The Saga Continues...

Here's another post from my Dad. This stuff is so interesting, I thought I should share it. If I need to interject anything (although I don't think I will) it will again be in [italics]. And now...

HOW THINGS WERE
OR
HOW I FAILED TO WIN THE WAR

PART II

Being further misadventures of a youthful Patrick Boland

You asked about the draft board and the East-West Center (EWC). It’s a bit convoluted. You need some background. Plus, old people tend to ramble.

Before there was an all-volunteer army, there was something called the Selective Service System (SSS). Upon reaching the age of 18, all males had to sign up. The army would fill its need for new soldiers by “drafting” (involuntarily) the number of conscripts it needed. The draft was usually for a 2-year term. If you volunteered to sign up with one of the armed forces (so you could choose your branch, and maybe a specialty) it was a 4-year term. If you had solid political connections, you could get in to the Texas Air National Guard which meant you would never be sent overseas to combat and later you could be President of the United States.

There was a classification system to determine which lucky persons would go.

I-A. This classification meant “keep a toothbrush packed.” Depending on the army’s need, the whims of the president and your standing with the great god Quetzalcoatl, you were ripe for the picking.

Other classifications were usually considered “deferments,” since the need was never so great that they had to go beyond I-A to fill the draft quota.

For example, there was IV-F. This meant that you were unfit for service. Perhaps you had very bad eyesight, or had flat feet, or were gay, or had some other disabling condition.

I imperfectly recall a rhyme, later set to music, which went something like this (potential draftee speaking to sergeant):

Sarge I’m just eighteen,
I got a ruptured spleen,
And I always carry a purse.

I got eyes like a bat,
My feet are flat,
And my asthma’s gettin’ worse.

Consider my career,
My sweetheart dear,
My poor old invalid aunt.

Besides, I ain’t no fool,
I’m a goin’ to school,
And I’m a workin’ in a defense plant.

So have a ball,
Sarge, watch ‘em fall
While you kill me a thousand or so.

And if you ever get a war
Without any gore,
Well, I’ll be the first to go.

But I digress.

II-A was an occupational deferment. This meant you were employed in some activity critical to the welfare of the nation, such as being a teacher and molding the minds of our youth, or engineering fighter planes, or packing artillery shells at the New Brighton ammunition plant. Stuff like that.

A common deferment classification was II-S, student.

The big catch on the II-S deferment was that you could only keep it as long as you were continuously enrolled in school and making satisfactory progress. Once you left school you could never, ever, ever again get a II-S deferment, even if you re-enrolled in a school. So there.

I had a II-S classification from ’58 to ’63. The Peace Corps was considered an important occupation for the nation, so I had a II-A deferment from ’63-’65. As a teacher from ’65-’66 I had another II-A deferment.

Now comes the problem. After about, oh say, 7 or 8 minutes of being a teacher in St. Paul, and molding the immalleable minds of American tenth graders, I realized it was not my calling. I had enjoyed teaching in the Philippines, where education was seen as a way up and students appreciated the opportunity. In the U.S., tenth graders seemed to see school as a place to practice being surly while waiting for their next juvenile court appearance.

I had seen a flyer for the Center for Cultural and Technical Interchange Between East and West (EWC) while I was being debriefed in ’65 at the Peace Corps headquarters in Manila. Sounded like a good idea. I applied for a grant in the program where you lived at the East-West Center, interchanged culturally and technically with foreign students, and attended graduate school at U.H. One-third of the grantees were Americans, and two-thirds were from the Pacific and Asia as far as Afghanistan.

I wasn’t too optimistic about being accepted. These grantees were the crème de la crème. You had to take tests (academic and psychological) and get interviewed by grave professorial types. I got 99th percentile (take that, boys!) on the GRE (Graduate Record Exam), passed the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) for about the 5th time (you had to be nuts not to figure out what answers were going to classify you as being nuts), and presented myself with sufficient gravitas to the designated professorial interviewers at the University of Minnesota.

I got the grant.

Ah, but what about the draft board? The Selective Service System was managed nationwide by local draft boards. Mine was Local Board No. 96, Ramsey County, Minnesota. Your draft board decided what your classification was and whether you would be called up. They were all-powerful.

I was about to leave the safety of my II-A occupational deferment. I was no longer eligible for a student deferment since I had been out of school for three years.

An idea! That’s what we need, an idea. The EWC is funded by the United States Department of State. As a grantee, I was going to be paid by the State Department while being in a State Department program. Seemed like I should get another occupational deferment – doing all that important international work and such for the State Department and the nation.

The draft boards themselves were composed of volunteers – usually elderly, retired guys who were looking for their own way to be of service. The board would have a staff person, the “clerk,” who did the day-to-day work. I called the clerk and told her (sweet lady) that I was going to participate in this State Department program so would she please issue me a new II-A classification. She said “no.” She decided that I was really going to be a student, and that I was not eligible for another student deferment. Further, she told me that I had joined the Peace Corps so I wouldn’t have to serve my country (honest to God, she really did say that), and now she was going to get me (she really said that too). I would be I-A. I could appeal the decision to the full board if I liked, but it would be fruitless. The rules were clear.

I appealed to the full board, and was granted a hearing. I came armed with cogent arguments and several letters from scholarly types about the importance to the nation of my proposed occupation as an EWC grantee.

There were three or five cordial old geezers on the board – can’t remember now for sure. I remember that one of them was a retired dairy farmer. He listened to all the arguments and then said “you’re going to be a student, aren’t you?” I assured him that being a student was strictly a sideline, that my real occupation was being an EWC grantee – State Department, you know. He said, “We’ll give you a student deferment.”

The clerk was beside herself. She sputtered. She explained to the board that the regulations prohibited me from another student deferment. She rushed to the bookshelf and pulled down the applicable regulation. She took it to the board members, laid it out on the table, and pointed to the applicable text. I was absolutely, positively, ineligible for a student deferment. It would be a violation of the Code of Federal Regulations Part something-or-other. Says so right here.

But, as I said, the draft boards were all-powerful, and sometimes capricious.

Retired dairy-farmer repeated himself. “He’s going to be a student, ain’t he? We’ll give him a student deferment.” The rest of the board agreed. I fled before they changed their minds, leaving the red-faced clerk to deal with her bitter defeat. Another “refuses-to-serve-his-country” slacker had escaped. Didn’t even have to move to Canada like so many others.

Footnote: I always thought that serving in the Peace Corps was one way to serve the country, but I guess I didn’t really understand patriotism. Apparently, the only true way to serve your country was to go to Vietnam and shoot commies.

So I came to the EWC and UH in June of ’66. Your mother came to UH in September of the same year. We got married in October of ’67.

Now it’s January of ’68. Oops. By summer I’ll be finished at the EWC and UH. What will my draft status be then? Salvation. Your mother becomes pregnant.

SSS classification III-A: “Extreme hardship deferment, or registrant with a child or children.”

The premier/strongman of South Vietnam about this time was a man named Nguyen Kao Ky. In 1968 there was no ultrasound for pregnancies, so we didn’t really know who was in there. Whoever he or she was, your mother was always hungry. The kid was demanding nourishment. We sometimes referred to this unknown person as Nguyen Kau-Kau. The nickname combined his appetite display with his pre-birth accomplishment of keeping me from going to Vietnam to shoot commies.

Raymond got me a III-A deferment. I would be forever barred from serving my country.

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