END OF CHILDHOOD AND THE
DRAFT
I was back home from my trip to Europe, but there was not enough room for me at the
apartment. I also needed to figure out what to do with my life. I wanted to get away and leave the area again, so I began to
explore the possibilities. Over the next several weeks I had taken the Army
,Navy, Marines, and the Air Force physical examines at the Oakland
Induction Center. I was trying to get in to the
service. I was not having any success with the results, as I kept getting
rejected classified 4-F. They based it on my medical history and my chest x-rays. They thought
I was trying to fool them and that there must be something wrong with me.
I realized that I had to do something with my life and went
to San Francisco and signed up for the Military Sea Transportation Service
better known as MSTS. It was as close to the old Merchant Marine Service as you
could get. The jobs paid good money and they went to the Far East. Ports of call
included Saigon and the war zone areas. I went down and got all my shots and all
the paperwork done. They were ready to ship me off on a ship to Vietnam, when they mentioned
that I needed to be cleared by my draft board.
I went to see the board and they told me I needed to take a
complete draft physical before I shipped out, so that they would have my status
and my rating. I figured this was going to be no problem at all since I had just
spent the last couple of weeks there failing the physicals.
I showed up for the bus ride to Oakland at 4:30 in the
morning at the San Jose Draft Board offices. They took all of us young guys on a
fleet of five buses to the Oakland Induction Center. It was very quiet on the
bus trip there. The day at the center was a very long and boring process. We stood in lines all day
long in our underwear. We were poked and prodded, as we handed over our paper work, that they had us carry, from one doctor to another.
They asked me questions about my health and medical history. I gave them all the
very same answers to medical questions that I had given them before, when I had failed the
physical exams. These were in fact, the very same doctors but this time, the results were different.
They felt that I was
trying to get out of the draft, so they discounted all my medical history and
said I was classified as 1-A, and fully fit for military service.
Then I found out that my draft board had listed me as a
volunteer for the draft. That meant that I was going to be inducted within a
couple of weeks at the latest and perhaps at the end of this very physical I had just
taken. I was mildly upset, but more puzzled by the fact that the same doctors
could get different results based on the same facts. I was interviewed by an
Army recruiter who happened to be in the same building. He told I would be smart
to join for an extra year, so I could get some good schooling. His idea of good
training was helicopter maintenance. He told me that this would be good
civilian job training for when I got out of the Army.
I signed up for the extra year, thus committing my life for
three years to the U.S. Army. I was given the oath and feed a meal at a cheap
restaurant before getting on another bus that was heading for Fort Ord and basic
training.
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