I still remember it like it was yesterday.
It was between semesters at UNC after having flunked out for about the 18th time. That was entirely my fault. Too much cutting class and shooting pool at the student center along with an overall lack of care and concern had put me in a place where the university administration thought someone else could better use my spot in the student body, so the dean invited me not to come back.
I don’t even remember where I was working or much of what I was doing or even the exact date for sure. I do know I was living at home and my folks were becoming interested in what I was going to do with my life, if much of anything. It was sometime, I think, in the autumn of ’69, about the time I was easing out of my teen years. Life was generally pretty good — not many demands and not much in the way of responsibility.
I vaguely remembered during those days that my student deferment from local draft board number 19 would be a casualty of not being in college. Since I wasn’t thinking much beyond the next 10 minutes of my life, that didn’t really seem like much of a big deal.
Then one day I went to the post office for the family mail and I had a letter from my uncle.
My Uncle Sam.
And not my father’s brother Sam who was living in Alabama.
It was a nice pleasant letter. He wanted to know how I was doing. He even started out by saying “Greetings,” and it wasn’t even Christmas.
Then he invited me to go on a bus ride.
To Raleigh.
To the Armed Forces examining station and induction center.
I didn’t want to go.
I had heard about Southeast Asia and other places. I had high school friends who had gone there and some had not returned. It was a hard time in our country’s life. But I wasn’t about to run away to Canada or break my leg so I’d be in the hospital or anything like that. So on a Tuesday (I think) morning at 4:30 I gathered at the draft board office with about 40 others of Chatham County’s finest and we piled into the Greyhound and off we went.
They made me the group leader. I’m not sure why. Maybe they were impressed with my ability to stick to a task, like flunking out of school on a consistent basis. I asked the lady at the draft board what that meant. “Give them this envelope when you get there,” she said.
“Give it to who?” I asked, forgetting that Mrs. Rigsbee and Mrs. May had told us in English class that I should have said “Give it to whom?”
She said something about “the people who will meet you at the door.” She was right. They did. I don’t think they were impressed with my potential as an officer, however, since when I got off the bus I headed the wrong way. I think I was still asleep. The bus driver blew the horn, stuck his head out the window, hollered at me and pointed me in the right direction to the correct building.
The next hours were a rush of going from one examining point to another. The highlight was when we all got to stand around naked in a big group and see if we could touch our toes. The fellow in charge said something about not wanting to hear a sound, which sounded like pretty good advice to me.
Anyway, I was one of the folks who made the ride back to Pittsboro on the bus at the end of the day. While my hearing and height and weight and general overall sweet disposition were beyond just merely acceptable, the fact I couldn’t see an elephant in front of me without my glasses or contacts pretty much meant Uncle Sam would call me later if he wanted me or got really desperate.
Some of the guys who rode to Raleigh with me didn’t come back that day. I remember the recruiters telling us that if we wanted to sign up that day, we could and could pick the branch of service and assignment and all that stuff. They said if we didn’t volunteer then, we were going to be drafted within 30 days and we wouldn’t have much of any choice. Some guys did that. I remember walking by one of my bus mates as he was crying to his mama in the phone telling her he was leaving for Texas in a few hours and wouldn’t be back in Goldston for supper.
In time I got my act together, finished college and so on and so forth. But I’ve never forgotten that day. And I’ve never forgotten the folks who went that day and on other days. Sometimes I do a mental checklist of just how many guys my age out of my school buddies went to Vietnam and out of just some 40 or so guys, I come up with about 10 — including a couple of them who paid the ultimate price and made the ultimate sacrifice.
And that’s when I start to wonder. I wonder why them and not me. I wonder what genetic event happened in my life that kept me at home and gave other guys an eagle’s vision. I wonder what I would have been like if I had gone. Would I have had the internal fortitude to do what millions of other folks have done through war after war?
Seeing a B-17 World War II bomber at the Sanford airport a few years ago just added to that mental exercise. Old veterans in their 80s — including my father-in-law, who spent three years away from his Bennett home without benefit of cell phones or instant messaging working as a mechanic on those planes in India — went through the plane, touching and feeling and moving slowly. They told stories ... and no doubt kept some to themselves.
And I wondered ... about them and about me.
A veteran of the fighting in Korea and Vietnam once told me not to feel that way, not to beat myself up mentally because I wasn’t there. But still I wonder.
I like to think I could have.
And I appreciate those who did ...
Today as so many in our country seem bent on destroying it from within (as Russia’s Nakita Khruschev years ago said at the United Nations would happen as he beat the desk in front of him with his shoe), I’m thankful for the men and women who did answer the call.
Winston Churchill is remembered for his comment about the Battle of Britain against the German Air Force that “never in the history of mankind has so much been owed by so many to so few.” In the U.S., we could rewrite that to say “Never have all owed so much to so many.”
May we not forget.
