[AT] OT Draft Exemption Exam

Tue Jan 21 10:50:01 PST 2020

Certainly not a big deal... but the draft lottery "winners?" were somewhat dependent on the local board's quotas.  I had been getting college deferments.  The lottery came out just as I started graduate school.  A bunch of us guys went to a local pizza place in Tempe to watch the draft lottery in I think October of 1969,.. we were still on our first pitcher of beer when my birthday got called.  I got my draft notice in February, and got to finish out the school year.  I was 23 years old when I went in.  I always felt that the quotas were hard on the rural counties, at least in Oregon.  Very lucky, never had to go to Vietnam.
There is almost a tractor reference here.... it was my lucky day when I was processing in to be a medic at Fort Sam Houston, they pulled some of out of the line and asked us for our driver's licenses.  ????   To get to the point, we were going to be truck drivers for our groups of medic trainees.  We went to a training..... backing up a bit... the farmer/rancher I worked for during high school hauling hay, etc., had purchased several military surplus 6 X 6 trucks for farm use.  So, I was very familiar with them, and for example double clutching, and backing a trailer,  and with my knowledge of diesel engines...etc.,   the instructor didn't even let me finish the test.  Some how I seemingly got lost in the motor pool at Ft. Sam Houston.  I sometimes think the sergeant of the motor pool was looking out for me...he knew I could get those trucks in and out of tight spaces, was reliable and was easy on the equipment.  He must not have minded that my military protocol was lacking.  I was there a lot longer than I should have been.  When they finally found me, I was too short to go to Viet Nam, so they put in the medical lab of a large hospital since I essentially had a masters degree in chemistry.  

John MaxwellFerndale CA

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Auten <pga2 at basicisp.net>
To: at <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Mon, Jan 20, 2020 8:37 pm
Subject: Re: [AT] OT Draft Exemption Exam

 I had several different deferments during Vietnam (never served). First, when I registered for the draft at 18 I was still in high school. While I was still in high school, I started electronics school. I got a deferment for that. Then when I graduated from tech school in '68, I went to work for Texas Instruments in their defense division and received a different deferment. I was repairing radar systems for the F4 Phantom, A7 Corsair II and P3 anti-submarine aircraft. When the draft lottery came around in '69, I was already 21 and they were only drafting 19 year old guys. I had a high school friend that was sent to Vietnam, He was pretty crazy before he enlisted, but his experiences as a door gunner on a Huey changed him drastically. Another of our mutual friends went to see him out in California and he said that Butch had become pretty anti social and really didn't want to see any of us. He came home physically intact, not so much with his psyche.
  Phil in TX

 On 1/20/2020 5:36 PM, Indiana Robinson wrote:

 My employer kept me out of Vietnam in the mid 1960's but I didn't know about it until I was told by someone later. Then when they did the lotteries in I think 1969 I was just barely too old to be included. I was born in 1942 but the lottery draws started including those born in about 1943 / 44 I believe. I had some friends who went and some co workers who went. Some didn't come back... Most who came back were changed forever... One co worker enlisted after his younger brother was killed. I never heard anything of him again. I know nothing of his fate. I know that he had a wife and very young child. A friend had gone and came back about 1968 or so and we were best friends for about 45 years. Our kids grew up together and we were all together constantly. Still he almost never talked about his time there. On very rare occasions when it was just he and I he would talk a bit. I never pushed him. I did learn that his job was to sneak way out into the hills and call in target locations, "forward spotter"? I forget. I do remember him once saying that if he had been there 100 years that he would never have gotten used to waking up to machine gun fire... He has been gone about 5 or 6 years now I guess. As you get older time gets fuzzy... Diana and I currently board a horse for one of his daughters. 

  .

  On Mon, Jan 20, 2020 at 4:39 PM <bradloomis at charter.net> wrote:

As was my father. 1 class short of dual engineering degrees in 4 years at NC State, civil and mechanical. He spent the war developing sound tracking torpedoes for the Navy, spending time at sea.  As an engineer, not in uniform. He would have been in his 30s. Sadly polio killed him four months before I was born in 52. 
 Brad

 -----Original Message-----
 From: AT <at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com> On Behalf Of szabelski at wildblue.net
 Sent: Monday, January 20, 2020 1:12 PM
 To: Antique Tractor Email Discussion Group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
 Subject: Re: [AT] OT Draft Exemption Exam

 My dad was called up for WII, but didn’t serve. His boss made an argument that he was un-replaceable at his job and they needed him above everybody else. He was deferred from serving.

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 Francis Robinson
 aka "farmer"
 Central Indiana USA
 robinson46176 at gmail.com

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