WHERE A WAR WOULDN'T TAKE ME

WHERE A WAR WOULDN'T TAKE ME(L DOUGLAS ST OURS) WHERE A WAR WOULDN'T TAKE ME

I was a shadow deprived of light.

"OH SHIT! JESUS! I'M AWAKE DAMN IT!"
My father had pounded the door
like a blacksmith on an anvil
and my head bore the brunt,
groggy, grumbling, I stumbled out of bed
slipping on an errant sock,
blinded by the hallway light.
My neck kinked and my brain rotten
after last night's party binging
on malt liquor, ashtray butts,
and a frustrated attempt
at a quickie washed down
by a post midnight concoction of mostly raw eggs.

Like me, stone faced, my dad drove my miserable hung over self to the downtown armory
along dark and deserted streets foggily mirroring my predawn stupor and desiccated tongue,
too late it registered that I should have drank a glass of water before leaving home.

I felt like nothing,
nothing until the fear crept in
when I climbed aboard that chartered bus,
its diesel engine groaning as if it caught whatever was rumbling in my upset empty stomach.
The bus was full of young men and teens backslapping and bragging
about what they meant and swore they'd do
as if our sunrise destination was a panty raid
instead of the pre-induction physical we were ordered to appear for by the Selective Service.

It was the early fall of 1969
and in spite of eight months of goofing off, I had so far avoided the draft.
During that tumultuous time I participated in two anti-war demonstrations at the Capital
where I learned the hard way how tear gas sears your eyes and scorches your throat.
1968 was the bloodiest year yet in the Vietnamese civil war
we barged in to facilitate and maximize the locals slaughter of each other,
compounding the agony with our modern can do know how,
demonstrating our prowess at civilizing with the introduction
of napalm, chemical defoliation, free fire zones,
search and destroy missions, relentless bombardment,
and the occasional massacre of innocent civilians.
Still I had no sympathy for the Vietcong
with their wicked bamboo sticks and tripwire mines and encircling ambushes
killing and maiming boys I had known in high school.
The war became your fight if you failed or dropped out of school.
The draft board's tentacles would catch and collar you
like a mongrel dog loose on the streets without tags.

My final year in high school amounted to an academic disaster.
I was so turned off and disenchanted, I went from not giving a crap
to deliberately cutting every class and failing every course.
My prospects for graduation were nil, the accumulating manifestation
of failing grades were slowly pulling me away, far away to Southeast Asia.
I got so nihilistically drunk on the week of final exams,
I was more full of rum than answers.

Early that June 1968 I returned to school prepared to take my lumps,
expecting nothing but bad news results and the budding realization,
the quandary of whether I was to become a warrior or an exile.

I made the rounds and visited each of the faculty and strangely I eked out a passing grade in every subject including chemistry where that teacher's befuddling congratulations flew in the face of an entire year of me not bothering to complete or submit a single assignment.
Bewildered and disbelieving I grudgingly accepted my diploma
though I spared my parents the expense of buying me a bourgeois class ring.
The mystery of my meager success astounded me for many years
till my mother admitted to me a decade later that without my knowledge or consent
she secretly met and tearfully beseeched each of my teachers
to give me a pass and spare her the loss of another beloved son.

I was getting pretty good working construction
and was disinclined to go to college to merely continue my downward academic march.
Through the spring of my senior year I adamantly refused to apply to any colleges.
But after receiving that diploma, my mother pleaded with me
to give it a try and for her sake I relented.

That June I applied and was accepted by a diploma mill state public college
desperate for warm tuition paying bodies...it was situated near the beach,
but most importantly for my mother qualified me for the coveted student deferment.
The campus was 180 miles from home and with the usual temptations, conflicts, and distractions,
not to mention the political ferment of those times, by the midterm of the fall semester
I stopped attending classes and even sold my textbooks.

I kept my parents in the dark until I was officially suspended in February of 69
though I hung on through the spring to take advantage of the beach,
and I sure as hell did not inform my draft board. But late that summer
the F.B.I. during a routine background investigation,
discovered my deception and I was immediately reclassified 1-A.

Meanwhile back on the crowded bus
I sat like chicken on a poultry truck
only this birdbrain knew what he was in for.
Scared, exhausted, numb, and rubbing elbows, shoulder to shoulder
with mostly gung ho rednecks and hillbillies, that unlike losers like me,
were hell bent for leather for their shot to land in the middle of a bloody war.
As they prattled and the bus rattled
I drowsily imagined I was sitting on a pirate galleon in the company of rowdy buccaneers.
Through the morning mist I visualized a main mast
and a swarthy cutthroat with eyepatch and spyglass
up in the crows nest shouting
"Ahoy mateys! I see the prize! And a pretty one she is!"
And a rough chorus belted back
"Yo ho ho and a bottle full of rum!"
And I thought "Oh no no not another rum!"
Then I awoke to the belligerent chant "Yo Ho Ho Chi Minh!"
And I had to smile "Oh no no not another pun!"
My conscience was in a wrestling match
between letting these poor ignorant devils bear all the burden
and me shouldering a gun and sharing in the insane sacrifice.

After two weary hours passing cornfields, billboards, and ghosts,
we arrived in the hallowed angry heart of the Confederacy, Richmond.
we were herded into a drab concrete building
as a red sun took the controls from a gray bleak sky.
We stood around forever it seemed
smelling lysol and bleached linoleum and farts
and before long the defiant sweetness of a lit marijuana joint.

We were ordered to strip down to our underpants
and that was all we wore the rest of that day
corralled in that windowless stockyard.
Soldiers marched us, measured us, weighed us,
probed us, punctured us, questioned us, and abused us.
When they jabbed us with needles to draw our blood, Where a war Wouldn’t...
the baddest, hardcore big mouth ass on the bus
fainted and slumped on the floor with a thump,
and I could see how tough and ready he'd be
when instead of the pinpricks of a nurse
he’d face the bullets of an enemy.

We were told to form a circle and stand straight then drop our drawers,
bend over and spread our butt cheeks so a sergeant could beam a flashlight up our rectums.
We were then told to turn around and face each other
with all that we cherished most out there hanging like flags in a dead calm.
The sergeant and a major who was a physician stood in the eye of our circle.
The non-com and the officer were discussing the disposition
of a muscular black inductee who had specifically requested an assignment to airborne.
The major retorted "You expect to be a paratrooper with feet like that?"
Though not directed at me, his comment sent me mentally searching
in an alternative world for an answer, wondering why all the fuss
over this eager beaver fighter and his incredibly flat feet.
Focusing on the issue of podiatry, I inadvertently tuned out the major's next instructions.

I couldn't interrupt and ask that he repeat them or I'd get screwed for insubordination,
so I closely watched the major as he confronted each recruit and how they responded
and thought "piece of cake." And then it was my turn for the major to invade ny space.
He jammed his fingers into my crotch and told me to cough and I did so right into his face.

Instantly he blew his stack and spit out his rage all over my nose.
During my preceding daze I not only missed his order,
I neglected to notice the other guys turn their heads before coughing.

I winced when he yelled in my face
"GET THIS ONE'S NAME! KEEP AN EYE ON HIM! ONE MORE STUNT LIKE THAT AND WE'LL SHIP STRAIGHT TO THE NAM!" Then he moved on to the next crotch grope and cough.

Eight grueling hours later and the few of us not inducted that day
gathered our clothes and re-boarded the nearly empty bus,
a lot more subdued after most of our early morning fellow travelers
surrendered their freedom and were bound for basic training that evening.

By mail I learned I had passed the physical. Concerned about how much time I had left,
I dropped by my local board located in a small room above the post office.
Two gray haired matrons ran the operation out of three file cabinets.
They were most amenable and gracious about thumbing through the manila folders
and found my status sheets tucked among the sketchy lives of all the other boys
and almost men eligible to suffer and die far from home and mom.
So upon my request she pulled my jacket and after a perfunctory perusal
politely informed me I would be called to duty within six to ten weeks
depending on the pentagon's quotas governing manpower requirements.

What was I going to do?
I started receiving recruitment letters from other branches,
extolling my fitness to serve and encouraging me
to join the few and the proud or to see the world or to earn my wings.

It sounds cliche, but it was an existential moment of truth.
I was about to shit hit the fan, mulling my chances, my options
when out of the blue congress enacted a lottery system
and I drew a high number and as a consequence
I never had to choose whether to desert or die.

This shadow was going nowhere a thumb wouldn't take me.
by L DOUGLAS ST OURS April 2010