Years ago Arlo Guthrie, son of the legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie was in a movie that panned the draft in the Army. I saw that movie once and it has stayed with me ever since. I lived a part of that movie and I can pretty much vouch that everything in that movie is based on real life.
I had graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1967, well I say graduated because I never did get my degree. I flunked the second semester of Calculus and I needed to complete my degree requirements. I would try over and over in the intervening years, but I did not complete my degree work until 1976 nine years after I graduated.
I was working in Racine, WI for the J I Case Co on a management training program. It was extension, tedious and down right boring, but it would build a wonderful foundation for my later years in manufacturing.
Bonnie, my first wife, and I lived in a set of apartments call Diamond Head. They were the early version of apartment complexes with a nice swimming pool and such. It was the high life. Work at day, grill out in the evening with cocktails by the pool. We were embarking on the grand adventure.
I had been working for Case since February 1967 and was thoroughly enjoyed finally being in the big time. I had made friends with some of the old timers and they were showing me the ropes and were treating me well. Well, four months had gone by and in June 1967 I received notice to report for my physical exam for the draft board. My heart sank. Vietnam was really getting hot, now I do not have a degree, so I saw trouble. Plus I was just getting started on my career, making friends, drinking beer, swimming in the evening and being with my wife enjoying the idea of finally being grown up.
I had to report to the processing station in Milwaukee to go through the physical. The site was in downtown Milwaukee on the industrial side of the river. It was a big old building that looked more like a deserted factory than a medical facility. Herded like cattle we youngsters were lined up, made to strip, bend over to check for hemorrhoids, pushed pulled, yelled at and had to pee in a cup in front of everybody. No time for modesty here. The process was fairly long and it was the classic hurry up and wait situation. Among us newbies there was little interaction other than to voice concern over being drafted, what would happen if we were drafted and how much this process reminded us of what we'd heard about a slaughterhouse.
I got back to Racine in one piece, my ego bruised and my fears of leaving home, wife, and my comfort zone thoroughly aroused. One thing we had heard was that exemptions to the draft were being granted to men who had a family. So Bonnie and I undertook a somewhat desperate, but unsuccessful to become pregnant. Time ground on, work took my interest. I was learning to play golf and almost every Friday evening was spent with some friends drinking beer and playing cards. The worry of being drafted lost its edge and we hoped some how the terrible idea of being drafted would bypass us. It didn't.
In July, about 30 days after the physical I received my draft notice. Uncle Sam want ME! I felt like I had a terminal illness. There was now hope, my life was going to end prematurely ground into dust by the bureaucracy of the United States Army. Life was now filled with telling my employer. Conversations with other parts of the family about what Bonnie would do. Notifying the apartment complex we would be moving out. I was ordered to report to the draft receiving area in Milwaukee on Sept. 10, 1967. The date of my execution. Death! In the middle of August Bonnie and I went north to Munising and spent a long time out at Dana Lake. I fished, we made love, we walked, we talked the conversation of two youngsters about to embark on a long separation and tried to reassure one and other that things would be OK and we would be OK. I was sure things were not OK and I felt like I would not see her again.
In the meantime trying to protect my skin and insure that Bonnie and I would be together after Basic Training I ended up enlisting for four years so I could get a guaranteed assignment back to Milwaukee for 15 months in the guided missile field. I was going to have to endure 8 weeks of Basic Training at Ft. Campbell, KY, and then 8 weeks of AIT (Advanced Individual Training) at Ft. Bliss, TX.
I recall driving north that August. We would meet people on the highway who were obviously coming back from camp/vacation. Their cars were pulling boats, the back loaded with life preservers, fishing gear, and the other stuff associated with freedom and fun. In the meantime I felt smothered, I felt sad, no hope, no prospects, no future - shit!
Finally, in mid-September Bonnie and I head back to Milwaukee, my leaping off place and had a few night's visits with my parents and sister and brother-in-law. My brother came over for a visit and we played a round of golf and got drunk together at my sister's home. Then, without fanfare the day came. My Dad and Bonnie drove me down to wherever I was to report to leave Milwaukee. A group from around the region met and we were bussed to Mitchell Field to take a plant to Hopkinsville, KY where our executions would take place. A more somber, morose group of young men you ever met. However, as in most situations where there is an external threat we began bonding immediately. Where are you from? Who are your parents. Searching desperately for a connections, a point of commonality that would allow us to grasp some form of alliance. This is how we flew to Kentucky.
When we arrived it was late, like 1 AM. I was dead tired. We were taken to a barracks by bus and didn't arrive there until about 3 in the morning. I was so tired I thought I would be physically sick. We got some bedding and crawled into a bunk bed and passed out. Three hours later we were awakened and taken to breakfast. Then we were moved to the reception center.
The reception center is where you go for one week prior to being assigned to a Basic Training battalion. Hundreds of us are brought there. We go through another physical. We get our hair buzzed off. Most disquieting is we are given a complete set of military clothing and then have to pack our civilian clothes into cardboard boxes and send them home. We lost our contact with civilian life, now we all looked like green beans with a baseball cap on. I recall Bonnie later telling me that receiving that package of clothing was like receiving the final effects of a dead person. I did not know that was going to happen, but I sure recall swallowing hard when it did.
Reception center is like hell week. The GI's returning from NAM are usually held there spending their last few weeks in the Army by serving as guides and leaders for the group of new recruits. Many of them, battle tested, psychologically beaten up, or deranged are assholes. Oh, they don't hit you or punish you, but they will tell you stories calculated to strike fear in your heart. They succeed. The officers that you see are often in the same category, or their new officers still unsure of the power they will wield.
We are told that the training Battalion if forming and that we will be taken to our new training barracks on Sunday. Now my 8 weeks of Basic Training is now 9, one week wasted at the reception center. We are not given any instruction on what is to happen, we are not given any information about where we are going. The lines are long, the waiting is tiring, and we do nothing to fill the idle hours. We are restricted to the barracks, and it is a little like being in prison.
Sunday afternoon we are marched, if you can call it marching, to a huge field somewhere on Ft. Campbell. We are in a formation and given the command "Parade Rest" which is standing up right kind of like at attention but with your hands crossed behind your back. Then the people who took us there left. We are standing in this huge field, no officials, leaders, or anybody around at parade rest. You can only hold that position so long and then you slump. Then you are tired of standing so you sit on the ground. Pretty soon you have your duffel bag next to you and you rest your head on it. You wait. Time passes so slowly. Your nerves are on edge and you wonder what is going to take place. Perhaps we have been forgotten and will spend four years in this field.
Late afternoon some cars show up on the road in front of us. Not too close so we can make out who is in them, but we now know we are being watched. Still no one gets up, we smoke, we lay back, some sleep. Finally about 5 PM some men come, form us up again and march us to a mess hall nearby to eat some dinner. Then back to the field, formation and given parade rest. This time the people who took us to dinner leave and we all immediately light up, slump to the ground and wait.
About 7 or 8 PM the people in these cars started getting out and they put on this hats called Smokey Bear hats, or drill sergeant hats. They approach us, gently tell us to put out the cigarettes, stand up get into formation, they seem a decent sort and certainly know where we are going although they aren't telling us. Many big Army buses pull up and we are marched to the buses and load up. One or two DI's, Drill Instructor's, get on each bus and off we go. We ride for about an hour. Where in God's name they took us I have no idea, but I figured out later that it was just around the perimter of Fr. Campbell, we were probably not too far from the training center. It is now dark. Guys are singing, the windows are down, they are yelling and acting up just as a bunch of young, nervous, scared men would do to show some form of bravado.
Finally the buses pull into an area where you can see there are low wooden buildings. We've arrived. The yelling continues, the caterwauling is in peak form. Unnoticed is the fact that there are no lights on in the barracks, no lights on in the compound, in fact there are no lights period.
When the buses stop the DI's who have been sitting quietly transition into crazed men with flash lights yelling at us the the fun is over, this is it. They get in your face, belittling you, scaring the bejesus out of you. You stumble from the bus. All around recruits are being told to drop and "give me ten." We are roughly organized into a line. We are herded by a door opening where a bundle of bedding, sheets, pillow, pillowcase, and blankets is launched at you with uncommon force. I almost thought they had some kind of a slingshot device in there. I see several smaller men knocked to the ground, or men who are not as coordinated miss catching their bedding to see it scatter to the distance. They are followed by a DI who tells they guy he'd better hit the ground before his bedding does and if he can't catch it before it gets dirty to "give me ten."
Posts
