Vietnam Stories: When I received my draft notice, I chose to enlist

By MIKE PRIDE

Monitor editor emeritus

Published: 09-25-2017 1:14 PM

(The “Monitor” is asking readers to submit short personal anecdotes or accounts of one specific aspect of the Vietnam War, such as a story about combat, a protest march, political action, killed relative or friend, etc. Please keep the accounts under 500 words so we can run as many as possible in the Opinion and Forum pages and online. Submissions should be sent to opinion editor Dana Wormald at dwormald@cmonitor.com, with the subject heading “Vietnam Stories.”)

In the spring of 1966, at the age of 19, I dropped out of college. I wanted to be a writer, but I was too mixed up to apply myself to classwork. I got a job in an animal hospital in New England and then another as a bellhop at a summer resort in New Paltz, N.Y.

Quitting college had cost me my student draft deferment. Reclassified 1-A, I convinced myself as days ticked by that my name had been lost in the shuffle.

On Aug. 2, a draft notice showed up in my mailbox.

My dad was a World War II veteran. When I told him I would never fight in Vietnam, he said: “When your country calls, you go.” We stopped speaking to each other.

I couldn’t bring myself to defect, but what if I enlisted and gained more control over my military future?

My dad had stressed two things about the Army: Don’t believe anything a recruiter tells you, and never raise your hand.

The recruiter told me that if I enlisted for four years, the Army would guarantee me language school. I bit. I asked for Serbo-Croatian, Russian or German, anything but Vietnamese.

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In basic training, the drill sergeant asked if any of us had been to college. I raised my hand. He made me squad leader.

My squad was diverse. There were Italians from South Philly, tough guys from Connecticut, and a private who earned the nickname “Combat” Polsky by not fastening his helmet strap. My bunkmate was a good-natured South Carolinian, one of several African Americans in my squad.

All but me were draftees, and many, I knew, would soon enter combat in Vietnam. I loved bringing these young men together, settling their scraps, becoming the one they turned to.

When basic training ended, most of them went to AIT – Advanced Infantry Training. Next stop, Vietnam.

I leaned Russian in Monterey and went to West Germany.

When I watched The Vietnam War for review, it reminded me what astonishing sacrifices other young men of my generation made in that war. My four years in the Army felt like a prison sentence, but I emerged from it a mature man with a new family, more found than lost.

My nearest brush with Vietnam was service on a funeral detail out of Fort Gordon, Ga., during my last summer, 1970. It was an honor to fire the salute before taps, but it was heartbreaking, too. What a cruel blow to lose a son or a husband or a lover or a friend in a war that most Americans were already trying to forget.

(Mike Pride is the editor emeritus of the “Monitor” and the retired administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. He lives in Bow and Goshen.)

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