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Selective Service...
...for those old enough to remember. Who still has their Selective Service Registration Card and Draft Classification Card?  Selective Service Cards by Frank Lewis, on Flickr I found mine the other day quite by accident. I've been watching Tour of Duty on TV and online recently, and I wondered if I still had these. I thought if I did have these cards, one would be my 1-A but no, my 4-A instead. In the late summer of 1966, when I received my 1-A draft classification, my dad went with me to see recruiters. First we went to see the Army recruiter. In my high school we all knew him: Sgt. Yount. He was not well liked. He seemed to never look you in the eye. My dad certainly didn't like him. We weren't in his office ten minutes and we left. From there we went to the Air Force recruiter. Turns out the Air Force recruiter, who's name I don't remember, was in the Army Air Corp the same time my dad was and, apparently at some of the same air fields my dad flew out of. After about a one hour trip down Memory Lane, the sergeant asked me if I wanted to enlist and I said yes. The next week I went to the induction center at the Mart Building in downtown St. Louis to take the Air Force physical. That same day I was sworn into the United States Air Force. My enlistment began on 1 Sep 1966. I didn't go on active duty until 26 Dec 1966, when I took the train with dozens of other enlistees, from St. Louis to San Antonio, Texas and Lackland Air Force Base to begin basic training. I was assigned to B Flight, 3708 Basic Military Training Squadron. Two weeks after receiving my 1-A, I received my draft notice. I still had to take the Army physical, but I was already in the Air Force. Apr 15 17 12:36 pm Link Thanks for your service. So may I ask what happened next after basic training? Were you stateside during your service or did you go abroad? Apr 15 17 08:31 pm Link I sure hope we are done with the draft. I do know military service is one of the few affordable ways to get a higher education. Apr 16 17 06:27 am Link LeboGraphics wrote: After basic training, I was assigned to the 3550 Pilot Training Wing, Moody AFB, GA. I stayed there for the duration of my enlistment. I was released from active duty in September 1970. My career field of Illustrator was important for the training of pilots but was not especially critical in any other area. Every time applied to go overseas I was turned down. I couldn't even get to Vietnam. Apr 16 17 06:47 am Link Robb Mann wrote: Robb, I believe that the draft, or Selective Service, is a necessary component of our national security. Compulsory service is necessary to maintain a sufficiently manned and trained military. I believe that everyone who is privileged to live here owes something back. Whether it's military service, Americorp or the Peace Corp. While our all-volunteer military is the best in the world it has been severely depleted after 15+ years of continuous war. A draft, or compulsory service, would help offset the effects of being on a continuous war footing. Apr 16 17 06:58 am Link Frank Lewis Photography wrote: I'll try and stay off the soapbox as well, and I"ll state up front, I'm Canadian, not American, and I didn't serve, although my Dad did, in Korea. Apr 16 17 08:26 am Link I totally lost mine in 1972. Maybe I just threw it out... can't remember. Thank God Nixon called for the volunteer army in August of 1972 right before my 18th birthday on 8/28. Thanks President Nixon. Apr 16 17 08:56 am Link Frank Lewis Photography wrote: I also don't want to enter soapbox territorry but I go back to the cival war where young men from the north were drafted into the service the sons of the wealthy could be relieved of service for $300. During Vietnam many upper middle class and rich young men could get student deferments, until the last couple years of the war. Apr 16 17 09:03 am Link Robb Mann wrote: The registration still exists. They are not drafting people as we have an all "volunteer" armed forces. So far it's worked out pretty well. Apr 16 17 11:06 am Link I haven't seen mine for years. When I was 17 I signed up with my local Army Reserve unit in Detroit, intending to go full time career upon graduation from high school. By the following year, although I had done my first two-week basic "tour" and was still active with weekly drills, my career focus had changed--I was now going to set the theater world on it's ear as an actor. At that point, Detroit was in a major slump, enlistments were high, and there were, effectively, no draft call-ups as a result and my C.O. was kind enough to transfer me from the ready reserve to the standby reserves to facilitate the needs of my intended employment, and I stayed there for the remainder of my required eight years of military service. Being on the road a great deal, I never received my actual discharge papers but given that I will be eighty in a couple of months, I don't expect to be called up any time soon, but given my time in grade, I would think that by now I should at least be a master sergeant if that happens. Apr 16 17 11:30 am Link Risen Phoenix Photo wrote: Nobody said it was perfect, that doesn't make it not a good idea. Apr 16 17 11:34 am Link I still have my card. In fact, I have a whole folder filled with all my orders for reassignments, promotions, awards, pay stubs, and the valued DD-214 form if I want to take advantage of VA health care. Where else could I have received training to fly around and fix helicopters, and take target practice in an exotic country shooting at real people hiding in rice paddies and behind rubber trees shooting back. Apr 16 17 02:06 pm Link DespayreFX wrote: Sorry sounds like a really bad idea from my perspective. Apr 16 17 06:00 pm Link My neighbor tells a story that he was drafted a couple of days before Nixon ended the draft. He was ready to go, but his Mom told him she had heard Nixon say on TV that the draft was ended, so he was not going anywhere. He says it was in the back of his mind for at least 10 years that one day the MP's would roll up and arrest him for draft evasion. He never heard from anyone about not showing up. Apr 16 17 06:26 pm Link Risen Phoenix Photo wrote: I am sure I must of had one because I know I registered. I know Vietnam ended before I turned 18 or graduated high school. I remember walking into the cafeteria in the old high school building in 1973 to the news. I tried ROTC in college. Ha. Yeah. Apr 16 17 07:49 pm Link Risen Phoenix Photo wrote: I had a deferment because the company I worked for was doing work for the military. Apr 16 17 10:12 pm Link Frank Lewis Photography wrote: I know 2 young men who recently joined the military. One entered the Navy and the other one is in the Marines. Apr 16 17 10:15 pm Link Risen Phoenix Photo wrote: Enjoy the Democracy you have from it today anyway, even if you think it's a bad idea. Apr 17 17 10:03 am Link 
Model Posts: 6639 MacMurdo - permanent station of the US, Sector claimed by New Zealand, Antarctica Thank you for sharing your story, Frank, and thank you for your service. Your draft card is dated just over a month before I was born. I appreciate my fellow veterans who served before me and those who served after me, whether they were drafted or served voluntarily. I enlisted the day of my 18th birthday and served 8 years in the Air Force. Failed my first physical because I was underweight, but I didn't have enough money to eat more. My recruiter bought me lunch every day in return for helping him with some paperwork and the Marine Corps recruiters next door to him bought me a beer every day after the office closed until I reached my minimum weight. That's how I first felt the camaraderie and support you only find in the military, and it's what I've missed ever since I got out. Apr 17 17 11:00 am Link MoRina wrote: I like your story! Apr 17 17 11:03 am Link Back in 1984, one of my younger brothers called me for advice: should he enlist in the Air Force? We talked for about an hour and agreed he should enlist. He already had an engineering degree from University of Missouri - Rolla but he didn't want a commission. After basic and tech school he was assigned to the 36th Bomb Wing, Anderson AFB, Guam, as a B-52 crew chief. He spent his entire enlistment there. Every time he had time off, he hopped a flight and went somewhere, Japan, Hong Kong, you name the place in the Far East I'm sure he visited there -- on our dime! Too cool. As a B-29 flight engineer, my dad would have been assigned there in 1945, if the Japanese had not surrendered. After he was released from active duty in 1988, he went to Arizona State and earned another engineering degree and went to work for Boeing in Mesa, AZ. He should be retiring from Boeing in a couple of years. Our military, the best in the world, is a great experience for men and women. In service, not everyone serves in combat. Ten percent of our military are the "point of the spear." The other 90% serve in support of that 10%. I would advise anyone under the age of thirty today, to think about military service, if for no other reason than the perks. Travel, job training, college and vocational education, the opportunity to expand one's world view. Mo, you failed your first physical? Well, you're in good company, Jimmy Stewart failed his first physical when he tried to enlist in the AAC. He didn't weigh enough either. On his second try, he made it. He went on to be a B-24 pilot and flew 20 missions over Europe. And you made it to E-6. I made it to E-4. I shoulda stayed in for 20. Apr 17 17 12:11 pm Link DespayreFX wrote: In full agreement. I also never served, which I regret, as I see it as a rite of passage which invests a young person in the fate of his or her country. Apr 17 17 07:10 pm Link I registered with the Selective Service around the time of my 18th birthday but I never saw a card like this one. Apr 18 17 06:21 am Link So, have "they" been in contact with ya yet FL . . . once ya get the card "they" never really forget where ya are, Sgt. Yount may still be on the lookout . . . jest in case "they" need ya . . .  I still have mine, it sits next to my ID in a small box in the attic . . . I'm thinkin' with all the surgeries I've had, and my decreased mental capacity (mostly, self inflicted . . . ), "they" won't be a needin' me no mo' . . . SOS Apr 18 17 07:05 am Link They had ended the draft before I turned 18, but I registered as required. I had almost gone into NROTC to go to college, but I ended up choosing a college that didn't have NROTC. I had wanted to go into the Navy because my dad had served in the Navy. I was still contemplating the whole idea at times when I hurt my knee playing softball during my senior year. While I'd never had any real problems with my knees, they found numerous bone deformities on my left knee and even an issue or two in my left hip. If I'd gone into NROTC, they might not have kicked me out, but they would likely have put me on some kind of restricted service. Maybe that wouldn't matter, but maybe things were better that the place I would have taken was given to someone who wouldn't be restricted. I believe in the option of a draft for military necessity. I completely oppose a peacetime draft. The problem in our country is not that those who are diligent don't give enough. The problem is that we take too much from those who work and have too many who do nothing but absorb the resources of those who work. Putting the ones who work hard through two or three more years of giving to others is just one more unjustified tax on their lives. For those who don't work, two or three years of compulsory service is more likely to leave them feeling that much more entitled. We currently spend about fifteen to twenty percent of the federal budget on the military and have about 0.3% of service-aged people serving. Even if increased the number of people in the military to 1%, we'd still end up with a society where 99 of 100 people don't serve. We'd also end up at least doubling our military expenditures. At a time when we need to reduce the debt, there's no reason to spend that much more to get no improvement in military readiness. Adding people to the military means that we need to train, clothe, house, and feed them. Once they are through training, we need to find something for them to do. If their "service" consists of sitting around doing nothing, they're more likely to become cynical rather than feel a greater investment in their country, particularly when their peers are on the outside building lives and careers. We are better off continuing to rely on volunteers who want to be there, who will have a mission to accomplish, and who are more likely to stay beyond the minimum time. Apr 18 17 09:50 am Link I honestly don't remember getting a card like that but maybe that's because I enlisted at age 17. I don't regret enlisting and planned to make it a career until my last assignment. Micky Mouse unit full of idjits, drunks and butt kissers. Before that, every place had been strac outfits and most guys, despite the usual bitching, were okay with their service. Friendships were close and you could count on your buddy as he did you. Wallets, valuables were often left out and nothing every came up missing even with all the signs warning us not to do such. Sure, things got tight now and then but most of us came out of it in one piece, others, we'll never forget. I was only in Asia under the 13 usual months but I lived with it. My sixth grade teacher had been a Marine and was in the Okinawa fighting. He believed that every able bodied male in this country has an obligation to serve. I follow that thinking but then, all my family served up to me and a couple after. My uncle had been a bomber in Germany and was one of the ones that dropped on Koln. At the end of my service I finished up in Germany and one of my bosses told me of his experiences in Koln and seeing what looked like burning logs but weren't. I also met a lot of old German vets and viewed photos from the war while drinking beer with them and even traveled with an ex-colonel (our equivalent rank) who, previously to 25 years in prison had served at a concentration camp. Odd thing was, he was purchasing two additional apartments in what was being constructed for the Munich Olympics and would be sold afterwards. Let me stay in one while he went on and the place even had a Jacuzzi! One grows a lot in the military and the experiences are rich. If I'd have had kids, I would have steered them towards service. I've been in 28 countries and the military accounts for most of them. All it cost was three years of my young life. I look around at he world today and think that we NEED to bring the draft back for many reasons not involving war or combat. I also have to question myself that if that age again, would I volunteer for the people of this country. I think I lean to not but I still love this country and hope it gets back on track. Apr 23 17 08:18 pm Link I kinda remember the draft card. I think. I missed being in the bad numbers in the draft and a couple years later enlisted anyway. So the draft never meant much to me. Had somewhat older people I knew, though, who got drafted, served, and a couple died violent deaths. I didn't consider it a good system. Apr 24 17 12:17 am Link |
