Tales of a Baby Boomer Draft Card The year before I was born, 1954, Ho Chi Minh and the communist government in Viet Nam kicked the French military regime out of his country. The country split into two nations, North Viet Nam and South Viet Nam. I began school in 1961 and graduated in 1973. During those twelve years, American servicemen would die by the thousands to protect the South Vietnamese people from communism. From the first grade until college, I would watch Walter Cronkite’s nightly coverage of the war on the evening news. Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, and others got their starts covering the war first hand. Related to the war coverage was the anti-war movement in America, mainly on the college campuses. I remember when the four students were killed at Kent State in May 1970. It was a tragedy. One issue of LIFE magazine had photographs of every soldier killed the week before. There were about 500 photographs. One of my coworkers had a brother killed during the war. The photograph of four of his buddies carrying his body out of the field made the magazine’s front cover. Many men from Lyons and Toombs County were drafted. Others volunteered either to avoid Viet Nam or to go to war bravely. Some of the baby boomers in my neighborhood joined the local National Guard unit to escape active duty. None went overseas and therefore, none were killed or wounded. I would hear about local soldiers who were killed or wounded in the war. Lyons lost a few good men. Most notable was Captain Barry Jones who was killed in action in 1968. He never saw his baby girl who was born a few months later. One man died in route to his induction in Jacksonville, Florida. L. C. Moore had been picked up by a bus at the Post Office in Lyons. Before he made it to Baxley, another draftee accidentally stabbed him in the chest with a small knife. The wound was fatal. The war had begun to dwindle to the end during my senior year in high school. The POWs were released in February 1973 just prior to my graduation. Peace, momentarily, had been obtained. Henry Kissinger, the secretary of state under President Richard Nixon, had been instrumental in the negotiations. Constant B-52 pounding of Hanoi, Haiphong, and other enemy cities helped. I turned eighteen in September 1973, and as required by law I registered for the military draft. My status on my card was ‘1-H’. Daddy told me, “Son put that card in your wallet and never take it out.” I did. American involvement in Viet Nam ended in 1975 with the communist finally reunifying the two worn-torn sections. No one my age was ever drafted. Some men from across the nation who had enlisted as teenagers my age were killed. My friend, Brannen, was a Viet Nam veteran due to his ship venturing close to shore at one time late in the American involvement. A few years ago, I was cleaning out my wallet and I removed the tattered draft card. I kept it though. It’s on one of the shelves in my office that defines my life.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 11:08:43 +0000
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