Vietnam War Draft Lottery

Richard, Pennsylvania, 1970. No. 243: The Boys On The Bus

I received a high lottery number in 1970 but don't recall the exact number, except that it put me pretty much out of harm's way. What was curious is that I was classified as 4-F in 1969 and I didn't expect to be in the lottery. I got the classification after my second draft physical notice in 1968 (my first was in 1965 when I quit undergraduate school and lost my student exemption, but got it back when I transferred to the UW) that came soon after I was arrested at the 1968 Democratic National Convention (no coincidence there!).

About 30 or so of us from the Madison campus were on that bus to Milwaukee in the early Spring of 1969, and many of them, as I was, were anti-war activists. And in that bus there were more feigned, imagined or exaggerated illnesses and maladies than you could find on WebMD today, more medical literature memorized in support of those maladies, more doctor's notes and more shrink notes, and more pills and sundry substances pumped into so many bodies to elevate blood pressures, cause nausea, and induce diarrhea than you could have imagined packed into one bus, all in an effort, not always successful, to insure against acceptance into the military!

It took some weeks to recover from the damage they inflicted on themselves for this event. I for one had shrink letters which helped get me the 4-F classification, and I "got" the depression I claimed and ended up taking medication for it!

And I have to say that those doctors and other military personnel at the exam center were some of the most patient people in the world with all the shenanigans that went on there by our group. A lot of us were turned down just to get rid of us and end the chaos. We were really out of control and obnoxious.

But certainly I can recall that all of my friends and I watched that lottery intensely and cheered for those getting the high numbers, and shared the dismay of those who got the lower ones. I remember parents from all over the country calling to find out the good news or deliver it, or calling to commiserate with their sons when the news was bad.

I can remember a lot of drinking at those moments, whether the news was good or bad. We couldn't afford the hard stuff so it was cheap gallon jugs of wine and beer.

Those were interesting times and the memories are not difficult to recall. The draft and the lottery shaped and changed our young lives then, and have left a tattoo on our memories to this day.

Don, Wisconsin, 1969. No. 202: Safer Than Dodging Bullets

I was actually drafted in January of 1969 PRIOR to the lottery. I had dropped down to 12 credits at UW-Madison which, according to the draft board, made me eligible. An acquaintance of mine was a 20-year Naval Reserve vet who pulled some strings and got me in the Navy.

Unfortunately, it was a 6 year hitch (4 active and 2 reserves). This was still better than a 2 year hitch in "Nam" so I signed up. As it turned out, I did not have to worry because I washed out of basic with a bad back (which I still suffer from) and food allergies. Having had a taste of military life, I was glad to be back at UW. Dodging tear gas cannisters was immensely safer than dodging bullets. Even so, I have a healthy respect today for all of our veterans, especially those who did not make it home.

James, Wisconsin, 1969. No. 235: Don't Shoot The General

I never had to get a student deferment -- I was classified 1-Y by my draft board on the basis of my terrible eyesight (they were afraid I'd shoot the general if I ever were to lose my glasses) and a history of asthma.

There was great apprehension in the days leading up to the lottery. I drew #235 (or so - I do not remember the exact #) that night, a relief mixed with sadness over far lower numbers drawn by friends.

There seemed to be a general consensus that my number would never be called. That must have been correct because shortly after the lottery, my 1-Y was changed to 4-F.

Allen, Wisconsin, 1969. No. 7: First Degree Heart Block

We sat by a crackling radio listening to the draft lottery, which could determine the status of the rest of our lives. The numbers moved very slowly. We were anti-war and had participated in the student protests, some of which became violent. It was a very exciting time. We thought it was possibly the beginning of the change to the world we had sought.

The numbers came painfully slowly. And when they reached No. 7, Mickey Mantle's uniform, a lucky number in most respects, my birth date was announced. The world would not change. My future was in grave doubt. Was I prepared to go to Canada? I was definitely not prepared to go to Vietnam.

That fall I was admitted to the University of Wisconsin hospital with pneumonia. The hospital interns had a ball with me. They tested me for everything in the process of learning their trade. One day I was placed in what appeared to be an electric chair. It measured blood pressure, heart rate and other vital stats.

Upon release several days later, I was ushered into a private office. The doctor had bad news. He told me that I had a first degree A-V heart block. I asked what it was and would it compromise my health. He did not know. The prognosis for heart blocks was uncertain. I needed to be monitored for the rest of my life.

Forty years later, I am still alive, have two healthy children and a 20 year marriage. I have kept current with being monitored. The heart block had two outcomes. First, it had no adverse effect on the quality of my life and second, and most important, it got me deferred from that awful and illegal war in Vietnam.

Robert, Washington, 1969. No. 294: Life in the Draft Lane

I attended UW-Milwaukee from 1965 to 1969 and then transferred to UW-Madison Law School in the summer of 1969. I had been "protected" by a II-S deferment for my undergraduate years but sometime in 1968, I recall, the undersgraduate student deferment was ended and would apply only to graduate students. I got married in 1968 and then obtained a III-A deferment. Nonetheless, I remember being summoned to the Milwaukee Selective Service office for an induction physical in early 1969. I was deemed draft-ready. By mid-1969, both the student and family deferments were being phased out and I fully expected to be pulled out of law school and drafted. I reseached conscientious objector status and various other options. At around that time, a good friend, Mark, enlisted in the Navy as a medic (conscientious objector) rather than face the threatened Army draft. He went to Vietnam but saved lives instead of taking them. In my first semester at law school, the lottery was announced and I assumed that might be my only saving grace. I hit the only jackpot in my life (either before or since) when I came up 294. I finished law school in 1972 as the Nixon world was collapsing. I cannot conceive of what my future would have brought if my lucky number was not picked -- neither could my now three children. What a way to run the world!

Stephen, Colorado, 1969. No. 51: A Bittersweet Moment

   When I received my undergraduate degree from UW Madison I was immediately sent my draft notice. I decided to join the US Army reserves which was an option at that time. I remember expecting to be sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri for training and being pleasantly surprised at being sent instead to Fort Ord, California in January for basic training. It sure beat a Wisconsin winter even if it was basic training. I remember being at the reception station when we heard the news on the radio that the draft had ended...a somewhat bittersweet moment.

    I met some of the finest men I have ever known in the US Army. Though I would have never thought of joining the military, I look back on my experience as one of the high points of my life. I was offered a commission as a 1st Lt. in the USAR and re-enlisted for another 2 years. One of the things that I am most proud of is having been a US Army officer.

    I remember being in Madison just after the Sterling Hall bombing when the radicals realized that blowing up things and killing people to protest blowing up things and killing people finally made no sense.

Bill, Wisconsin, 1969. No. 212: Dropping A Load

In 1969 I had a student deferment since I was a full time student at Madison. My lucky number was 212, while my brother's number was in the 30's. He enlisted after college, but never went overseas. I waited to see how high the numbers would go at my county draft board for a couple of years. The last number to come up was ~160, then a slightly lower number the next year, so I dropped the deferment and sweated it out for a year. I lucked out. I had thought about an extended stay in Canada if drafted, but I never had to make that tough decision. My father AND my mother had both been Marines during WWII, so I knew that decision would not have gone over very well.

I had even been in ROTC for the first couple years in college, but I gave that up for a couple of reasons. I had wanted to be in NASA, and an Air Force pilot seemed my best shot, but I KO'd the pilot aptitude test. The other factor was one of our monthly meetings with the CO. I had always thought a reasonable man would consider war, at best, a necessary evil (or at worst, like the Vietnam war, a very stupid idea, done very badly). There was an officer in one of the military science classes I had taken that seemed to share this opinion. However, the CO started talking about how cool and exciting it was to go out on a mission and drop one's load of bombs. Everyone around seemed to be, at least on the surface from the expression on the faces, buying this story. Well, he was sure dropping a "load" on us. At that point, I knew AF ROTC was not a good option for me, because all I could think was, "Major, you are one sick f**k!". End of story.

Paul, Wisconsin, 1969. No. 360: Just Like A Game Show

In the fall semester of 1969, I started graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I had just graduated, having had the good fortune of a student deferment; but I probably would have been drafted by the end of the summer, were it not for two changes of venue for my SS physical.
(My draft board was in Massachusetts and I had a summer job in California before moving to Wisconsin. The change from Boston to LA was gratis, but my mother had to write her congressman to get a second change to Milwaukee.) By the time the draft lottery went from rumor to reality, I had been in contact with AFROTC, hoping to obtain a noncombat role. Although it scared the bejeezus out of me, I had made peace with the prospect of flying rescue missions; and had taken both the AF physical and aptitude tests before being told that I would be needed for bombing missions only.
So, with no viable prospects other than jail or exile for refusing to kill people, and my Milwaukee draft physical scheduled for early December,
I watched, on our little B&W television, Mr. Hershey pulling dates out of a drum. Just like a game show! And, by the miracle of randomness, I won.
My birthday, June 20, came up No. 360. Just like that, it was all over. The bombing of Cambodia, Watergate, the shootings at Kent State, were yet in the future.

Bill, Oregon, 1969. No. 34: The Sword of Damocles

When I headed off to the University of Wisconsin as a freshman in September, 1967, I didn't know much about Vietnam. My fellow freshmen and I assumed then that by the time we graduated, Vietnam would be behind us. But the war dragged on, and sometime during my undergraduate career they abolished grad student deferments except in the case of certain fields--my leanings towards the arts and humanities not among them. In my junior year, three of us (myself and two seniors) shared a third-floor walk-up apartment on Princeton Avenue on Madison's West side. The Selective Service Sword of Damocles had been hanging over our heads since we all turned 18 and, in compliance with national law, registered for the draft. On December 1, 1969, the three of us were tossed into the Selective Service System's peacetime draft lottery. One roommate and I came back from somewhere--probably a few quaffs at the corner bar-only to learn that November 2nd, my birthday, had been pulled at No. 34. If things didn't change drastically, come June of my senior year I'd take my Bachelor's degree in one hand and my enlistment papers in the other. Of course, long before then I had become convinced that the US involvement in Vietnam was a tragic mistake, both for Americans and Vietnamese.

One of my roommates applied for conscientious objector status, which was eventually granted. After agonizing over whether I should do the same, I eventually recognized that morally I didn't qualify as a C.O. Briefly, I mentioned the possiblity of C.O. status to my parents and immediately got the expected response. My dad was a between-the-lines World War II vet, a cadet the Air Force trained as a fighter pilot then stuck at the controls of B-24s for 55 missions in the South Pacific. My mother, especially, voiced fears at the possibility of my resistance to the draft. Although she "wouldn't send a dog to Vietnam", she also felt that my resisting the draft would bring great shame on them. To minds shaped by World War II, nothing was lower than a "draft dodger". The shame won out over the dog; it was about them, not me.

The lottery system which allowed so many young people with high numbers to escape the draft would not remove the pall that Vietnam had draped over my generation--men and women alike. Vietnam even diminished the rah rah aspects of college life. We celebrated football victories (rare in those days for Wisconsin) with sudsy beers diluted with misgivings. Was it proper to go over the top about a football game when men, women and children, including our peers who never had a chance to hide from the Army in the schoolhouse door, were dying or at the very least changing their lives irrevocably? How many Asian families huddled together in the night while bombers droned overhead as, a half a world away, we added another drunken chorus to "If You Want To Be A Badger?"

Thanks to excellent draft counseling, I failed the physical by being two pounds overweight. The counselors told me that the Selective Service would only ask for one more weigh-in six months later which is just how it happened. They also counseled--correctly--that my deaf right ear wouldn't defer me. Without the counselors, I might have faced the hard choice of whether to go or stay. I'd like to think that I would've resisted. But talk is cheap. I'm still happy I wasn't put to the test. I'm at peace that I didn't serve and I honor those who did. The kids who went against their will were not the war makers.

Bob, Florida, 1969. No. 333: Difficult and Strange Times

The first 1969 lottery was a Monday night, broadcast nationally, in December of my sophomore year at the University of Florida. Before I left for class, a number of my fraternity brothers and myself each contributed $10 into a pool, to be given for the lowest number chosen......which no one wanted to win. The TV room was filling as I left for class.....when I returned, the attendance had dwindled as they were pulling No. 320.

No one could remember if my birthday had been picked. I was convinced I had a low number, as one of my roommates was the pool winner with No. 2, and not at all happy. A few minutes later 333 was pulled, and although I wasn't the highest, it was high enough to allow me to earn my degree a few years later.

As for our roommate, he left school at the end of that quarter. He has not been heard from since. Difficult and strange times for all.