1971 was an interesting year in the history of the Vietnam War, and for me personally.

For the US, the war was “winding down”.  It was generally accepted that the war was unwinnable and the US was losing ground. Negotiations were underway for the US to exit Vietnam.

The Pentagon Papers were published.  The war had become enormously unpopular in the US and protests were common on most college campuses.  The Kent State shootings happened in May the year before.

The 26th amendment to the Constitution took effect, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, largely in response to the draft age being 18.  ‘If I can die for my country, I should be able to vote.’

And impacting me personally, the Draft Law expired in July of that year.

The Draft Law allowed any male to be conscripted into the military at age 18, which during the late 60s and early 70s meant being sent to fight in Vietnam.  Of my friends, schoolmates, bandmates and colleagues from work who enlisted or were drafted and served in Vietnam, fewer than half came home alive.

I had a student deferment from the draft that expired at about the same time the Draft Law expired.  The expiration of the Draft Law didn’t mean no one could be drafted, it meant that the only people who could be drafted were the ones who became eligible before the Law expired, but couldn’t be drafted due to deferments.  This included me. Within days of the Draft Law expiring, I received my notice to report for the medical exam that would be the first step in being drafted into the army.  We were told to pack a toothbrush and expect to go straight from the medical exam to boot camp.

The next part of this story felt surreal then and even more so now.

I was living in Fort Wayne Indiana.   The notice said to gather at an address at 6AM to board the bus that would take me and my fellow potential draftees to the medical testing facility in Indianapolis, about 125 miles south.   By 6AM, forty of us had gathered and were awaiting the bus.  It was an emotional morning with tearful goodbyes from family and friends.

Random chance had brought together 37 strangers and three people who, while not close, were at least acquainted before that day.  Those three were Bill Trickey, Willie Long, and me.

Bill Trickey and I knew each other from college; more specifically, I dated his ex-girlfriend.  But no hard feelings.

I met Willie Long through Bill.  Willie and Bill were unusual in that each was at least 7 feet tall.  In spite of his size, Bill never played basketball.  Willie however was a South Side star who went on to play college and pro basketball. Willie was the only one of us who arrived in a limo to meet the bus. Bill and Willie knew each other solely by virtue of sharing similar stature.

The three of us rode the three hours together, but there was little conversation on the bus as we were all contemplating our futures.  (Read “scared shitless”.)

At the medical facility, we started in the cafeteria where were got a short orientation, which was mainly being told we were now under military command and had better do as we were told, or else.  From there we queued up in a hallway and started our trip through the process.  The three of us stayed together in line, Willie, then Bill, then me, and were probably somewhere close to the mid-point.  At one of the first doors we came to, we would wait in the hall until someone inside the room, but out of sight for us would say “Next!”.  We slowly indexed forward as people entered the room then exited to continue the queue.

When it was Willie’s turn, we heard exclamations as he rounded through the doorway.  “How tall are you!?”.

Turned out this was the room where they gathered some simple height and weight information.   The Army’s height limit for a soldier was 6’8″.  That was also the limit of the measure that was part of the scale you stood on to get weighed.  So they knew Willie was over 6’8″ but had to take his word on his actual height.  (I thinks he claimed 7′.) Willie was told he was ineligible for service due to his height and was told to wait in the cafeteria for the bus to take him back to Fort Wayne.

“Next!”  Now Bill walked around the corner.  More exclamations.  Two soldiers came out to look at the rest of us in line to see if there were more seven-footers.  They correctly concluded Bill was a couple of inches taller than Willie.  They had Bill and Willie stand back to back to compare heights and listed Bill at 7’2″.  Bill too was told to wait in the cafeteria.

I continued in queue through to the last stop which was in a large room where the remaining 38 of us stripped (completely) and stood in four rows all facing the same direction while we were visually examined.   I remember thinking perhaps the guys in the front row had it best as they didn’t have to look at anyone else’s naked ass, but imagining three rows of guys behind you who could be looking at yours.  Or was there a benefit in being in the back row where you knew only the medics were looking at your ass?  It made no real difference to me as I was in the second row with butts in front of me and eyes behind.

When one of the medics got to me, he looked me up and down from all sides and asked (more loudly than I thought necessary) “What is wrong with your feet?!”   So to explain this reaction, I have a congenital condition affecting my feet and ankles that has resulted in gradual deterioration of some of the bones over my lifetime and does impact my mobility slightly.  However, 50 plus years ago, it was not in any significant way limiting nor did I think it was noticable much less obvious to the casual observer. And considering how desperate the Army was for soldiers with the limitations of the Draft Law having expired, it did not occur to me the condition would keep me out of the Army.

The medic called the Doctor over to take a look.  Without the exclamation point, the Doctor’s question was the same as the medic’s, “What is wrong with your feet?”.  I told him the medical name of the condition.  He told me I was disqualified for service and to go wait in the cafeteria.

It was just Willie, Bill and me in the cafeteria until mid-afternoon.  While our 37 other bus-mates were on their way to bootcamp, we three were on our way back home.

One hell of a coincidence that the three of us were together for the entire trip and shared the same outcome.