INDUCTION

My high school classmate Tee was really strung out. We were both at our induction physical for the Selective Service draft. It was 1970, the draft was in full swing, and we were both college dropouts. Tee had dropped out of college, I presumed, because he couldn’t take it anymore. I’d dropped out thinking I’d travel awhile. The Army, as it turned out, was going to make sure I did.

We hadn’t gone together to Ft. Hayes in Columbus for our physicals. We just met up there by coincidence, both having gotten “Greetings from the President of the United States” in the same batch. Now we were in a long line of other nineteen and twenty-year-olds, many of whom, with no special skills, Uncle Sam needed for cannon fodder in Vietnam. The others would be cast according to what they knew how to do and according to the needs of the Army and Marines. If there was no need for your particular skills, you’d probably end up in the cannon fodder category as well.

We were both skinny and shivering, maybe more out of fear than cold, but we gave each other a warm welcome when we met up. We’d never been close friends, just school acquaintances, but this was a place where you were glad to see a familiar face—any familiar face.

Like I say, we were both skinny, but he was skinnier, by a long shot. Christ-on-the-cross skinny, and I could tell he was hurting. He looked like a guy coming off drugs and I thought it was a pretty safe bet to guess he was.

I was thinking that he must have faced a real dilemma before coming here. If they found drugs in his bloodstream, he’d likely be out on a 4-F—unfit to serve on the basis of physical, mental and/or moral standards. But, in that case, wouldn’t they, perhaps, just turn him directly over to the narks? I couldn’t help but notice that there were State Police at the exits and didn’t figure they were there for show. From the looks of Tee, he’d opted to come in clean—if pretty shaky and paranoid-looking. Myself, I was thinking this experience would be a lot less daunting with a six-pack. Alas...

As if on cue, for those of us wondering what they were there for, the State Police sprang into action. There was a hulking guy who looked like a Caucasian sumo wrestler a few men up ahead in line, who suddenly stepped out of line, leaned up against the wall and lit up a Lucky. He stood there smoking placidly until a pint-sized buck sergeant with an MP armband and a chest full of ribbons on his dress greens, called out, “You! Hey, shithead! Put out that butt and get the hell back in line!”

The big guy feigned hardness of hearing and kept right on smoking.

“Hey, you, lard-ass,” the buck sergeant tried again, “you better douse that butt and get back in line before I count to three or you’ll wish to hell you had.”

The big guy half-turned and glanced at the sergeant with about as much interest as an elephant might look at a house-fly and said, “What’s yer problem, short-stuff? You ain’t got no authority over me, man. Go screw yourself.”

“One...two...” the buck sergeant counted as he moved purposefully up on the wrestler, who responded, “Screw you, hotshot!” tossed his cigarette and crouched in a fighter’s stance.

Draft protesters often gathered outside recruitment stations.

“Three!” shouted the sergeant and lunged. The big guy threw a wild haymaker, which the quick little guy easily ducked, and now the sergeant was behind the other fellow who was twice his size, grasping him by the back of his belt and a handful of collar and, with really impressive speed and uncommon strength, was rushing the hulk toward the exit, hurling him toward the two State Troopers guarding the door and shouting, “Get this sack of shit outa here!” And before the big guy knew what’d hit him, he was on the floor, face down, getting cuffed. Then the troopers pulled him up and hauled him away.

I wondered fleetingly if this all had merely been a show, some theater among friends to put the fear of God into the rest of us and keep us moving along without resistance, since, for all intents and purposes, we were still civilians—though not for long. But I didn’t figure it was a mystery worth solving.

They had just told us all to strip down to our shorts but to leave our shoes on. There were guys who were well adapted to this, wearing, as they were, the sandals that were popular at the time among college hipsters. They might have been going to the beach, if it weren’t Ohio, late February, and in the thirties outside. For my part, a musician nerd, I was shod in shiny black wingtips, which, with my size twelve feet, scrawny white body, extra-long legs, and white jockey shorts, looked anything but elegant. We were instructed to fold our clothes and carry them in front of us with both hands and with the folder full of forms that they’d given us on top.

The lottery system was a new addition to the Vietnam draft.

This was how we progressed through the large, warehouse-like building, from station to station, where medical personnel gathered data on us—height, weight, physical characteristics and maladies, blood pressure, pulse, etc. etc. At one point we were all lined up in a row in a large open space and were told to do an about face, and place our belongings neatly on the floor in front of us. Then an NCO bellowed, “Aw right, drop your drawers, bend over and spread your cheeks.”

There’s always a wise guy, and a fellow a few men down the line from me stripped down his underwear, bent over, stuck his index fingers into the corners of his mouth as if to whistle and spread his lips wide in double fish-hook fashion. A few of those closest to him chuckled, but the joker turned out to be the second one hauled away by the State Police. Now a doctor accompanied by a corpsman carrying a gross of rubber gloves passed behind us probing us for god-knew-what before permitting us to pull our shorts back up.

I had no problem with the subsequent urine sample since I’d been wanting to ask for the restroom for a long time by then. My only fear, as I stepped into one of the tiny stalls provided, was that the smallish plastic cup they gave us wouldn’t be big enough. But this test turned out to be a real challenge for Tee. I had already turned over my more than sufficient urine sample, and moved ahead in the line, while Tee remained for an inordinately long time out of sight behind the stall door.

Finally, a burly sergeant went up to the stall, hammered on the door and hollered, “Hurry it up, rookie! We ain’t got all day. What do you think, that were rentin’ you that goddamn stall?”

I heard Tee’s muffled voice from inside say, “I can’t piss,” to which the sergeant responded that he’d better figure out how to pretty damn quick unless he wanted to be a guest of the Army overnight. This must have literally scared the piss out of Tee, because within a few seconds he emerged with a paltry sample in hand.

The day dragged on from morning into the early afternoon. Finally we were done and were read our qualifications. Mine was 1-A, apt for immediate service. I was given a date in March to report for induction and active duty. Though I’d expected it, the reality of it hit me and I was stunned.

When I stepped back outside, the air was cold and clear and smelled like snow. It might have been the first time I’d ever breathed air for as sweet as it seemed. Not even the sentence of induction into the Army hanging over my head could dampen my joy at being back outside, at still being a civilian, at still being a free man, as I returned to my car.

As I was pulling out, I saw Tee standing by his battered Corvair, grinning from ear to ear.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, rolling down my window.

He held up a piece of paper that the classifying medical officer had handed him. “Four-F,” he grinned. And I immediately thought of his urine sample. But then he said, “Flat feet! Who would have guessed it?”