Avery Shores Military Madness

I promised bits and pieces of my life here. I talked briefly about my military non-career already but I'll try to fill in more of it the best I can.

I guess I got my draft notice sometime in November or December of 1968. I was working at a job I enjoyed and I was pretty much against the Vietnam War. It seemed immoral to me, I really had no desire to kill anyone or to be killed. I wouldn't say I was a pacifist but this war was different than many the US had been engaged in. The South Vietnam government was corrupt, which kind of meant we were too. People far smarter than me were against the war for so many different reasons. And the nightly news painted a grim picture.

I weighed my options after getting my draft notice - enlist and hope for a non-war posting, suck it up and be drafted, refuse induction, or go to Canada or Sweden. A friend of mine, Bud, was going to school in Boston and he suggested I go up there and talk to people in the anti-war movement. Sounded like a good idea.

So a couple of friends and I drove up to Boston and talked to a few people at the anti-war office. First was a really wasted guy. He talked about how he had dropped a massive amount of acid prior to going for his physical, which had been months prior. I guess he failed the physical but man he was pretty burned up. Next guy was bragging that he had refused to be inducted - twice. Each time they locked him up for two years. And he had been called up again. He said they'd probably keep calling him up until he was too old.

So none of those options sounded good to me. And at that time I was not ready to leave "my" country. Some time in late February or early March (my memory is a little fuzzy on exact dates and I'm too lazy to dig through my paper work) I boarded a bus for Fort Dix, New Jersey. I knew as soon as I got off the bus I'd made a big mistake.

The degradation and humiliation, normal military procedure to break the spirit at the time, was bad enough but the attitude towards all things Vietnamese was disgusting. During my short time at Dix (I did not finish the eight week basic training) I learned about fragging green lieutenants (seems enlisted men didn't like college educated, ROTC-types and sometimes killed their own, or sent them into deadly situations knowing they wouldn't come back). I also learned that it was true what they say about the military; if you're a mechanic they aren't going to make you a mechanic in their army. I was just more cannon fodder.

Let me point out a couple of things about when I got drafted. First in the first three or four months of 1969, they were drafting 30,000 + per month. With all the student deferments other deferments were few and far between. (The lottery did not come into being until December 1969.) There were guys in my platoon that had no right being drafted; some for physical reasons, others for mental reasons (there was at least one kid who at any other time would have been classified as mentally defective). One kid who passed the physical finally got sent home because his right hand had been severed at the wrist when he was a kid and reattached - but he had no feeling at all in the hand. Basically if you could stand upright and you weren't a student you went.

I spent about six weeks in basic training before fate intervened. I got sick. Not just a cold, not even just the flu, I had pneumonia in both lungs. I passed out during morning formation one day. They sent me for xrays and found I probably shouldn't be playing soldier for awhile.

The hospital at Fort Dix was almost as scary as basic training. By the time I was admitted there had been six (I think) deaths that winter from spinal meningitis and there was some kind of a congressional investigation. I spent about two weeks in intensive care and another two weeks in some recuperation unit. Once they deemed me fit enough to be checked out I was given leave until mid-May when the next basic training would start.

I made tracks home as best I could (it must have been around Easter because I do remember there were no flights available). I took a bus from Dix to Neward Airport, and then the Port Authority to Hartford by bus. I remember telling my mom when I got to the bus depot in Hartford, "I'm never going back." She didn't believe me. But I never did.