RE: the draft
At any rate, though quite a few guys claimed to be gay to get out of serving, I kept it to myself. I had been assured that should I be drafted, I would not be placed in an infantry unit. With a college degree and practice teaching experience and a teaching credential, I was assured I'd either be serving as a clerk in an office, or with some political wheel-greasing, I'd be teaching the children of army bigshots on some military post somewhere. Since my family were great friends of Senator Strom Thurmond who was quite pwoerful in national politics at the time, I knew I'd have the pull to get a teaching appointment if I got drafted.
So, even though they never reached my number, I was fully ready to go in if I got called.
During the Vietnam era, the enlisted ranks were filled with men and women with college degrees. It was an embarrassment of riches for the military at that time. Anyone with a low draft number but with a student deferment had a better-than-even chance of applying to become an officer before being graduated. The Marine Corps visited my college campus recruiting juniors who, during the break before the senior year, would attend a basic training. The officer trainee would return to finish his last year of college at his own expense and then would be given his commission and sent off to training for whatever occupational specialty for which he was best suited. Other services did the same thing. There were other service recruiters there, but I talked to the Marine recruiter. I was ready to sign up. Unfortunately for him, I needed a parent's permission (parent being the one paying for the education, as it were). My father drove up to the school and talked me out of it. At least, it seems like that's what he did. I knew I wouldn't win the argument, but I sure did like the uniform I "might" have been wearing.
My draft number was 91, and I knew I was going to serve somewhere, somehow. (ALL of my friends had numbers in the 300s). There wasn't any question of lying my way out of it. Call it what you will, I knew the military was going to be an obstacle between me and my dreams, and I had to handle the mlitary the best way I knew how. Anything less than a medical reason for being classified 4-F (unsuitable for military service) would, at that time, follow you around and make it unlikely you'd ever get the jobs you really wanted. At least, where I came from that was the case.
As Matt pointed out about a "gay" deferment, that was like wearing a pink star. At that time, employers always checked your military status. The "gay" flag was instant "We're sorry, but we can't use you."
The military isn't suited for everyone, of course. One needs to be able to immerse oneself into being a team player. It's not about the one, it's about the many. Several guys in my company were discharged during boot camp. One was totally by design. He began wetting his bed regularly after he realized he had made a mistake by passing the physical. Another had a meltdown. Sweet guy, though.
In consonance with TOD, what is the scariest thing you've ever had to get out of (or thing you didn't want to do):
I hated my first two years in the Navy because I hated the occupational rating they forced upon me. I was a "Radioman". School was fun. I was a quick learner in Morse Code (but it was no longer used except for emergency communications) and could tune the equipment readily enough. At my first duty station, I spent my first month cleaning two bathrooms and waxing/polishing the hallway. Happily, two weeks into that another guy joined me. He had recently been graduated from Amherst. We had a lot in common and became fast friends. Sometime after that -- a week or so -- the division officer's secretary called us into her office. She was baffled why two college grads were cleaning heads and passageways when, as she put it, "idiots were running the communications center."
We were both integrated into the Comm Center within the day and two new arrivals took over the janitorial duties in the passageway and heads. In the message center, I found that I was expected to make coffee, run off messages on a mimeograph machine and, once a week, swab and wax the floor.
Over the next year, my friend and I were both promoted to Radioman Third Class (we became "petty officers"). That was still at the bottom of the pecking order, but it was a healthy pay raise. In late 1972, my friend applied for a commission and got his approval in Spring 1972. During that same spring, I applied for a change of rating to become a Journalist. That, in itself, was a minor drama with my request form being torn up by my leading petty officer (this, in the era of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt who "modernized" Navy thinking), the first person who had a crack at it.
I knew that if I was to finish my four-year obligation I'd need to improve my circumstances. Journalism had been a closed rating for several years for the Navy. It was a "plum" rating -- that's PLUM as in highly desirable. In that Spring of 1972, a friend in our personnel office informed me the rating had opened back up and thought I might like to apply.
Request forms (aka "chits") could be approved or disapproved. They had to run the course of the chain of command, however. In this case, I had a leading petty officer, five chief petty officers (whose function, as far as I could tell, was to drink all the coffee I and another guy in my section could make in an 8-hour shift), the communications officer (the division officer to whom I referred earlier) and, ultimately, the Commanding Officer of Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, Florida.
Another petty officer in the division heard about what happened and told me to fill out another form. When I had, he went to the leading petty officer with me and told him, point-blank, that he could approve it or disapprove it, but that he had to send it along.
The LPO smirked and disapproved it and handed it back to me to take to the chiefs. The other petty officer said, "No! You take it in. Pulliam doesn't get it back until the final sign-off."
A day later I was called in by one of the chiefs. They were all in one room, fingers firmly hooked into their coffee-cup handles. I was told to sit and, one by one, I was regaled with stories about "other radiomen" they knew who had attempted to change ratings and failed. The Navy, they said, "spent thousands of dollars on you" to make you into a Radioman. They further reminded me that they had recently gotten me a top secret clearance and decryption training. "This", they said, is what you are meant to do. I thanked them kindly, told them I understood their points-of-view, and absolved them by telling them I understood they'd have to disapprove the request, but that I still wanted it to go forward.
A day later, the commander in charge of the division called me in. He asked me what the chiefs had said to me. I told him. He then said, "If those chief petty officers have told you this is a waste of time and disapproved your request, do you think I'm going to do any differently?" I professed innocence in having a clue what he might make of it but I still wanted to be a journalist and that I wanted my request to go forward.
Two days later, I got a call from the secretary of the base commanding officer requesting I come to his office after work that day (2 p.m.) for an interview on my request.
This was a wholly different experience from anything that had gone before. I was nervous, but not particularly scared. I knew if I could impress upon him the sincerity of my request, I might have shot.
The CO's office was huge compared to any I'd been in since being on active duty. His secretary was a lovely woman and her desk was near a set of "saloon doors" that led to his inner santcum. I had only been seated a few seconds when one of those doors swung open and Captain Smith looked directly at me, smiled and said, "Petty Officer Pulliam, come on in!"
I moved quickly and waited to be told to sit. He asked his secretary to bring us coffee. He looked at me and said,"I'm told by one of your co-workers that you drink coffee." Wow! He caught me off guard with that one! This was the number-one dude on base, and I was one of a thousand next-to-nobodies He made small talk, and I'm certain I joined in, while the coffee was put before us. He took a sip, and then asked me: "Why do you want to be a Journalist?"
I told him about my college years, my double major in theater and English, my interest in writing, and my interest in learning about public affairs. I then told him how disappointed I'd been when, in boot camp, I'd been placed into the radioman rating. I had, I explained, done a very good job on the Foreign Language Aptitude Test and that I'd hoped I might have been taken into one of the "naval intelligence" programs at the very least.
He laughed. Yes, he admitted, I had a very high FLAT score. (He had reviewed my records!!!) He said he was amazed that they'd decided on the radioman rating for me, too. Radioman, as a rating, was considered highly critical, though, and sometimes people are classified for the school based on other scores that are deemed desirable for the rating.
He asked me to write a couple of pages on why I wanted to be a Journalist and how I felt it would benefit the Navy more than my being a radioman. I was to drop it off with his secretary (in the next couple of days).
I went back to the barracks and began writing. I wrote and wrote. I edited. I wrote some more. I re-copied everything. Several times.
Next morning, on my way to work, I dropped off my final two-page declaration.
A week passed. I had no concept of when I might get some news about the CO's decision. What I didn't expect, in the middle of the second week, was to arrive at work and find that the door's cypher lock codes had been changed. I rang the bell. One of my co-workers looked out the window and said, "Oh! Wait a minute!." I expected the door to open, but I waited. And I waited. And then, one of the chiefs came out. He handed me a message and told me to read it. It was my orders to report to the Defense Information School, Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, in six weeks. The other petty officer stuck his head out the door and told me the CO wanted me to drop by his office after getting that message.
I was so happy I could barely function. My head was swimming as I made my way to the administration building. Upon entering the CO's office, his secretary stood and stuck out her hand. "Congratulations!" she said. She then handed me my two-page declaration on why I wanted to be a Journalist. Attached to it was my request chit. She told me to make note of all the signatures and recommendations. At the bottom was the CO's with a big check mark by "Approved". Above that were the signatures of the communications officer, three of the five chiefs and the leading petty officer. They were all checked "Approved", too....but the check marks in "Disapproved" had been whited out.
She laughed and said the CO had invited them all to his office the day after I'd submitted my writing. He asked them if any of them knew "why" I had requested to change ratings to become a Journalist. Not one of them knew because not one of them had asked. He then handed each of them copies of my two pages and directed them to read. He had then told them all to see his secretary who would help them, if they chose, make a better-informed decision before they left his office.
She also told me I was to spend the rest of my time at NAS Jacksonville working in the base public affairs office.
That was the beginning of a career. I didn't know it at the time, of course. I met many extraordinary people, had many extraordinary experiences, and have tons of extraordinary memories because of it. And, of course, there's the lifetime pension.
It was a good time, it was the best time...
