Unless You've Been There

I wasn't there!

Not too long ago, a commenter at Sanity’s Bluff, demanded to know what branch of the service I was in and when. “If you have not served in the armed forces don’t talk about the military things” he spouted.
This type of narrow-minded thought is around everywhere today.
Many of you have probably heard something along these lines, “You can’t talk about us blacks unless you are black.”
While it is true, no light skinned person knows how it feels to be dark-skinned, it doesn’t mean a honkey cannot know what prejudice or racism is like.
Another one you may have heard is; “You can’t talk about children unless you are a parent”. Or when someone offers a point of view about children, we often hear the old, “How many children have you had?”

This kind of logic is wrong, and here are a few reasons proving it.

“If you can’t play the French Horn you can’t talk about the orchestra’s performance.” Okay is that true?
“If you’ve never been on a National Football League roster, you can’t talk about Pro Football.”
See where I’m going.

I was never in the military, but I can be proud of the military of my nation, and talk about it. I’ll now share a little snippet of my life.

The confused days of 1964-

The first wave (and the largest) of baby boomers turned 18 in 1964. How convenient for L.B.J. who was committing the armed forces of the United States deeper and deeper into a hellhole called Viet Nam.

It was April 1964, I turned 18. My best friend at the time was Rex H. We had spent the summer months of 1963 doing teenage things together. Rex wanted to get away from his parents, so he had enlisted in the Marines and his plans were to join the marines in the summer of 1964, after high school graduation. I wanted to follow the same path, so he talked to me about the Marines. I was in excellent health, was on the high school track, baseball and soccer teams at a private school in Oklahoma, and I wanted to be a Marine so bad, I could taste it.

I was swift of feet, (ran the 100 yard dash in less than 10 seconds, broadjumped over 22 feet in a meet, was on an undefeated relay team, both 440 and 880 yard relays), and of a sound mind. I loved my country and wanted to be a marine, nothing else.

Rex was a very fit teenager also, but he just made the weight requirements of 150 pounds.
During my senior year of high school in Oklahoma, I had to return to Kansas City to register, as every male was required to do within a few days of their 18th birthday. I had been planning this day out, I wanted to pass the intelligence and physical tests, so that I could join up in the summer of 1964.
On the evening before my appointment with the Selective Service I met up with Rex and we talked about the future. There was one problem we talked about that night. I only weighed 145 pounds and stood 5’6 ½. Rex told me that the Marines would probably take me if I could meet one of the two requirements.. Since I could not add a ½ inch to my height, I needed to gain 5 pounds overnight.
Someone had told Rex that bananas would add 2 pounds to your weight for every pound of them you ate.
Have you every sat down and ate 4 pounds of bananas? To this day I am not that fond of bananas. I polished them off early that morning, and Rex and I were off to the Selective Service Office. Rex had already turned 18 and his deployment date was rapidly approaching, and he went along with me, because he was my best friend.
The intelligent test was so simple, I about laughed. Next was the physical. Down to shorts and socks I stepped on the scale and “wow”….155 pounds and 5’7”. I must have had a little growing spurt, so I would have been all right without the bananas.
I was poked and prodded, and then someone told me to take off my glasses and step into the dark room he was pointing to. He told me to read the first line of the chart on the wall.
Problem, real big problem…
I felt my life evaporating, at least the life I wanted. My eyesight at best was 20/400, uncorrected, and I was forced to admit I could not read any of the chart, not even the biggest letter. It was a only a blur on the far wall. My heart sank as they sent me on my way to the rejected line. I came close to becoming physically sick. My glasses corrected my sight to 20/20, but there was no way for me to become a Marine. Rex and I talked about it on the way home, of course he was attempting to make me feel better, and he told me I should visit the army recruiting center, and ask them to give me a waiver of some kind. When school was out that summer I went to both the Army and Navy recruiting centers and tried without success to get in the armed forces.
Rex went on to serve honorably in the Marines, and did a tour in Viet Nam. I had many friends who ended up in Vietnam, and almost all of those that returned were screwed up somehow by what they witnessed and were a part of.

It was John F. Kennedy’s war and we can only speculate about how he would have fought the war if a madman had not murdered him. Lyndon Johnson took over as commander in chief and poured the nations treasure into the losing cause. Losing, because of the lack of will by the citizen government to command the military to win the war at all cost. It is best to stay completely out of a war, if you won’t fight as hard as you can.
In 1966 Rex came back to Kansas a different person. We roomed together for two years and it seemed like I was always apologizing for Rex’s behavior when we went out partying. He would always wanted to pick fights with people. I would try to soothe things over, it didn’t always work. I actually roomed with two returning Marines, Rex and Russ. Russ was so messed up it was sad. When he got a little drunk, Nam started coming back to him. He told me over and over again how he was strapped to a helicopter deck manning a 50 caliber gun, and the gunner next to him was decapitated and bled to death while a battle was taking place. I lost track of Russ and for several years Rex and I were close, but he no longer was the same Rex.

I was going through many changes at this time and not all of them were good.

As I look back upon that time and remember how much I wanted to join the Marines, I felt like a shunned lover.

But back to 1964, In college I took a political science course, and worked for the campaign of Barry Goldwater, who was ahead of his time, and was the father of conservatism in America. One of his campaigns, was to do away with the draft all together and to raise an all volunteer military. I wonder how Vietnam would have gone if Barry had been elected? I was becoming more and more embittered about the whole matter. I had been given a 4-D classification, it was the closest to 4-F. It did not exclude me from the draft altogether, but 4-F would have. To me they were telling me that if things got completely out of hand, they might reconsider me.

I was losing direction in my whole life, but I tried one more time to get in the service in 1965, but to no avail, and I guess to keep me from bothering the recruiters, I was given a permanent 4-F classification.
I dropped out of college after 1 year and worked for awhile, but I couldn’t stay put anywhere. My politics were changing too; I spent a lot of time around college students who were in college to escape the draft. Well they had an influence on me, not a good one either. My writings started to be anti-war, and anti-establishment. I let my hair grow, and took a lot of flak for it while I worked for a year at the Ford Assembly Plant. Some other time I may share some of the hippie days of John, not at this time though.
Somewhere I threw off the chains of liberal thought and have never been happier. So when I argue with a leftist, I can say….”Been There, Done That.”

There was some opposition to the draft even before the major U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. For example, Senator Barry Goldwater proposed ending the draft during his unsuccessful 1964 campaign as the Republican candidate for President. As U.S. troop strength in Vietnam increased, more and more young men were drafted for service there. The draft was unpopular both for its impact on those drafted and as a focal point for opposition to a controversial war. Conscription ended in 1973.