The Republicans

By Jacob V. Lamar

"Try to imagine what it was like to be a college senior in early 1969," says Jack Wheeler, 43, a Viet Nam veteran and chairman of Washington's Center for the Study of the Viet Nam Generation. "Winter, ice and a dreadful uncertainty gnawing at you." At that time, less than a year after the Tet offensive, Americans were shocked by the stories and televised images of an increasingly bloody and, to many, pointless war in Southeast Asia. In university dorms and dining halls around the country, students endlessly discussed their overarching obsession: the draft and how to avoid it. "The stress was ungodly, enormous," says Wheeler. "Viet Nam meant death." It was in this highly charged atmosphere that J. Danforth Quayle, DePauw University class of '69, enlisted in the National Guard.

The controversy over Senator Quayle's military service has recalled one of the shabbier aspects of American involvement in Viet Nam. Middle-class youngsters often managed to duck military induction, while society's less privileged members did most of the fighting. Some 76% of the 2,150,000 servicemen sent to Viet Nam from 1965 to 1973 came from working-class or lower-middle-class backgrounds. Roughly 25% were from families with incomes below the poverty line. Yet college-educated young men stood a 12% chance of being shipped off to the war, in contrast to 21% for men who did not attend college. "Basically the feeling was, That's for other people. It's not for us," says Lawrence Korb, an associate at the Brookings Institution and an Assistant Secretary of Defense from 1981 to 1985.

For most American men now over the age of 33, the draft was as much a part of growing up as getting a driver's license. Congress had reinstituted military conscription in 1940, requiring men to register when they turned 18. The unfortunate were generally drafted at 19, but a prospect remained eligible for induction until 26. The law exempted men with medical problems, as well as conscientious objectors, ministers and some in essential occupations. A key provision provided deferment for students. Yet to the horror of college students who had hoped to avoid going to Viet Nam by earning advanced degrees, the revamped Military Selective Service Act of 1967 abolished deferments for graduate study. The maximum penalty for draft dodgers: five years in prison, plus a $10,000 fine.

As the Selective Service began sweeping more and more men into the military (283,586 in 1969), many complained, justifiably, that the selection system was still unfair. In response, a draft lottery was introduced for 1970: a number from 1 to 366 was randomly assigned to each day of the year (including Feb. 29), and men were picked for military service based on their birthdays. Quayle, born on Feb. 4, was given 210; men with numbers as high as 215 were drafted.

Yet even under the new, more equitable rules, says Korb, "anybody with a grain of sense could have beaten the draft." Some college students deliberately flunked their Army examinations. Others depicted themselves as conscientious objectors or fought the Selective Service System in the courts. An estimated 40,000 eligible males fled the U.S., most of them emigrating to Canada.

And a great many men joined the National Guard. Since their units generally remained in the U.S., Guardsmen were able to fulfill their military obligation with only the slimmest chance of seeing combat. Guard members were required to undergo six months of basic training and then provide part-time service, mostly on weekends, for the rest of their six-year tour. Though the Joint Chiefs of Staff had recommended in the early 1960s that the Guard be sent to Viet Nam, Army Guard units were assigned combat duty only in 1968-69. No more than 20 of the nation's approximately 4,000 units were ever called up. "What the Guard meant," says Jack Wheeler, "was not going to Viet Nam." One exception: Company D of the 151st Infantry, Indiana National Guard, served in Viet Nam from December 1968 to November 1969 and suffered 110 casualties.

With the escalation of the war, the number of weekend warriors, as Guardsmen were sardonically called, increased from about 379,000 in 1965 to 421,000 in 1966. By the end of 1968, just before Quayle enlisted, the Army National Guard had a waiting list of 100,000. In 1970 National Guard Association President James Cantwell estimated that as many as 90% of all Guard members had joined to avoid the draft. When the draft was abolished in 1972, Guard membership began to drop off, falling from 411,000 in 1974 to an all-time low of 347,000 in 1979. The size of the Guard has climbed steadily in the 1980s, reaching 458,000 last year.

Feelings about the draft continued to run high after it was abolished. As a freshman Congressman in 1977, Quayle voted to cut off funds for President Jimmy Carter's proposed program to grant amnesty to Viet Nam draft dodgers. Yet Wheeler speculates that Quayle, like others his age, may suffer from a vague sense of shame. "Most men who did not go to Viet Nam feel a twinge of guilt," says Wheeler, adding, "It's unnecessary emotional freight." Wheeler believes Quayle should speak out about the fears and conflicted feelings that so many young men experienced during the war. Such a speech, he says, could ; help exorcise the demons of the Viet Nam era that still torment Americans. "It would be a real act of leadership," says Wheeler. "It would be something our generation and our country need."

With reporting by Jay Peterzell/Washington