SAYING NO WAY IN HELL TO THE WAR IN VIETNAM
By Paul Abramson
Paul R. Abramson is a Professor of Psychology at UCLA and the lead singer and lyricist of the band crying 4 kafka.
(This article originally titled Why I Didn’t Go To War
was updated on December 16, 2020)
President Richard Nixon was audiotaped in the Oval Office on February 1, 1972. He is speaking to Bob Haldeman, his White House Chief of Staff, and the Reverend Billy Graham.
Now, the point I [want to] make, is that there has never been a time when the United States needed, in this office, somebody who knew the Communists, who knows our strengths. Take Vietnam. Who is more keenly aware than I am that, from a political standpoint, we should have flushed it down the drain three years ago, blamed Johnson and Kennedy? . . . Kennedy got us in, Johnson kept us in. I could have blamed them and been the national hero! As Eisenhower was for ending Korea. And it wouldn’t have been too bad. Sure, the North Vietnamese would have probably slaughtered and castrated two million South Vietnamese Catholics, but nobody would have cared. These little brown people, so far away, we don’t know them very well, naturally you would say.
Two days after my 18th birthday, I received my military draft card. That was in 1967 and the Vietnam War—known in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America—was already a full throttle mess. Forever throwing caution to the wind, Richard Nixon, the Chief Racist Demigod that he was, then decided in 1969 to secretly bomb Cambodia, too. One witless move apparently deserved another.
Compulsory conscription notwithstanding, I immediately got a student deferment because I was already enrolled at the University of Miami. When I graduated in June of 1971, that deferment evaporated. Though in fact there was a draft lottery at that time—not everyone was going to be selected to serve in the Vietnam War—I had the misfortune of drawing the number 119. Young men who drew numbers above 125 could, if so desired, take a rain check on the train wreck destined for Hanoi.
There was a long tradition of military service in my family. My mother’s father Samuel served in the Navy during the Banana Wars, circa 1912. Two of his children, one of whom was my mother Ethel, also served in the Army, during the ravages of World War II. Ethel, in fact, held the highest rank of all of my family members in the service. She was a Lieutenant (nurse) in the Medical Corps and served in the Philippines, while her brother Norman served in Europe as a member of the infamous Ghost Army. My father Leonard was in the Army, too, a Staff Sergeant in the infantry in New Guinea. Wounded in battle, Lennie was awarded a bronze star and purple heart. Despite their avowed patriotism, every last one of them was, nonetheless, staunchly opposed to the slaughter in Vietnam.
I had my own reasons. Right out of the gate I was thrust into a household ruled by a guy who repeatedly beat and humiliated his kids. God damn you, he’d scream, this is the way we’d do it in the Army. Though my mother could, in fact, be quite loving, she’d turn cold when my father’s temper flared. Being his Greek Chorus was evidently the only melody that she knew.
If this is the way it goes down in the Army, I remember thinking even as a little kid, I want no part of it.
Then there was the issue of my conscience. Despite the abusive household, or perhaps because of it, I had an intuitive understanding of the rights and liberty of conscience. Nobody, I was convinced, could fuckin’ tell me how I was supposed to think, choose or judge. Yes, of course, my parents could force me to do some of the things that they wanted me to do, and they could certainly withhold things that I really needed, but they never got me to think that any of this was right. I simply concluded that I was being held captive in a tyrannical household that I desperately wanted to escape, no less in my mind than in my body.
Being sick of listening to my parents and relatives trying to compel me to embrace their beliefs and rituals, there was no way in hell that I was going to kill people in Vietnam just to achieve racist ends, the apocryphal domino theory notwithstanding. I cherished the rights and liberty of conscience—so much so, in fact, that in my fifties I would write a book about those rights that was published by MIT Press. But even as a 21-year-old, I had a deep respect for all of the nuances of freedom.
On July 7th, 1971, I received a Selective Service notice to show up for my Medical Examination and Classification for Induction into the US Army. I took my not so secret weapon with me. I don’t have a spleen. What I have, instead, is an 8-inch-long scar across my abdomen, courtesy of a surgeon with Dr. Frankenstein’s skillset. Putting this loss to good use, I was now determined to turn an operative mishap into a putative get out of the US Army card.
But then again, I didn’t want to leave anything up to chance, so I made an appointment with the American Friends Service, a Quaker organization that was counseling young men about avoiding placement in the Army during the Vietnam War. Yes, of course, I was told, you have the physical evidence to support your contention that you don’t have a spleen, but it would be substantially more effective if you had a doctor’s letter saying so. I thought that was a really good point, so they gave me the name of a doctor who’d provide me with the letter. They also asked me if I’d like the name of a psychiatrist who’d write me a letter saying that I wasn’t exactly Army material.
I’ll take that, too, I replied. The American Friends Service then informed me that there were two options. One psychiatrist provides the letter for $150.00, and the other psychiatrist does it for $250.00. I took the more expensive option, figuring I’d get what I paid for. The $150.00 guy, it turned out, wrote the exact same diagnostic letter for every person he saw: definitely paranoid schizophrenic. The Army induction center, I later observed, ripped up every one of the letters that psychiatrist wrote.
My guy, at the very least, listened to me and genuinely seemed interested in my welfare. I told him about my motorcycle (a 750 Royal Enfield chopped on an Indian frame), my teenage years of defiance, and my inveterate antipathy to authority figures. Taking a few liberties with that narrative, he then reported that I was a member of a notorious motorcycle gang, and prior to college, I had been in and out of Juvenile Hall. In my opinion, he concluded, the United States Army should stay far away from this young man.
By the time I showed up for my Medical Examination and Classification for Induction into the US Army, literally at the crack of dawn, I was hardly the picture of an obliging warrior. I was more like an intransigent Henry Thoreau, with civil disobedience on my mind.
The first station was height and weight. I knew I was skinny, a byproduct of the times, but my height of 5’10” was stable. Even my draft card said that I was 5’10”. But lo and behold, I’m now 5’8”, so that my height will match my weight. That’s not right, I said, getting into the face of the soldier who took the measurement. Move on! His superior barked.
Like the rest of this sullen crowd of 500 strong, walking in single file, and rarely saying anything, I eventually finished all of my stations. It was then that I realized that no one had asked to see my letters. What the hell was that all about, I wondered? But before I could speak, a sergeant started barking – apparently the lingua franca in the US Army - go put on your clothes and get on the bus.
What are you talking about? I shouted back at him. I don’t have a spleen! I’m allergic to wool!
Tell it to the Captain, he replied dismissively.
The Captain, I’m assuming he was a physician, was wearing a white coat and standing in a small room with three other officers. I stepped inside, and right off the bat I let him have it, I DON’T HAVE A SPLEEN. DID YOU MISS NOTICING THIS HUGE SCAR ACROSS MY STOMACH? WHY DIDN’T ANYONE ASK TO SEE MY LETTERS? WHEN WAS I SUPPOSED TO SHOW THEM? IS THIS SIMPLY A SHAM TO MAKE US BELIEVE THAT YOU’VE ACTUALLY DONE A THOROUGH PHYSICAL?!! WHAT’S GOING ON HERE? AND WHILE I’M AT IT, I’M NOT EXACTLY THE KIND OF GUY YOU WANT IN THIS MAN’S ARMY.
Not a word was said. Just staring, with what seemed to me like a mixture of uncertainty and disbelief. Wait outside, the Captain then remarked, almost in a whisper. Before I walked out, I put my doctor’s letters on the counter.
Three minutes later the Captain approached me. One hand was cupping the side of his face. Put your clothes on, he murmured, and then you can go home.
Only one other guy was released that same day. When we saw each other outside of the Induction Center, I asked him how he got out? I said I was a homosexual, he replied.
How’d you get out, he asked? I don’t have a spleen. We smiled and then waved goodbye.
On November 21, 1972. I got my new Selective Service Classification. I was now 4F. Registrant not qualified for military service. They got it right this time around.
