The Artful Dodgers

Tran Van Hai, 34, has been hiding out in Saigon's labyrinthine alleyways since 1965. Reason: he is trying to avoid military service. While his wife works as a vendor, Hai does odd jobs in the neighborhood; together they make enough to care for their six children. When the police come, as they do with increasing frequency these days, he ducks down the maze of passages in his ramshackle neighborhood or hides between the wall panels of his house.

"I could not leave my wife and children," Hai explains when asked why he deserted from an army unit a few years ago. "I love them very much, and there is no one else to care for them." The irony is that because he has six children Hai is now legally entitled to a deferment. Since they were born while he was in hiding, he cannot get his draft status changed without being arrested as a deserter--which would mean up to twelve months in prison and then front-line duty in an army unit.

Avoiding military service in South Viet Nam has long been something of a national pastime. On a visit to Saigon back in 1967 (when the country harbored an estimated 40,000 draft dodgers), Robert McNamara, then Secretary of Defense, flatly told the Thieu government that, if it wanted more U.S. troops, it had better get all those long-haired kids roaring around Saigon on motorbikes into khakis. Because of the invasion by the North, avoiding military service has once more become a life-or-death matter for several thousand Vietnamese. The draft has been temporarily expanded to make all males between the ages of 17 and 43 liable for military service, and many of the new eligibles are working all the angles to avoid going to war.

Draft evasion is most widespread among the middle and upper classes, who have the money to buy phony papers or grease the palms of corrupt officials. Rich families simply send their children out of the country, frequently buying a certificate from a doctor stating that they need medical treatment only offered abroad. Some wealthy families even bribe South Vietnamese army helicopter pilots to fly their draft-eligible sons to Cambodia, where a laissez-passer for travel outside Southeast Asia can be purchased easily.

A simpler (and cheaper) method is to buy false documents that entitle the bearer to a legitimate deferment. There are papers available for a price saying that one's father has been killed by the Viet Cong or that one is the only remaining son in a family. A mother who has lost her only son in combat may sell his identity papers to a willing customer. One 19-year-old bought the papers of a 14-year-old; he beat the draft but wound up back in elementary school.

There are also medical ruses. An X-ray film showing someone else's debilitating growth of tuberculosis often does the trick. The only catch is that a medical examination is required for three years in a row before a permanent medical exemption is granted--all of which can cost up to 500,000 piasters ($1,200). For a time it was not uncommon for boys to chop off the first two fingers of their gun hand; that practice ended when the military decided to conscript the fingerless youths for porters. Today, some desperate draftees dig a shallow hole, toss in a fragmentation grenade, and cover the hole with a foot. If done properly, the practice brings an instant medical discharge.

Lacking money or the will to mutilate himself, a man can turn himself in as a former Viet Cong agent, which will draw him six months in a reindoctrination camp. Combat evaders can even join the army and still find ways to avoid active duty. One man paid an officer 100,000 piasters for the privilege of joining the Regional Force. Each month he goes down to headquarters to sign the pay book; he gives the officer his entire salary plus a cut of the wage he makes at his regular job. The thousands of soldiers who do nothing more than sign pay books have become known as the "Linh Ma"--the phantom troops. Once a man has been drafted into the army, the name of the game becomes desertion. An estimated one-third of all the men in fighting units have deserted or gone AWOL at some time, and even North Viet Nam's tightly disciplined army has had desertions.

Despite a recent crackdown by the Saigon government, neither desertion nor draft evasion carries any great stigma among most South Vietnamese, who are weary of a war that has gone on for 25 years. One reason is that family allegiance has traditionally been recognized as the highest loyalty, greater even than that due to one's country. Men like Tran Van Hai are protected by a closely knit community that admires their struggle to avoid military service. Another reason is the pervasive corruption that permits all but the poor to buy their way out of army duty.

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