On 15 Feb 2004 11:50:02 -0800, (Fred the Red
Shirt) wrote:

Ed Rasimus wrote in message . ..
On 13 Feb 2004 11:44:10 -0800, (Fred the Red
Shirt) wrote:

...
I don't think anyone disputes that. But how many were there?
CNN today (feel free to correct this) said that 8,000 National
guardsmen served in Vietnam in total. How many Americans in
total served there? How many National guardsmen during that
time did NOT go to Vietnam.

...

How many did NOT go? How many Americans did NOT go? How many men did
NOT go? How many members of Congress did NOT go? What has that got to
do with anything?

It is generally accepted by most folks who remember those years that
men joined the NG to avoid service in Vietnam. Here and there some
folks on this newsgroup argue that GWB in particular did not choose
the Air National Gurad to avoid being sent to Vietnam. If he had
WANTED to go to Vietnam as a pilot then it would ahve made sense
for him to enlist in the USAF or USN.

You oversimplify. By 1970 input to USAF pilot training was
contracting. It was harder to get a slot, with priority going to
USAFA, then full four-year ROTC and finally to OTS which was the
"opportunity of last resort" for a college graduate who finally saw
the draft looming on the horizon.

By getting a Guard slot, a lucky individual got a guaranteed pilot
training slot, and probably more important a guarantee of
post-graduation assignment to the aircraft of the state unit. IOW, a
guaranteed fighter slot. Pretty good deal.

Under no circumstances would someone wanting to go to Vietnam as a
pilot ever ENLIST. (Before Kevin jumps me again, that is not a slur
against enlisted folks, but merely a statement that enlistment is not
a route to UPT.)

So I still stick to the notion that GWB chose the guard to avoid
being sent to Vietnam. That's why those numbers are meaningful.

If GWB did not want to go to Vietnam that's fine with me. My brother
didn't want to go, but his birthday was drawn last in the lottery
for his year. I didn't want to go, and they did not draft anyone
from my year. Neither one of us volunteered.

I didn't even know that I didn't want to go. I wanted to fly fast
jets, and got sucked into the business. Too bad I found out that I
liked it.

I see nothing wrong with avoiding service in Vietnam by whatever
legal means. I see nothing wrong with terminating one's tour of
duty in Vietnam by whatever legal means. That was how things
were back then.

And, conversely, there were an incredible number of USAF and USN
aviators who went again and again, all voluntarily.


It remains a fact that a man who was 1-A and had a low lottery
number was a lot less likely to go to Vietnam if he joined the
Guard than if he didn't, unless he could get CO status.

If a man was 1-A with a low lottery number he didn't need to join the
Guard. If a man were in college, he didn't go. If he were married, he
didn't go. If he did drugs and admitted it, he didn't go.


If he aws gay and admitted it he didn;t go. But weren't defferments
for college eventually discontinued (with existing ones grandfathered)?
I thought that was the basis for the 'unrest' on the college campuses.

Nope. Deferments for college continued throughout the war. You
extended your 2-S deferment if you went to graduate school. You
remained deferred if you went into selected professions such as
teaching--which may account for the pacifist left-wing bias found in
so many educators today.

The "unrest" was simply protesting the war in general and the
obligations of citizenship in particular.



Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8