#Draft March 17
We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.
Today contribution to the 30-Day Letter Writing Coach4aday Challenge is on the military DRAFT.
The challenge involves composing a letter to yourself when you were an earlier age. The goal is to focus on a value, habit, or choice that needs to be adopted or made.
In December of 1969 the United States started to utilize a lottery to draft young men into the armed services. This letter is about my experience with the lottery and draft when I turned 19. During my sophomore year in college both myself and roommate at East Carolina had a few months we felt sure we would be called into service.
Day 17-Letter about the Selective Service Lottery
February 2, 1972
Dear 19-Year-Old Dan:
Well tonight is the big event for the United States Selective Services and for you. Today February 2nd is the day that all men born in 1953 will learn what order of call numbers they have been assigned. Those numbers apply to US Military Draft to see who would be conscripted. Every male in the US turning 19 in 1972 are classified as Draft-age eligible and that includes you. You will be assigned a number between one and 365, depending on your birthday. The lowest numbers will be called first to serve in the military if you pass the physical or don’t have some type of deferment.
Your roommate at East Carolina University is Michael H. Orrell and his birthday is February 18. Yours is February 22nd. Mike will be assigned #11 and you will get #20. The two of you bemoan your bad luck walking back from Joyner Library where they have posted the results.
There is also another clever government acronym associated with the Selective Service and it is called APN. Administrative processing number (APN) denotes the highest lottery number that will be called for each table year. You and Mike will be in the first batch to have to report for a physical as the APN for 1972 is 95.
Draft Physical
In the fall of 1972, the two of you will board a bus from Greenville NC headed to Raleigh NC. In Raleigh you will go thru a comprehensive evaluation at the Military Entry Processing Station. At the end of the day, you will see if Selected Service Classifications are going from 1-H to 1-A. For Mike two knee surgeries due to high school football injuries will get him a 4-F designation.
19-Year-Old Dan’s fate is that due to his height of 6’4” he needed his weight to fall in an acceptable range. Tipping the scales, you will miss that target by two pounds. You will be screamed and lectured sternly by a sergeant telling you he will be seeing you again soon so eat up. Your classification status boarding the bus back to East Carolina remains at 1-H.
Before you ever get that call to retake the physical President Richard Nixon ended the draft. The lottery would continue but only men born in 1953 would be called. You missed it by two pounds.
Grown Up Dan
Recent Comments