Good Morning, Good Day, Good Evening, Good Night Vietnam

I remember in some English class that although Jane Austin never once mentioned the Napoleonic wars in her novels, they were there…every present in the background, affecting her characters decisions and views.

Well, dear reader, let me tell you Vietnam was not only in the background of my college life, but it was in the foreground, underground, upper ground, and beside the ground of my life. It was everywhere, with fear and trembling in every day of my life. It never once left my side.

Let me digress for a second for the young-ins, who may not know what I am talking about. You see the Vietnam war (another useless incursion into other peoples life) was the last war that America fought with a draft. All able-bodied men and boys (no girls yet, as this was before one of the gifts feminism gave women, the ability to die or be maimed in combat) were subject to military service. With the attrition rate of almost 85% of the people drafted being shipped to Vietnam, and with thousands dying each month in this useless war, all my friends and most of my enemies spent a great deal of time figuring how to avoid this war. The options were, conscientious objection, fleeing to Canada, protests, army reserve (for the real elite as our heroic president George W. was able to acquire through his family), and last but most definitely not least for me a 4F disability or rejection from military service.

This last paragraph is loaded with nuance and conflicted thoughts that I will deal with at a later date. Today it is the 1960’s. In the summer of 1968 in the heat of battle, my life was completely full of Vietnam. How was I going to avoid this mess of a war?

Now let me tell you the truth, or as I often say, let’s get to the heart of the matter. I was scared out of my mind. I verbalized noble thoughts, quoted Platonic notions of objections to violence, wrote treaties on the ontological unfairness of the draft and even considered joining the Quakers, but deep within my heart I was just scared to die in Vietnam. The military, the system, all became the enemy and my contemporaries and I marched in protest.

Although the truth was I was sincerely morally opposed to the war, and despised Richard Nixon, unfortunately if there were no draft the world would have been as it is today, a country oblivious to the financial, emotional turmoil that a war causes. I would have gone my own way and left the fighting to others, but this was not to be the case in the very early fall of fall of 1969 when I received a well stamped and curtly versed letter from the U.S. Government demanding that I show up for my draft physical in two weeks.

Let’s return to the scene of the crime for a moment. For years leading up to this day as I already mentioned, I was in a state of catatonic fear that this day would arrive. I protested, I prayed to every God that I could think of that the war would end before my time, but like no wine before it’s time, this was not to be the case. So being a good A student, I started in my freshman year, my plan of attack. As a young boy I had migraine headaches and rest assured that the simple thought of marching into battle the headaches would return with a vengeance. I wrote my family doctor as a child and he kindly wrote a simple one-sentence note that he had treated me as a child and that I had recurrent migraine headaches. There was no more or no less to this letter.

No one, least of all me happened to bring forth that I hadn’t had one in over ten years, but this sentence was at least a beginning.

I learned that migraine headaches could get you out of military service, so starting in my freshman year I made weekly trips to the medical school to read every treatise and talk with every physician and patient that I could find about migraines.

By the time I was through I could have become a specialist. I knew every symptom, every drug available, but most of all I knew that migraines, at the time, could not be empirically diagnosed.

So along with about 50 other students I went on a bus to some military hospital to begin my physical and mental evaluation. Tucked ever so gently in my left breast pocket was the letter from Dr. Robbins, for all the world to see that I was a casualty of migraines.

For hours upon hours we filled out forms and eventually started the physical exam. By now I had written in huge letters in every spot I could find that had headaches and total anxiety at the thought of even being brought to that hospital.

After giving up my forms, they took my blood pressure, which I was somewhat able to control hoping that an elevated blood pressure would help reject me from consideration. The problem was, in this case, it was so completely out of control, and I was so nervous that the pressure was off the charts. They immediately told me I would have to spend a week at this military hospital for evaluation. They thought I had taken some drug to elevate my blood pressure to avoid service. Little did they know that it was just fear. Well as soon as they mentioned my incarceration I told them to take it again and it was normal. I don’t know which was more frightening at the time, the hospital or Vietnam.

Next came the migraines. Over the course of the next three months they had me evaluated by at least four different specialists. Back and forth I would go to that hospital but my homework had paid off and ultimately I received my 4F deferment. Then I was so proud of myself, and Vietnam began to be like a Jane Austin novel, appearing only in the background. Today, well that’s a whole other story.