Every morning when Marge and I woke up in our furnished apartment in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood we would hear three things on the radio: An advertisement for Pan Am’s flight one to London, Karachi and around the world, the number of three alarm fires in the South Bronx and the body count from Vietnam. We always killed more of them.
I received my induction order in the fall of 1967. I had just returned from the Peace Corps and entered into NYU’s Graduate School of Public Administration. I was learning about administration and the idea of administrative overload and I started writing letters to my Selective Service Board in Seattle doing my best to jam up their system with administrative appeals. I remember, though, that I always addressed the Selective Service Board as “Dear SS” and I always signed my letters with my Selective Service numbers, “Sincerely, twenty-five dash three dash two fifty three.”
I just didn’t see any reason to kill Vietnamese nor did I see any reason why I should put myself in a situation where out of self preservation I would have to kill someone who wanted to kill me.
I had fantasies of course. I would go to Canada, fly to Athens, get to Rhodes and then hire a boat to take me into the port of Antalya where I would use my old Peace Corps contacts with fishermen to get me into Turkey without anyone knowing about it, head up to my village, Comakli, and live happily ever after. Are you kidding?
I also thought I should start learning Karate so that when I went to prison I wouldn’t be raped. Then someone asked me what I would do if I were to wake up with a knife at my throat. Okay, prison is out.
I always knew I wouldn’t go to Vietnam and that was a given. Permanent, no wavering about that. But, what would I do?
I’d get scared about prison or refusal or consequences so I’d read another book about Vietnam, its history, our history of financing the French, taking over colonial responsibilities, atrocities, war crimes, napalm, defoliation and the atrocious treatment of Vietnam vets when they came back home. I read Air War in Vietnam by Chomsky or Mike Klare’s writing. I suppose much of my generation has many books about Vietnam. It ate at us, made us protest, think, despise, want to grow goatees like Uncle Ho. I tried but mine kept curling up rather than hanging down like Uncle’s.
I can’t remember exactly when I saw my draft board in Seattle, but I did go see them. Three old men. They asked me, “what’s this Peace Corps, is it a peace group or something.” Maybe they were just being cute, but I was too serious to see their humor if that was what it was. I despised them.
After a couple years of administrative appeals, my options were exhausted. The “exhaustion of administration remedies” … the antecedents to direct court, legal action. I had talked to my sister and friends about where I should refuse. Who was giving what? Seattle reported in – Five years and five thousand. Berkeley was offering a couple years of community service. New York seemed to be averaging a couple of years in the slammer.
I was now looking for an attorney. Someone told me about Conrad Lynn. He was a famous attorney, famous for defending hard core cases against Black nationalists condemned to life or death. I found his office in Lower Manhattan and sat in front of his big desk. He told me about his life living in a Quaker intentional community somewhere outside of New York City. He told me I’d probably get five years. I began wondering why this man would spend time aggressively defending a scared white boy when he had real cases on his plate. I left his office and didn’t go back.
I got scared again and someone told me about a psychiatrist in New York City. I paid my money and went to see him. He wrote up his profile. He wrote I had a Christ complex and that I was a drug habitué. It was supposedly good enough to get me out of the draft. I still have his profile in the little metal box I use as my “safe.” Never used it, though, I just couldn’t buy my way out of this one.
Somehow I found an attorney named Marvin Karpatkin. I called him Magic Marvin Karpatkin. Magic wanted a $1500 retainer. I sold my insurance policy that Uncle Joe had my mother buy for me. It was the only savings me and Marge had. I felt I was betraying Uncle Joe who had retired as a Lieutenant Colonel out of WW II.
Magic assigned me a young lawyer in his firm called Michael Pollitt. Michael interviewed me and asked me to write up why I wasn’t going to go as a prelude to a conscious objector request. I really didn’t think of myself as a conscious objector. I mean I think I could fight if necessary, kill if necessary. I mean the fucking Brits were still in Ireland, their last colony.
Nevertheless, I wrote up why I wasn’t going. I can’t remember what I said. I suppose it was about the illegitimacy of the war itself. When he read it, he couldn’t believe that I hadn’t emphasized my seminary experience, my Catholic background with its commitment to service. Commitment to service? Really? Yeh, there was a commitment to service buried within the Church although it was hard for me to admit to any positive aspects of the Irish Catholic religion based on being born sinners with the old Original black spot on our souls and living in fear of hell for wanting to sleep with a woman.
You know, I grew up in fear of hell. It was real to me. When I was sleeping on the couch in our Queen Anne home and for some reason falling off, I would dream about falling into hell. Sinning had dire consequences. When Jimmie Jolin and I would be fooling around on the bleachers in singing class at St. Anne’s Parish School, the Sister (can’t remember her name) would reprimand us and tell us if we didn’t stop THE nuclear bomb, when it fell, would fall right there on St. Anne’s parish hall, because me and Jimmie were goosing each other rather than paying attention to her.
I did get to sleep with a woman in Turkey, another Peace Corps Volunteer who I lusted after. Someone told me she was on the pill and I got more interested in the possibilities. She came to my village and our intercourse was a disaster. I was still a virgin, of course, and her pussy was so hot it scared me. I thought there must be something wrong with her. It was a mess. Nevertheless, there was a very positive outcome. I gave up my fear of hell. In fact, I gave up hell altogether. If sleeping with a woman meant hell that was the end of hell for me. I liked sleeping with that woman and I wanted to do more of it.
I rewrote my conscientious objector argument for Michael’s review and we submitted the CO request to the Selective Service. It was rejected, and now I faced induction at the Whitehall induction center in lower Manhattan. Some radicals helped me out here too. Sam Melville and Jane Alpert blew up the induction center at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. This led to more people having to go through Whitehall and this delayed my induction date.
Sam Melville ended up in Attica prison and was involved in the Attica Brothers’ rebellion. He had dug a system of trenches to defend against the inevitable retaking of the prison by the state police. The cops killed Sam Melville. He helped save my life and the lives of many others. Anyone remember Sam Melville? Jane Alpert went underground and came up years later. I don’t know what happened to her. Thank you, though, Jane.
There were many courageous draft resisters. I was not one of them. I remember how Mark Rudd, an SDS leader from the Columbia University anti-war student movement, went to the induction center and challenged them to induct him because he would organize resistance from within the Army. He was a funny looking guy, but straight forward and determined. I saw him talk at Washington Square Park. I wondered where he and many others got their courage to be public.
I was going to refuse, but I wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it. I wasn’t going to do it “publicly.” I also had a possible ace in the hole. Magic Marvin told me that there was a recent court decision that was in my favor, but the court decision had not yet made it to the administrative end of things so my induction order was probably invalid.
I was glad to know about that possibility, but I was also bound and determined to say no. I went down to Whitehall in September, 1969, and got there early in the cold morning for an orientation from the Sergeant. Refusal was now part of the administrative order. He asked how many people were going to refuse today. I raised my hand. There were a couple of other hands.
I went through my physical like everyone else. My folder had a red tag on it. It meant that I was headed to Vietnam. The guy next to me was Black man who said that he was not only 27 years old, but married with kids. He had the red tag too.
When I worked for Uncle Eddie on construction during my college years, I had an industrial accident. When we were moving rip raff on the side of the Columbia River in front of Rocky Reach Dam in the summer of 1963, my eight foot long wrecking bar had slipped out from under a very large rock we were about to send down the hill. I got slammed back and pinned to the ground by both the rock and the wrecking bar. When I got up, I couldn’t move. I thought I was paralyzed.
I got three quarters of my pay from industrial insurance (workers compensation) and headed up to Lake Chelan where Aunt Irma was encamped on the Indian reservation. I spent about a month lying in the sun and wondering what was under that mou-mou worn by my distant cousin, Karen Laws. I even got my first kiss in Chelan’s Rialto Theater that summer.
The industrial accident left me with a back injury and the Navy doctor who was on duty at Whitehall told me to come back the next day for a closer examination. I went back the next day and he asked me if I was really going to refuse induction. I said yes. He said he could get me out due to this back injury. I almost yelled at him. NO!! I have waited and prepared for two years for this day and I was going to refuse. Period.
In order not to contaminate the other fodder headed to Vietnam, the refusing part of the induction process was now a private affair. It took place in an office. The induction officer I was told had a baseball bat leaning up against the radiator in his office. Sure enough, when I entered the room, there it was. It was no doubt a defense against us killers. I kept thinking about Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant when he started raving in the psychiatrist’s office, “I want to Kill!” “I want to Kill!”
The deal was he would read your name and you would not step forward. I was still afraid someone would push me so I tried to stand as near to the wall as possible. “(name), please step forward.” I didn’t move. “(name), please step forward.” “(name), please step forward.” I still didn’t move. He told me to go see the FBI and I left.
When I got out of his office, I called up Magic Marvin. I said I was leaving for the West Coast with my wife and I was wondering if he could go see the FBI for me. He said. “Son, there are a few things your lawyer can’t do for you and this is one of them.”
I headed up to the FBI office in Manhattan. I think it was in the 60s near Hunter College. When I got off the elevator, I was faced with the large Department of Justice seal on the floor between me and the reception area. I walked around it. I told the office receptionist that I had just refused induction. She told me to take a seat.
I was called after a modest wait and ushered into an office occupied by a young suit. He was a graduate of the University of Washington law school and treated me like an old home boy. He had his wing tips up on the desk and casually slid a piece of paper across his desk and told me to sign it. It was a waiver of rights form.
He probably didn’t know how much I hated UW frat boys with their wing tipped shoes, but I meekly said that while I was sure he was trying to help me, my lawyer had said not to sign anything.
His wing tips came slamming off the desk and his demeanor changed instantly to hard ass. He told me the next step was the Federal District Attorney who would decide whether to prosecute me. He said I had to stay in touch with his office and keep him informed of all address changes, blah, blah. I left his office and had a taste of that wonderful feeling called “Liberation.”
I never heard about this whole affair again. Maybe it was Magic Marvin’s court case. Maybe it was the fact that the US public knew about the disastrous battle called the Tet Offensive in 1968 and that the promised US victory was not “just around the corner.”
Maybe it was all those courageous draft resisters who had done hard time since the mid-1960s in protest against the war. Maybe it was that every time I was in a demonstration for the next five years, I ran from the cops rather than getting arrested so that they wouldn’t pull my jacket and find out about my refusal to serve the war machine.
Still, I had refused and I was proud of it, if only privately.
