observed, the Johnson and Nixon presidencies forced draft-age men to choose either to fight in a war that many considered to be illegal and immoral, to go to jail instead of serving in the military, or find a way to avoid both war and jail. These choices, says Foley, haunt many of that generation and . . . contribute significantly to the cynicism so many American have come to share about the faithfulness of their government. Reckoning with how and whether to serve in the military was such a wracking decision that many popular magazines, such as Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Senior Scholastic, The New Yorker and even Better Homes and Gardens offered advice to draft age men and their families. Draft-age men faced myriad possibilities. They could wait to be drafted and serve as told. They could volunteer for a branch of the military, reserves, National Guard, or ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps). They could try to get conscientious objector status, which was very difficult during the Vietnam War era. They could avoid service by trying to get deferments for being married, having children, or being in college or graduate school. They could get or act hurt in order to try to flunk the Selective Service System's physical and psychological examinations to determine fitness for military service. They could elect to go to jail for up to five years. Some men entered the military, but later regretted it and chose to desert. Some men were unable to find deferments or could not face jail. Both of these groups were forced to go into exile and went into hiding all over the world, including underground in the United States. Canada and Sweden were the best places to go in order to avoid risk of arrest or extradition for violation of Selective Service or military laws. Foley feels that draft resisters were to the anti-Vietnam War movement what lunch counter sit-in participants were to the civil rights movement. The draft resistance movement started as early as 1967, predating other events that polarized much of the nation about the war, such as the Tet Offensive, revelations of the atrocities at My Lai, and the invasion of Cambodia. Protesting the Vietnam War: The March on the Pentagon, October 21, 1967. (Photo by Frank Wolfe, courtesy of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, serial number: 7052-8.)