I was drafted into the United States Army exactly fifty years ago today, on March 27, 1968. There was a war going on, and right then the Army needed more bodies: that week's haul of inductees was the largest haul to date, tens of thousands of poor fucks who weren't in college (maybe they couldn't afford it, maybe they weren't smart enough to go or smart enough to stay in once they got there, like me, maybe they'd just graduated and lost their student deferment) or couldn't get a doctor to write a note, or avoided the draft in any of the many other ways creative young men took advantage of at the time.
There I went, after a day at the induction center in Oakland, flying off, drafted, on the first jet plane I'd ever ridden in, flying up north to Fort Lewis.
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